The Next Tech Battle: Chrome OS vs. Office Web Apps

I've seen some good posts covering Chrome OS and now Microsoft on SaaS enabling Office. These can emerge as disruptive innovations especially to small businesses and students. Google is challenging Microsoft as the OS of choice for notebooks or said another way, we've got it all wrong and it's not about replacing the OS on PC's
So if all you want to do is get online to browse the Web, check email, view video, tweet or update your Facebook page, edit some online documents, buy a book from Amazon.com--and think about it, that's a lot of what we do on a PC today--you get online in a few seconds and just go.

And here's another way to think about Chrome's business model

But when you consider the $50/year price to license an anti-viral, the $30/year to license a malware program and the additional $30/year you need for a registry cleaner, the software price of a Netbook gets completely out of line with its hardware cost.

Here's Microsoft's issue: There success has largely been based on three tenets combined in different ways: (a) gaining a monopolistic market share, (b) being a low(est) cost provider, and (c) replicating innovative products 1-2 years when they become more widely adopted. Making Office SaaS enabled is just another step in this playbook, but let's face it, as a small or medium business I've had options for some time whether it be Linux on the desktop, StarOffice, Zoho, or Google Docs.

Chrome OS just ups the ante because it means that Microsoft and other desktop application vendors may lose their seat at the table. It also plays well to Google's strength in moving more application and data to Google's cloud. And if you think enterprises won't be paying attention, think again - now they have several options to simplify the desktop and the datacenter when it comes to the basic office productivity applications. Think of the cost reduction in servers, desktop support, etc.

The next tech battle is well underway.
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Why Agile in the Enterprise is hard, and how to make it Easier – Multiple Stakeholders

I’ll get straight to the point, there are several reasons, and I’m going to focus this post on one primary reason. It goes like this

  • Agile is optimized when there is a single product owner that can own and prioritize the backlog.
  • In an enterprise, there are multiple stakeholders often with different priorities and different (sometime conflicting) needs around specific enhancements.
  • Enhancements often touch legacy systems and upgrading/transforming these can unravel a tricky landscape of dependencies.

So it’s hard for a product owner to maintain a backlog when they must negotiate the landscape of conflicting priorities and technology dependencies.

Elements of a Fix

The “fix” to these issues is not trivial and takes some time to sort out with business leaders and other stakeholders. Elements of the fix
  • You need to define roles and responsibilities around several planning functions and especially Agile’s notion of a product owner with traditional roles like product management, project management, and business analysts. This series on Product Owner / Product Manager is a good read on managing these two roles in an enterprise.
  • Backlog creation and prioritization needs to mature to a transparent process, not a process directly controlled by the product owner.
  • Stakeholders must be educated on the agile process and interfacing with it. Think about tools for onboarding work, wikis for collaboration, etc.
  • Recognize if/when specific people in the organization are having difficulty working with, understanding, or engaging an agile (e.g. non-waterfall) ‘hands on’ process.
Hope this helps! Comment here if you want me to elaborate on any items.
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Top 5 Links, Week of June 28

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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.