Microsoft, IBM Lotus: Operating Systems for Collaboration?

In speaking to a number of startup vendors in the collaboration space, often my first question to them is "How does your product integrate with Microsoft or IBM Lotus office communications applications?" (E.g. Outlook, SameTime, LCS, etc.)  Often the response is "We include our own messaging client or capability."  IMHO, this makes the product a non-starter for the enterprise market.

In conducting our research for an upcoming benchmark on enterprise collaboration, mobility and convergence, it has become quite obvious that the vast majority of enterprises are aligning themselves with strategic collaboration vendors, and these are almost always either IBM or Microsoft.  While there is a considerable amount of interest in open source and third-party applications, the fact of the matter is that any vendor wishing to get into the enterprise collaboration market will have to have a ________ strategy. (Insert "Microsoft" or "IBM Lotus" in the blank.)

In effect, the Microsoft and Lotus application suites have become operating systems for collaboration, much like Windows or Linux/Unix are operating systems for PC applications. 

Vendors can’t come to the PC software market and offer to replace the underlying operating system, rather they must provide value that integrates into the operating system to achieve success.  I believe this same approach will govern the development of products in the enterprise collaboration space. Those who succeed are the ones who can deliver a value-added product or service that leverages the existing Microsoft/Lotus collaboration services.

Already we’re seeing a growing number of examples of vendors adopting this approach.  For example, Socialtext  just released SocialPoint, a wiki platform designed to integrate with Microsoft’s SharePoint workgroup collaboration platform.  Open source messaging/collaboration products such as Zimbra fully support the use of Microsoft clients.  And numerous companies are adding value to SameTime 7.5 thanks to IBM’s integration of the Eclipse open source development framework.

Will there still be room for products that replace rather than supplement Microsoft/IBM platforms? Sure -- but primarily as a backend application that supports either the Notes or Outlook client (or LCS and Sametime).  Yet the battle for the user desktop appears to be decided.  Those that add value to the products that enterprises are already implementing will see greater market potential versus those that attempt to engineer wholesale change to the enterprise collaboration operating system.