Bill Pray
Research Director
2 years at Gartner
16 years IT industry
Bill Pray is an analyst in the Collaboration and Content Strategies ITP team. He covers communications and collaboration solutions — e-mail, calendars, instant messaging, and web conferencing…Read Full Bio
by Bill Pray | January 27, 2011 | Comments Off
The roiled waters of legal precedence for e-mail were stirred again with the Sixth Court of Appeals recently ruling that police must obtain a search warrant before accessing e-mail stored by an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Below are some interesting quotes from the opinion issued by the court (http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/10a0377p-06.pdf):
“Warshak enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy in his emails vis-a-vis NuVox, his Internet Service Provider. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Thus, government agents violated his Fourth Amendment rights by compelling NuVox to turn over the emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.”
This is the heart of the issue – the Sixth Court of Appeals ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail, even if it is stored at a third party’s service.
“Email is the technological scion of tangible mail, and it plays an indispensable part in the Information Age. Over the last decade, email has become “so pervasive that some persons may consider [it] to be [an] essential means or necessary instrument[] for self-expression, even self-identification.” Quon, 130 S. Ct. at 2630. It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise, the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve. See U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. at 313; United States v. Waller, 581 F.2d 585, 587 (6th Cir. 1978) (noting the Fourth Amendment’s role in protecting “private communications”). As some forms of communication begin to diminish, the Fourth Amendment must recognize and protect nascent ones that arise. See Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 473 (“It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in the past.”).”
I love the first line. This is why I find the purported death of e-mail to be greatly exaggerated. Sure, e-mail will continue to evolve and, hopefully, return to its proper use as asynchronous text messaging, but death is not imminent. The pervasiveness of e-mail guarantees its life and just as snail mail lives on, it will continue to be an important part of business communications.
“If we accept that an email is analogous to a letter or a phone call, it is manifest that agents of the government cannot compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of an email without triggering the Fourth Amendment. An ISP is the intermediary thatmakes email communication possible. Emails must pass through an ISP’s servers to reach their intended recipient. Thus, the ISP is the functional equivalent of a post office or a telephone company. As we have discussed above, the police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call—unless they get a warrant, that is. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 114; Katz, 389 U.S. at 353. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber’s emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement absent some exception.”
This section equates the ISP to the post office or the telephony company – an important distinction in terms of legal precedent and the Fourth Amendment.
Interesting reading, but don’t bank on this decision clarifying the legal questions around e-mail. I am not an attorney, so the best advice I can give as an analyst is to involve your enterprise’s legal counsel in any decision regarding the outsourcing of e-mail. The interviews I have conducted over the past several months have revealed that organizations that involve their legal counsel in decisions regarding the outsourcing, storage, retention, and deletion of e-mail go through a valuable risk assessment process that helps IT to partner with the business in providing the best solution that meets the risk tolerance of the enterprise.
Category: Cloud Communication e-mail Tags: cloud, Communication, e-mail, legal
by Bill Pray | January 12, 2011 | 1 Comment
I was fortunate enough to spend the last week on vacation. As part of my vacation, I tried something I haven’t managed to do ever since I became involved in IT more than 15 years ago: I disconnected for an entire week – 7 entire days without internet, e-mail, text messaging, and telephone.
The experience wasn’t the respite that I had hoped for – rather, it was a bit discombobulating. I mentally prepared myself for being away from e-mail. I dutifully crafted and applied my vacation notices. And when I returned, because of my vacation notices, nothing in my e-mail cried out for immediate attention or action. My e-mail rules had pre-sorted many of the messages and I was able to – after a few hours – wade through the messages I needed to read and send the needed responses. The time of year also helped, in that many people were also on vacation or just getting back into their workflows from the holiday slowdowns, so my e-mail volume was down a bit. Not having telephone was a similar experience, as I just waded through the voicemail upon my return, knowing that callers were informed that I would be unreachable for the week.
In fact, I employed attention management tools and techniques to manage my in-boxes. Craig Roth recently explained attention management in his blog:
However, what discombobulated me was not being able to see my feeds – news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Without internet access, I didn’t have my finger on pulse of my world and what I consider important. For a week, I didn’t know what was happening.
So, a week disconnected turned out not to be about respite from overload and a mountain of messages awaiting my return. Rather, it was loss the of the pulse or heartbeat of what is important to me. As Craig would put it (I think), it was about the loss of keeping in touch with the things that warrant my attention.
Would I do it again? Maybe, but I think that keeping your finger on the pulse is important to your sense of well-being – even when you are on vacation.
Category: Communication Tags: Communication, e-mail
by Bill Pray | December 14, 2010 | 2 Comments
It has been a little over two years since the acquisition of PostPath and Jabber by Cisco, with not much to show. When Cisco acquired PostPath, I blogged about how it will not be easy for Cisco and that they have to answer the questions of why and how for enterprises:
Another 800 LB Gorilla Jumps In – Cisco Acquiring PostPath
A little over a year later, Cisco had started articulating its vision for e-mail. The vision is a good one, as I blogged about in:
The Evolution of the Inbox
And now, after two years, Cisco’s efforts in the e-mail and instant messaging (IM) space seem a bit stalled. Cisco recently changed the name of Cisco WebEx Mail to Cisco Mail, but it is still in “limited availability” – meaning only in North America. I interpret “limited availability” as another way of saying “beta.” Cisco hasn’t rolled out Cisco Mail internally either. There is no eating their own dog food or drinking their own champagne yet.
On the IM front, there has been more progress as the Jabber technologies have been integrated into Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, and Cisco WebEx Connect IM. However, there is no market buzz around Cisco’s efforts. The integration of the Jabber technologies has been lost in the confusing noise of Cisco’s collaboration solutions message.
I believe that if Cisco does not execute on its text-based messaging products, it will struggle to be successful in the rest of its collaboration solution story. Cisco doesn’t have to be #1 in text-based messaging to be successful. Cisco just has to offer viable enterprise-grade solutions that get them on the short list and provide enterprises with alternatives and choice.
Competition is good for markets and customers. It spurs innovation and better costs. I would applaud Cisco stepping it up and competing with Google, IBM, and Microsoft in text-based communications. The markets for text-based communications are huge, with room for numerous players and plenty of green field opportunities.
Category: e-mail Tags: Cisco, Cisco Systems, instant messaging, Jabber, PostPath
by Bill Pray | November 9, 2010 | Comments Off
The interviews are complete and the data is consolidated. As part of my research endeavors, over the last couple of months I have been interviewing organizations about how they are handling their e-mail systems management. The results have been interesting and now the work of creating the research reports begins.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in the interviews – 39 IT professionals, architects, and executives that were gracious enough to spend some time talking with me.
In all, the interviews generated approximately 2,000 affinity statements. Five analysts then categorized, discussed, and created insights over a period of 4 days – fueled by Chicago deep dish pizza and copious amounts of caffeine.
The resulting research documents will be published as part of the Collaboration and Content Strategies research in the IT Practitioner’s group within Gartner.
Category: e-mail Tags: e-mail
by Bill Pray | October 12, 2010 | 3 Comments
While interviewing a senior IT architect at a large firm a few weeks ago for my research project on e-mail systems management, I gleaned an interesting insight into how they have been successful in using an alternative e-mail solution (other than on-premises IBM Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange). They disconnected calendaring from e-mail culturally, socially, in processes, and even sometimes technically.
It is an interesting idea. For some, this may seem like a step backward.
The calendar has changed. What is in today’s e-mail clients is a technology derivative of the old paper planners. As such, it does not work well in the mobile device world where calendars are more dynamic and represent a filter for a person’s time and effort that spans their work and personal lives.
I have since spoken with a couple more organizations that have done the same – separated calendaring from e-mail. For each, it appears to have given the organization more flexibility in its choice of e-mail solution and made the possibility of changing that solution a less expensive migration situation.
However, there are issues with this approach. It usually requires users to interact with multiple interfaces. Interoperability between solutions can be a challenge. And, it is generally administrative users (who are usually the calendar power users) who will feel the most pain as they are the ones that manage multiple calendars for groups and executives.
Calendaring is something that has been neglected by the major e-mail vendors and numb point for enterprises – meaning that while calendaring functionality often doesn’t meet the needs, the pain of the work arounds hasn’t been enough for enterprises to seek or develop other solutions.
There are some attempts to fix calendaring. CalConnect, the Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium, is working to promote calendaring and scheduling interoperability and enhancement. There are calendaring and scheduling web service start-ups that are trying to address the numb points and get the attention of users and the enterprise (e.g. Doodle, TimeBridge, and Tungle).
However, until the enterprise recognizes the pain of the current calendaring and scheduling solutions available in e-mail and pushes for change, it will continue to be a numb point. Meetings will be missed. Admins will spend time on the telephone calling to coordinate schedules. Time zone snafus will disconnect participants. And users will be frustrated that their mobile calendar doesn’t provide the filter on their life that they need.
Category: e-mail Tags: CalConnect, calendar, Doodle, e-mail, TimeBridge, Tungle
by Bill Pray | September 17, 2010 | 1 Comment
When evaluating or discussing unified communications (UC), one of the first marriages of communications and collaboration technology that resonates with IT and users alike is that of e-mail, instant messaging (IM), and web conferencing. However, there are issues that an enterprise needs to consider when choosing to implement this integration. So, I thought I would have a little fun with some quotes about marriage and the technologies:
“A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966”
The integration of e-mail, instant messaging, and web conferencing generally means an expensive communications and collaboration platform purchase from one of the major vendors (e.g. IBM, Microsoft) for the best working relationship. Web conferencing and IM vendors often provide connectors into the e-mail client environment, but these do add complexity for upgrades and support.
The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly. ~Peter De Vries
The integrations for e-mail, IM, and web conferencing have been around for years – but getting users to take advantage of the integrations within their normal workflow and making it easy for them has taken time. The current integrations have matured slowly, but are getting solid and sophisticated in their ability to deliver.
Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity. ~Author Unknown.
Once enterprise users embrace the integration of these three technologies and incorporate them into their workflows, then it becomes very difficult for the enterprise to change any of the technologies and the supporting platform. The enterprise becomes committed to the solution set, which can lead to some insanity in future decision making for IT. Lock-in is something nearly every IT shop tries to avoid, but invariably encounters at some point in their delivery of services.
The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character. ~Peter Devries
The commitment means that the enterprise has to live with the product and vendor choice, potentially for a very long time. Agility, particularly when it comes to e-mail solutions, is not easy. On the other end of the spectrum, other than user training, it is really easy to change SaaS web conferencing solutions. Selection of each of the three technologies is often done because of the perceived benefits and functionality. However, once you learn the true character of the solutions and you decide you want change, it may be very difficult if they are integrated.
Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses. ~English Proverb
While users may embrace the integration and find it makes their work life easier, quantifying that value in a business case that justifies the expenses of implementing and integrating the solutions can be very difficult. These technologies have numerous “soft” benefits when integrated that are difficult to assign monetary value. However, it is generally not difficult for the executives to see how expensive it is to provide these technologies.
Category: unified communications Tags: e-mail, instant messaging, unified communications, web conferencing
by Bill Pray | September 10, 2010 | Comments Off
It always pays to read the fine print – or the documentation. I recently have spoken with several organizations about their desire to implement the multi-tenancy features of Exchange 2010 so they can create their own private cloud, software-as-a-service offering. This is attractive to organizations looking to setup chargeback models and who have some requirements to separate services and data. Government organizations find this model interesting. For example, the IT organization can separate the legal departments and agencies (using the multi-tenant capabilities) from the other agencies within the government, while still delivering the services in an easier to manage multi-tenant capable environment.
However, I don’t think that Microsoft planned for the multi-tenant features to be used in this way – at least not in the short term. After doing a bit of research, some organizations may need to revisit this idea. On TechNet, Microsoft documentation for Exchange 2010 SP1 states:
“Support for Multi-Tenancy
With Exchange 2010 2010 SP1 built-in multi-tenant support, service providers that use Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) no longer need a solution such as Microsoft Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.5 to host multiple organizations. Multi-tenant support provides the core feature set of Microsoft Exchange that can be deployed to multiple customers in a single installation and provides ease of management and flexibility of provided features to end-users.
The hosting solution available for Exchange 2010 SP1 includes most of the features and functionality available in Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise deployments (emphasis added), but also includes features and functionality that allow you to create and manage tenant organizations.
The multi-tenant capabilities in Exchange 2010 SP1 form part of the suite of multi-tenant capable products that will replace the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.5 solution.
For more information, see Multi-Tenant Support.”
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff459257.aspx
So, what does “most of the features and functionality” mean?
At TechNet, the documentation provides the list:
“What’s not available in Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting Mode
Exchange 2010 SP1 doesn’t support the following features in Hosting mode:
- Exchange Management Console
- Public Folders
- Unified Messaging Server role
- GalSync
- Federation
- Business-to-Business features such as cross-premises message tracking and calendar sharing
- IRM
- Outlook 2003 support (EnableLegacyOutlook)
- Edge Transport Server role”
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff923272.aspx
That is a significant list. For most of the organizations I have spoken with, that list rules out using the multi-tenant features and moves them back to implementing separate environments to achieve the desired walls between the users and data of different departments and agencies.
Overall, I expect Microsoft to work on shortening that list in future releases – but, the list may change your design and upgrade plans today.
Category: e-mail Tags: e-mail, Exchange, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2010 SP1, Groupware, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft TechNet, Multitenancy
by Bill Pray | September 2, 2010 | 1 Comment
Green
“Green i
s a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered one of the additive primary colors.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green
Web conferencing represents two kinds of green for an enterprise. The first being cost savings or reduction through using the technology to enhance meeting capabilities and reduce travel budgets. The second is a social responsibility story.
“In areas that use the U.S. Dollar as currency, green carries a connotation of money, wealth, and capitalism, because green is the color of United States banknotes, giving rise to the slang term greenback for cash.” Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green.
The economic conditions of the last two years have increased the use of web conferencing as an alternative to travel – but, not a complete replacement. Face-to-face is still needed, but web conferencing has become more complementary. For example, I talked with one organization who temporarily replaced their annual “bring everyone to Orlando” sales meeting and training with web conferencing. They still plan on bringing everyone together again in the future, but the replacement allowed them to cut costs during a budget crunch period.
“Green has become the symbolic color of environmentalism, chosen for its association with nature, health, and growth.” Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green.
Perhaps one of the more interesting values that is surfacing with web conferencing is the social responsibility story that organizations are telling. The social corporate agenda has traditionally focused on charitable activities and community participation. But the new song to be sung by the socially conscious enterprise is about how that organization is helping to save the environment. The CEO agenda is going green, and corporate green initiatives are springing up everywhere as organizations promote their environmentally friendly stories to the public and garner some positive publicity along the way.
Green initiatives can also contribute to the bottom line of an organization. For example, the European Community has several initiatives compelling its member states to put a high priority on energy efficiency. Many of these initiatives involve tax incentives for organizations that comply, and penalties for those that do not.
To help customers tell their green story through web conferencing, some web conferencing vendors have developed green meters. Green meters are web conferencing solution pods or widgets that measure, based on the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the participants, the carbon footprint reduction that results from web conferencing rather than traveling to the host location.
There are a plethora of web conferencing solutions in the market, with Adobe, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft being four of the major players. Now is a great time for enterprises to evaluate their choice of web conferencing solutions and delivery models – software-as-a-service (the most popular for web conferencing) or on-premises.
Category: web conferencing Tags: Adobe, Cisco, green, IBM, Microsoft, unified communications, web conferencing
by Bill Pray | August 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Welcome to the three Ps of unified communications technologies:
The Pitch
“consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types”
“to simplify and integrate all forms of communications in view”
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_communications
“provides a seamless flow between the work your employees do and the people they need to connect with to get work done faster and better.”
“saves IT time and money by replacing silos for phone, voice mail, and e-mail with an integrated, Windows-based platform.”
Microsoft – http://www.microsoft.com/uc/en/us/default.aspx
“high quality, highly secure experience across any workspace. “
Cisco – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns151/networking_solutions_unified_communications_home.html
“reduce costs and enable better decisions”
“reduce business costs. And help people find, reach and collaborate smarter with others.”
IBM – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/unified-communications/
The Promise
“to simplify and integrate all forms of communications in view to optimize business processes and reduce the response time, manage flows, and eliminate device and media dependencies.”
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_communications
“helps your company:
- Shorten sales and customer service cycles
- Reduce time-to-market
- Adapt to market changes faster
- Encourage innovation”
Cisco – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns151/networking_solutions_unified_communications_home.html
“provide a new connected experience, transforming every communication into an interaction that is more collaborative, engaging, and accessible from anywhere”
Microsoft – http://www.microsoft.com/uc/en/us/default.aspx
“deliver real-time communications services—from enterprise instant messaging and online meetings to telephony and video conferencing—through a single user interface. …unify the user experience while also leveraging your existing IT and telephony infrastructure.
Easy to use, easy to access… This can reduce business costs. And help people find, reach and collaborate smarter with others.”
IBM – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/unified-communications/
The Practicality
- Enterprise interest in unified communications (UC) is high
- But enterprise investment in UC has been cautious to date
- Most UC investments driven by legacy environment refresh
- “New” applications driven by mobility and videoconferencing
- Most new implementations of UC investments have limited application integration (communications, collaboration, business)
- Combined effect of economic, competitive overlap, and organizational complexities driving a slower pace of adoption than the industry portrays
- Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) are still in the early stages – initial implementations have not proven to be repeatable and are professional services intensive with custom APIs and SDKs
Category: unified communications Tags: Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, unified communications
by Bill Pray | August 18, 2010 | 1 Comment
My colleagues at Gartner IT Leaders have published some featured research on Cloud eMail & Collaboration. This is great stuff. The interview with Matt Cain provides insight into the challenges and issues organizations are facing when considering using SaaS e-mail. Matt hits the nail on the head when he says the first place to start is understanding what e-mail currently costs the organization. Make sure you take advantage of the free research offer and the free webinar that are linked on the page.
As a complement to what they have produced in Gartner IT Leaders, we – in Gartner IT Professionals (Burton Group) – are currently digging deep into e-mail systems management through a field research project. The goal of this project is to get at some of the stories and experiences of organizations grappling with the challenges of turning e-mail into an inexpensive (as possible) utility. The project involves in-depth interviews from a variety of enterprises. Using a process of creating and consolidating affinity statements, we are able to gain insight into the organizational, business, and technical challenges – and solutions.
If you are interested in participating in the research and have responsibilities for your enterprise’s e-mail strategy and management, please send me an e-mail. Interviews are approximately 90 minutes long and can be with individuals or groups. Most interviews are by telephone, but some are on-site when logistics permit. Participants do not need to be current Gartner customers and will have an opportunity to review and provide feedback on the research. As part of the research methodology, participant information is kept anonymous.
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