Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts

November 13, 2008

The Awesome Implications of Gmail and Enterprise Architecture

Recently, I took the leap from Yahoo! and added a Gmail Account.

For a long time, I thought, “What can be the difference? E-mail is e-mail.” Further, I thought people were just switching because it was the latest fad, and they wanted to be associated with the then-upcoming Google versus the troubled Yahoo!

While this may be partly true, there are some tangible advantages to Gmail. Gmail has a better interface than Yahoo!—it provides one look and feel while Yahoo! has a switching mechanism between the legacy email and a new Yahoo! mail, which is still kind of quirky. Gmail better integrates other tools like instant messaging and VOIP. Gmail offers a huge amount of storage. Gmail associates email strings so you can easily expand or click through the chain.

And finally,
Gmail has a label structure for emails versus Yahoo’s folder structure. This is the one that matters most.

The label structure is superior to the folders. You can have multiple labels for an e-mail and can therefore locate items of interest much more easily by checking in any of the pertinent label categories. In contrast, in the Yahoo! folder structure, you can only store the e-mail in one folder, period. This makes it it difficult to store, connect, and discover items that cross categories.

For example, if you have e-mails on enterprise architecture topics from a particular source, you may want to label it by the topic EA and by the source it came from, so in the future you can find it by topic or by source.

Reflecting on this archiving structure from an enterprise architecture perspective, it became apparent to me that the legacy folder structure used in Yahoo! mail and the typical Microsoft Office applications such as Outlook and My Documents is built according to a typical taxonomy structure. By this I mean that here are one “parent” to multiple “children” relationships (i.e. a folder has one or more files/emails, but a file/email is constrained to only one folder).

However, in Gmail, the archiving structure is built according to an ontology structure, where there are multiple relationships between objects, so that there is a many-to-many relationship. (i.e. a label category can have multiple files/emails and files/emails can be tagged to many labels)—a much more efficient and expansive metadata structure.

So in short, the analogy goes like this--

Folder structure : Taxonomy : : Labels : Ontology

And Google wins in e-mail archiving hands down!

In enterprise architecture, the implications are enormous. For example, Microsoft, which is the defacto standard in most of our organizations, rules the way we store files in the legacy folder structure. Perhaps, the time has come for us to evolve to the superior metadata structure using labeling. This will make it far easier and more productive for the average user to search and discover information they need.

Further, metadata is at the heart of enterprise architecture, where we seek to break down the siloes in and between our organizations and make for better interoperability and information sharing. The goal is a holistic view of what’s going on in our organization and between organizations, and the only way to achieve that from an IT perspective is to label information so that it is discoverable and usable outside stereotypical stovepipes.

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February 10, 2008

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Enterprise Architecture

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44 billion—brilliant play or stupid move?
Some say it’s a brilliant move:
According to techcrunch.com, a combined Microsoft/Yahoo would be a technology behemoth and have $65 billion in revenue, $17.6 billion in profit, 90,000 employees, and 32.7% of the U.S. search market share.
Yahoo owns semi-valuable assets like Flickr, a photo sharing site and del.icio.us, a social bookmark site.
Others say it’s a stupid move:
  1. Microsoft/Yahoo would still seriously trail Google’s U.S. search market share of 58.4%!
  2. Other corporate acquirers, like Oracle, generally profess acquisitions only if it enables a clear #1 market position like it is with data warehouse management, business analytics, human capital management, customer relationship management, and contract lifecycle management.
  3. Fortune Magazine, 18 February, 2008, says “Microsoft is paying too dearly for Yahoo.” Fortune asks “What exactly is Microsoft buying here? Technology? Yahoo has been managing a declining asset since Google invented a better way to do search…Technologists? Talent has been fleeing Yahoo Central since Terry Semel got there…a let’s not even talk about the clash of cultures that such a merger will create.”
  4. Yahoo has made serious management missteps, such as backing out of a deal to buy Facebook in 2006 at a $1 billion bargain (Facebook was recently valued at $15 billion) and botching the acquisition of YouTube and losing out to Google.
Fortune concludes:
  1. “Microsoft is buying an empty bag.”
  2. Yahoo will be Microsoft’s AOL” (comparing a Microsoft/Yahoo acquisition to the failed AOL/Time Warner one).
  3. Microsoft should abandon the acquisition, unbundle itself from search, Xbox, and Zune, and instead focus on improving its core competency, the operating system.
From a User-centric Enterprise Architecture perspective, it’s an interesting dilemma: should companies (like Microsoft) diversify their products and services, similar to the way an individual is supposed to responsibly manage their financial investments through broad diversification in order to manage risk and earn a better overall long-run return. Or should companies do what they do best and focus on improving their core offering and be #1 in that field.
Historically, I understand that most mergers and acquisitions fail miserably (like AOL/Time Warner) and only a few really succeed (like HP/Compaq). Yet, companies must diversify in order to mitigate risk and to seek new avenues to grow. As the old saying goes, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” The key to successfully diversify is to architect a #1 market share strategy, like Oracle, acquire truly strategic assets like Compaq, and not overpay like with Yahoo and AOL.

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