Oct 12, 2007

Quest acquires Proposion

Quest Software and Proposion just signed an agreement for Quest to acquire Proposion (details will not be made public). The Proposion products augment Quest's Lotus Notes to Exchange migration tools with SharePoint migration and integration capabilities, making the entire Quest solution set the most complete package in the Notes to Exchange/SharePoint/.NET migration and integration market today. While there are few vendors in this domain, it is a market that is highly competitive and instrumental in Microsoft's compete strategy with IBM Lotus - or what Microsoft calls the "Notes Transition" space.

Immediate plans from Quest include streamlining the suite of Proposion tools into bundles that will offer solution sets for migrating and integrating Notes and SharePoint. Proposion recently updated its Portal Migrator 4.0, which supports the migration of content from IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus QuickPlace, and IBM Lotus Domino.doc into SharePoint, all via server-based utilities that can be accessed by users anywhere on the network. The tools also provide utilities to convert Notes documents into InfoPath forms on-the-fly during migration and will convert/preserve document links to SharePoint and Notes regardless of where the linked-to document resides. The Proposion tools are built on top of the core Proposion N2N Notes to .NET data connectors that support the migration and coexistence of Notes and SharePoint applications.

Quest's acquisition of the Proposion solutions complements other Quest management and support tools, and presents a significant challenge to other vendors in this space, including Microsoft, CASAHL Technology, and BinaryTree. Of course, Microsoft ultimately still benefits, despite offering its own (limited) integration tools, since the broader context is migrating enterprises from IBM Lotus products to the Microsoft product suite.

Still, migrating Notes applications to SharePoint (or other platforms) is very challenging, and a hurdle Microsoft has not completely overcome. The consolidation of Quest and Proposion illustrates that the solution is not a found in a single tool but through a combination of data and application logic utilities that support the intermediate steps required to be successful.

We can expect that IBM will respond, as it is otherwise faced with the prospect of watching intensifying competition for the opportunity to migrate organizations from IBM Lotus products to the Microsoft suite.  The Quest/Proposion deal was relatively small in terms of the deal size, but it will likely have important consequences for the broader superplatform competitive landscape in collaboration and content management.

Oct 8, 2007

See you in Miami ...or Phoenix ....or Barcelona

Blogger: Karen Hobert

September has been consumed with planning and preparing for a series of events that I will be presenting at in October. My fall tour schedule unravels as follows:

On Monday October 1st I kick off my tour in Miami at the Advisor Summit. This event will bring together IBM Lotus, Microsoft SharePoint and .NET, and Novell professionals to talk all things communications and collaboration. I will be doing a keynote entitled "Thriving in an E 2.0 World: New Realities in Communication, Collaboration, and Content Management". I'm really looking forward to this talk, I think it's going to be a lot of fun!

On Thursday October 4th I'll be delivering a one day workshop, "SharePoint and Office 2007: New Enterprise Collaboration/Content Opportunities and Risks" at the first Burton Group Institute event in Scottsdale, AZ. I'll be delivering the workshop with Craig Roth, Service Director of Collaboration and Content Strategies services at Burton Group. The day promises to be chock-full of interesting information and discussions on deploying SharePoint in the enterprise.

But wait, there's more...

Catalyst Europe is at the end of October in Barcelona Spain. I'll be repeating my talk on Catalyst North America (June 2007) on IBM Lotus in 2007 and the marketplace. I will also moderate a vendor panel on collaboration and content trends. The panel will include:

Rob Gray, Product Marketing Manager SharePoint Technologies (Microsoft)

  • Doug Coombs, ECM Product Marketing (IBM)
  • Phil Karren, Product Manager, GroupWise and Collaboration (Novell)
  • Javier Cabrerizo, Senior Director, Enterprise Content and Collaboration Services (Oracle EMEA)
  • John Robb, VP of Marketing and Product Management (Zimbra)

I am expecting it to be a lively discussion!

So hopefully I'll get a chance to see you at one of these events! I'll be easy to spot in my Burton Group logo shirt!