Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) will apparently see the first demo of the new Office Web software. Think Google Docs but with more functionality and better compatibility with MS Office. If it works out, then it will make all the people hyping Google and proclaiming “the death of Microsoft” look very foolish.

The Web punditocracy (TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb etc) have a tendency to get ahead of themselves and confuse potential with actual results. Sometimes they are so excited for a golden, beautiful future that they forget it is the future and has not yet (and may never) come to pass.

Google Apps, Zoho and so on did get some traction among very small businesses and cheapskates because they were free and adequate for a few small tasks. However, the Web punditocracy mistook this traction for a shift in the enterprise IT landscape, and lambasted Microsoft for being a slow, out-of-touch dinosaur.

But where were the revenues — and where were the real businesses dumping Office and Exchange for these new alternatives? The revenues were pitiful and the real businesses did not exist. Sure, a handful of large companies are piloting Google Apps and non-serious or very small companies are using it instead of hosted Exchange, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to Microsoft’s 90-something percent market share, and the only practical reason to do it is to dump MS Exchange, the ultra-expensive email server.

And now, just when Google is so pleased with itself about its ‘traction’ that it is mulling the idea of removing/hiding the free edition, Microsoft is spoiling the party with software that is also free – but better. The dirty secret is laid bare: Google Docs only had users because it was free – not because it was good. (Try switching from MS Office full time and doing any kind of serious task – Google Docs is abysmal.) It’s like a high school where Google was the only 16 year old with a car – a Kia – so everyone wanted to be his friend and hitch a ride. But now another child has come along with a car, and it’s a Porsche. Suddenly all the Kia owner’s ‘friends’ are nowhere to be found.

The VAR Guy called us this week for an update on our plans and to see what we have in store for partners/resellers.

“Unison is preparing some new unified communications surprises that will debut in September 2009. Plus a hosted beta for channel partners is under way. Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy.” Read the article:

http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/07/08/unisons-next-unified-communications-moves/

Analyst Blair Pleasant wrote about Unison last week on NoJitter. When we met Blair at VoiceCon Orlando earlier this year, she couldn’t quite believe Unison was free. Now that she has had a chance to have a good look, I’m glad to say she’s suitably impressed.

Read the blog post: http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/07/unison_too_good.html

“Unison offers what it calls “a new approach to unified communications that combines e-mail, telephony, voicemail, instant messaging, calendars and more–all in one application.” My initial reaction after meeting with Unison at VoiceCon and speaking them last month was, “Is this too good to be true and what am I missing?” I’m still trying to figure this out.” continue (on NoJitter)

 Google’s latest hypefest, which began last week, presents Google Wave as the next advancement in communication. A combination of e-mail, IM and social media, it is, according to the developer “what e-mail would be like if it were invented today”. Wave will be an open source project, although it remains to be seen whether it is true open source (think: Linux) or ‘faux-pen’ source (think: Android, where Google maintains very tight control over the project).

But what’s really going on here? Beyond Google’s rhetoric of advancing communications for the benefit of all mankind, lies the standard Google subtext - ‘let’s kill Microsoft’.

Email, which has been around for over 20 years, suits Microsoft better than it does Google because the best way to approach e-mail is a client/server model, with a fat client - ie Microsoft Outlook/Exchange - which allows full access to email and rich functionality, even while offline. Gmail is a poor cousin to Outlook for serious business users, even with Google Gears installed, which is Google’s best-we-could-do attempt to twist a browser until it feels like a native client.

So what’s an evil-empire-in-waiting to do when the paradigm is stacked against it? Change the paradigm of course.

By trying to replace e-mail with a newer, shinier option (which happens to be Google-controlled), the Wave project aims to create a new paradigm for online communication. In doing so, it will turn the tables on Microsoft, IBM and the other client-server e-mail giants and privilege Google’s religious Web-client-only approach.

But will it work? A few reasons suggest ‘no’.

Here is why Waves is unlikely to create the revolution Google is promising:

1. Only a truly open standard could ever ‘replace’ e-mail
E-mail is a truly open, universal standard, and it is this fact that has allowed it to become a company- and system-independent medium for the whole world. What Google is suggesting smells too self-interested and too ‘owned by Google’ to gain the universal trust any new system would need. Wave has the look and feel of Gmail and relies heavily upon HTML 5, another initiative that Google co-owns (with Apple) and is pushing hard.

2. Google has shaky commitments to open standards
Even though Google uses a great deal of open source software in its datacenters, it has taken a lot of flak for failing to share with the community the modifications it made to the code. It takes, without giving back, which has badly damaged its cred in OSS circles.

3. It is not even clear to what extent Google will relinquish control of the open source Wave
In early briefings Google has made clear that Wave will be an open standard. However, as I said, there is ‘open’ and there is ‘faux-pen’. Android is technically open but it is clear that Google is the boss, and the mobile OS is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship.

4. E-mail inertia is too high
Even though everyone hates e-mail for many reasons, it is impossible to eradicate. Even if your own company totally abandons e-mail internally (for wikis/SharePoint/whatever) you still need a way to communicate with clients and partners outside your business and only e-mail fits the bill.

5. The ‘tipping point’ rule makes it almost impossible to replace e-mail
With Gmail, Google has - at most - a 2% penetration rate in the business e-mail market. Even if all of those people start to use ‘Waves’ as well as standard e-mail, that still leaves 98% of business users unable to participate. This creates a powerful conservative pressure to revert to the lowest common denominator - e-mail. Because even if it sucks, it just works.

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Microsoft just placed the first nail in the coffin of its Office suite. In Service Pack 2, the company debuted the ability to save documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the OpenDocument format - including an option to make this the ‘default’ document format.

For years, the largest barrier to switching away from expensive Microsoft Office to free OpenOffice has been file formats - MS Office formats did not work with OpenOffice and vice versa.

Now, in the worst economy for decades, Microsoft has handed its free rival a gift - MS Office compatibility. This comes after several years of irritation at the new docx and xlsx formats that Microsoft introduced in Office 2007. Of course it is not really a gift (Microsoft came under heavy government pressure and finally capitulated to support open standards but that’s not the important thing.

Sensible companies who want to phase out the ‘Microsoft tax’ now have an easy way to do it: set all copies of Office 2007 to save OpenDocument files by default, then gradually move to OpenOffice (it even works on Linux!) as a policy.

With a major recession, companies are looking for savings wherever they can. So instead of spending $400 on MS Office including Outlook, why not spend $0 on a copy of OpenOffice plus Unison.

Microsoft recently announced their Exchange 2010 beta and the interesting thing is that there does not seem to be a single ‘wow’ feature in there. It actually brought to mind Barack Obama’s slogan against John McCain in their presidential race: ‘more of the same’.

The best features that the Microsoft Exchange team could come up were an ‘email mute’ button (already in Gmail), ‘mail tips’ which alerts you if you are about to do something major – like reply-all to a big distribution list – and Outlook Web Access fully supporting Firefox (yawn). J. Peter Bruzzese wrote this technically-oriented summary.

In its panic around Google Apps and other players like Unison disturbing the Exchange Server cash cow (annual sales: $2.2 billion according to The Radicati Group), Microsoft has gone for reactive feature-matching and polishing, rather than big thinking. To be fair, Microsoft has been innovating on the telecoms side, and has successfully put the fear of God into Avaya, Nortel and the other PBX makers.

Still, the main thing you can really say about Exchange 2010 is ‘more of the same’. And we know how the election turned out for John McCain.

I’m very happy to say that Gartner named us a Cool Vendor in Unified Communications for 2009. This got me to thinking: how much will it do for us?

On the plus side, it is great to have the stamp of credibility from a major brand and influencer like Gartner. IT buyers are naturally cautious people, and a new solution like Unison, with very broad capabilities (and marketing claims) will certainly benefit from Gartner’s blessing.

On the down side, I’m afraid that very few SMBs have the time or IT understanding to digest Gartner’s recommendations. Some of the other ‘cool’ vendors are pushing fairly niche products, which are too complex for SMBs and will not make it onto their radar, unless their reseller pitches them. Also, there is still a suspicion of ‘pay to play’ which hovers over industry analysts — though in this case, it is incorrect, as we have not paid Gartner and the recommendation came after two separate Unison/Gartner briefings, with many tough questions.

There is no magic formula for reaching SMBs. Mostly it is a long slog, full of hard work and communicating to hundreds of different audiences. That said, a recommendation from Gartner is still a great thing to have…

It’s not just the designer labels that are having fun this Fashion Week. Check out our Unison Top Models, where even IT guys can meet models.

eWeek published a nice review of Unison from Andrew Garcia, the Senior Editor and Technical Analyst at eWeek Labs. He writes:

“With integrated VOIP, IM, presence, e-mail and calendaring, it delivers an experience similar to Microsoft Office and Communicator merged together. And the best part – Unison Server and Desktop is free.”

You can read the full review at the eWeek site.