The Bloor Perspective: Microsoft and CRM, government and web services, and some semantic clarity

Microsoft's first move into the enterprise software market comes with the announcement it plans to ship Microsoft CRM in the fourth quarter. The move into CRM is part of its strategy to increase demand for its applications as well as services based on .Net.

Although the CRM market is firmly established with leader Siebel fighting off challenges from Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP et al it is new ground for Microsoft. The company is targeting the small to medium-sized businesses and so is likely to come into contact with solutions from GoldMine and SalesLogix as well as Onyx and Pivotal, both of whom are Microsoft partners.

The move follows Microsoft's $1.1bn acquisition of accounting software vendor Great Plains in December 2000. And it is Great Plains technology that plays a key part in the Microsoft CRM solution. Based on Microsoft's SQL Server it will run on an internal server accessed through a browser, Microsoft Outlook or remotely as an application running on host servers and based on a monthly fee.

It's unlikely the big players in the market such as Oracle and Siebel will be too worried about Microsoft's CRM play. Microsoft doesn't yet have sufficient experience in the enterprise level business applications for any of them to panic.

Vendors at the lower end of the market might be starting to feel uneasy, though, and Microsoft's partners, such as Onyx and Pivotal, may be reassessing their relationship with Microsoft.

While Microsoft doesn't win every battle it fights, once its marketing machine gets behind something it doesn't let go without a fight. The company's adventures into set-top box software and media operations such as Sidewalk met with limited success.

On the flip side, Bill et al have come from behind in the internet browser market, challenged IBM and Oracle database software and, although it's not an enterprise application, the recent success of the Xbox shows what Microsoft can do from a standing start when it thinks there is an opportunity.

*Government green lights web services*

Next month, e-envoy Andrew Pinder is due to set out a consultation paper for the further development of the UK's eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF). It is expected that this paper will recommend the use of SOAP and UDDI standards for the provision of web services and, in so doing, will provide a massive boost to the web services market.

eGIF is a collection of rules, policies and technical specifications designed to create an infrastructure through which central and local government units can share and present information efficiently and with some consistency. This will prove a boost because, if adopted, the choice of standard becomes mandatory for all UK government departments that deliver their public services online.

Of course, under the eGovernment initiatives the aim is to get all of the possible public services into the online domain by 2005. There will be significant demand within the UK for any technology that is incorporated into the eGIF specifications.

The inclusion of SOAP and UDDI within the specification is no great thing in itself. These are key elements of a web services environment. However, this move will put the onus on government IT groups to find out the detail of how to make it work and make the appropriate investment in technology.

The consultation process usually takes a few months and involves input from technology companies, end users and individual industry sectors. Therefore, by mid-summer, we can expect a rush of interest in .NET, Java, Sun ONE and some rapid business growth for all those vendors offering application servers and other web services solutions.

Given the nature of the solutions the e-envoy is seeking for 'joined-up government', the use of SOAP and UDDI as standards for integrating and executing application components is not going to be a great surprise. These are the key features that will ensure the actual choice of technology vendor will have the smallest possible effect on government's ability to work in a consistent environment.

More interesting is the choice of vendors. It might be obvious to go and talk with HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun but other solutions out there might just be better or cheaper - or both.

*Knowledge, information, content - or just data*

There is no doubt that without centralised data we have less strength. In order to create the best possible context for any transaction, it is necessary to know as much as possible about all that has happened before as well as any other useful bits and pieces that might add some value. This is the fundamental basis for personalisation on the web - to know who you are, what you like, and everything that you do, so that content can be managed appropriately.

Here's where the problems start. What is content and what does the content management discipline entail? Actually content is just about anything that anybody might want to look at - it is simply data. It follows that the skills required to manage the content are the same as those for all other data. The issues of integrity, creation, movement and so on are exactly the same.

Similarly with information. It too is just data, albeit ever so slightly processed.

Knowledge, however, is different. Knowledge requires the use of technology to derive facts and assumptions that would not otherwise be immediately obvious. Knowledge cannot be created simply by scrunging the data into new tables with different index configurations. It demands the use of clever algorithms that perform AI and other mining functions to come up with their results.

Once again, though, we have to take care with the use of the misused term 'knowledge'. If there are no clever algorithms involved, or the derivation of unknown facts, then it is not knowledge management - it is content or data management. Those tools that allow you to create a data warehouse by extracting data from multiple sources and cleaning it are not knowledge management. Similarly, those applications that are able to make use of otherwise inaccessible data do not qualify.

To quote an analyst of world renown: "They take a mail system and hide the data in a format that nobody can read. Then, when somebody comes up with a tool to read the data, they call it Knowledge Management!"

Bloor Research is a leading independent analyst organisation in Europe. You can find out more at http://www.bloor-research.com or by emailing mail@bloor-research.com .