An alternative to Microsoft Office

Quite a number of year ago I had the privilege of hearing Clayton Christensen, the author of the Innovators Dilemma and the Innovators Solution, speak. He is one of those rare really clever intellectuals who has the capability to make complicated things and ideas simple when he talks to you so that when you later have the time to listen/read to all the words of the (audio)book they make a WHOLE lot more sense.

The model that he proposes about how innovation EVOLVES over time is both fascinating, backed up by evidence and intuitive to one’s own experience.

I have been watching  - like many - the Microsoft v Google competition growing up over a number of years. In various professional roles in companies, including as a CIO in a Retail Bank, I have deployed Microsoft solutions and enjoyed how Microsoft delivered – while initially functionally weak – tools and environments (SQL server, .Net etc, Visual Studio etc) that in time grew up to become very capable and ubiquitous platforms at significantly lower total costs of ownership, especially in the context of the mainframe hardware platforms that they completed against back then 5 and 10 years ago.

Anyway – to the point. As “the cloud” and “On Demand” gathers pace, that thing that most of associate with dominating search, Google, has creates an on demand offering aimed directly at Office, Exchange and Document/Content sharing and collaboration and many of the messaging and communication processes that enable business. In conceiving it in the cloud and that different paradigm, it may not (yet) have all the bells and whistles of each or any one of the Microsoft Office applications. However the business usefulness of a suite that integrates email AND email processing AND chat AND Voice AND video AND documents AND spreadsheets AND forms into a single space delivers a LOT of productivity and, as much to the point, someone else i.e. Google keeps it up an running. The utility of this full package particularly given the total package deal has now reach critical mass = what this space.

I am not saying that Microsoft will falter the way many great companies have done which Christensen gives as examples – it now has other revenue streams beyond its desktop applications. Rather I am suggesting that Google with the Apps products have delivered a product set worthy of the low cost innovators described by Christensen.

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)...by Clayton M. Christensen

My First Blog at Scion

Getting going with this Blogging Stuff

...... has taken a while and yes I am appropriately nervous. Like many things it took having to explain it to someone else to hear myself think. The synthesis that I came to it is intended to strip away the biggest weakness of marketing....the veneer and gloss that make people so wary of the content and claims. Social Networking, of which blogging is an important dimension, provides the platform to for people to share their views on products and services in a much more casual way - much more akin to an openchat so that one gets a much more real sense of who and what really lies beneath the surface of the person (people) and product/service.

So my intention adding to the content that I will post is to open up a new layer of transparency and openness.

And where better to start than our values.

• To be successful we have to make our clients successful
• Finding the Win-WIn ALWAYS leads to a higher net outcome for both parties
• Look for ‘Balance’ in all we do – The Yin and the Yang
• There are many things are perversely quite the opposite of the way they seem

o Wealth is defined not by what you have but by what you give away

o Adversity is a pre-curser to opportunity

o To lead one has to serve

• “Once & Done” conversations