Office applications Toolkit

Story: Oracle quietly works with Mozilla

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You got to hand it to Larry Ellison. He just doesn't quit. But when will he learn?

Years ago i caught my bookkeeper embezzling, and my accountant strangely looking the other way. So i took the problem to my layer and he gave me some advice i'll never forget, “If you're going to corner a rat, you better be prepared to kill it”.

While the collaborative computing plan is a good idea, i don't see where Oracle is ready to move in for the kill. And if they don't make the kill with that first shot, it's Oracle that had better watch out. The backlash will be incredible.

It's not enough to think you can take out OutLook and Exchange with a collaborative alternative. Oracle has to take out the entire application productivity layer. Which can be done using cross platform Open Source alternatives based on the OpenOffice.org – Mozilla core.

This is exactly what IBM is going to do with WorkPlace, a portable productivity environment built out of integrated from OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and the Lotus Notes Client. The components are bound together with a new information management interface, the extraordinary project – activity management application that sits at the heart of WorkPlace.

Could Oracle do the same? Of course. Oracle has built a collaboration suite client that connects to their many server side systems. This is analogous to the server side accelerators IBM has bolted into WorkPlace optimizing connectivity to WebSphere, Notes, and DB2 server systems. There is also plenty of reason to believe that Adobe will interconnect an Adobe WorkPlace version to the Adobe stack of server side systems.

What Oracle needs to do though is concentrate on the whole end user interface, and provide an integrated environment similar to WorkPlace. This would be a single install of Oracle Office that works very much the same on the many versions of Windows and Linux distros.

Open Source efforts like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla are made to be interoperable with all other aspects of the productivity environment and server side systems. Bu ton their own they are not an “integrated” environment. And that's exactly what Oracle is up against. The integrated productivity environment of MS Office, OutLook, VB, .NET, Access, InfoPath, and the server suites of SharePoint, Exchange, Server 2003, MS SQL, Collaboration Server etc.

What Microsoft offers the marketplace is an integrated stack of desktop, device, and server systems. We can argue about how well the promise matches the reality, but it is an integrated stack. And you can't attack an integrated stack at the layer level and think that somehow your current meager measure of interoperability with the rest of the environment will persist. No body has ever been able to do that. Least ways not as long as Chairman Bill is at the helm, and the rule of the day is whatever it takes. And he does mean “whatever it takes”.

IBM is attacking with a cross platform integrated stack model. Will Oracle do the same? Not from what i can see.

~ge~

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