Oracle Beehive - Sounds Like a Honeypot to Me
Sounds like a honeypot to me.
Oracle recently announced a new collaboration suite that includes e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, team workspace and more called Oracle Beehive. I was a little surprised to learn that they have re-entered this space again. I vaguely remember a short-lived and very poorly received e-mail and calendaring solution they introduced in the 1990’s. Today they sell the Oracle Collaboration Suite which has also failed to gain traction. Oracle was unable to show any market differentiation with either product which I’m sure is why both products failed to impress.
After giving this a bit more thought, it is understandable for Oracle to try to field a winning product in this space. It is getting more and more difficult to view the applications and collaboration services as separate things. So what is Oracle’s differentiation angle this time around? Chuck Roswat of Oracle says “integration is one of the major things we could bring to the market that would make it easier for users and more efficient for administrators”. That sounds like there is little differentiation again. There could be but so far, nothing.
Oracle has been spending billions of dollars either building or acquiring all kinds of application companies. I might be able to imagine Larry Ellison tolerating IBM’s efforts in this area, but I can’t imagine him accepting Microsoft Exchange, Office and SharePoint as the standard collaboration services vendor.
Clearly there are a few others trying to make inroads in this space including Google and Cisco. Oracle does have the resources and determination to make this happen if they really want to. Still though, with the control Domino and Exchange have on the collaboration market today, I can’t imagine it will be easy for them to find new customers.
Oracle recently announced a new collaboration suite that includes e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, team workspace and more called Oracle Beehive. I was a little surprised to learn that they have re-entered this space again. I vaguely remember a short-lived and very poorly received e-mail and calendaring solution they introduced in the 1990’s. Today they sell the Oracle Collaboration Suite which has also failed to gain traction. Oracle was unable to show any market differentiation with either product which I’m sure is why both products failed to impress.
After giving this a bit more thought, it is understandable for Oracle to try to field a winning product in this space. It is getting more and more difficult to view the applications and collaboration services as separate things. So what is Oracle’s differentiation angle this time around? Chuck Roswat of Oracle says “integration is one of the major things we could bring to the market that would make it easier for users and more efficient for administrators”. That sounds like there is little differentiation again. There could be but so far, nothing.
Oracle has been spending billions of dollars either building or acquiring all kinds of application companies. I might be able to imagine Larry Ellison tolerating IBM’s efforts in this area, but I can’t imagine him accepting Microsoft Exchange, Office and SharePoint as the standard collaboration services vendor.
Clearly there are a few others trying to make inroads in this space including Google and Cisco. Oracle does have the resources and determination to make this happen if they really want to. Still though, with the control Domino and Exchange have on the collaboration market today, I can’t imagine it will be easy for them to find new customers.
Category Notes Threats
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Comments
Posted by Anonymous At 05:45:20 AM On 10/30/2008 | - Website - |
At 0.3% of the market then, a large percentage of which was Oracle corporation itself and think.com (a subsidiary to whom Oracle gave licenses away to), it was not a threat to IBM, MS or Novell (or Emumail for that matter)at that time, nor will it ever be.
Posted by dan At 01:17:34 PM On 10/30/2008 | - Website - |