RSG receives many subscriber inquiries about what to expect from these major players, so here's a short summary

Myths are important because they allow us to share common stories. They often have a foundation in the truth, but in a commercial context, they can become disconnected from reality

If you license one or more of these IBM platforms, you have good reason to feel a bit queasy right now.

You won't find a single, dominant player. In fact, some of the larger vendors have proven slower to adopt software "consumerization" practices.

In this edition we now include a full-blown evaluation of Facebook Workplace against our strict criteria.

We just released an advisory paper "Contrasting the Major Marketing Clouds" for RSG research subscribers. This brief is an excellent way for marketing / technology executives to quickly gain a comparative understanding of the leading marketing clouds.

The popularity of Slack, particularly on the user engagement front (it may not really be ready for large enterprise use) — a group chat tool developed with a mobile-first design ethos — underscores that mobile collaboration in the digital workplace remains an unmet need. Traditional collaboration vendors have lagged here but are scrambling to catch-up.

As with most other terms in technology marketplaces, there are many variations and meanings of decoupling. Let's look at two general variants:

Both the tech press and the mainstream publications gush over this tool as if it were the next best thing since sliced bread, but Slack is unproven for enterprise use.

As a potential customer, understand that Google is signaling serious intent but that they are still in the early stages of that journey. Even for the mighty Google ambition does not automatically guarantee success

Think of one of the great tennis rivalries of our time. Federer vs. Nadal. At the French Open, you'd bet on Nadal. But at the Wimbledon..

Get a sneak peek of updated evaluations of Salesforce, Oracle, IBM Silverpop, Act-On, Infusionsoft, and Vuture

So if you are already an IBM customer — meaning you have invested in IBM WebSphere Portal and WCM and have entitlements for MobileFirst— this is good news for you. But remember that while this combined solution can target a lot of scenarios, it remains a complex set of platforms

When a vendor acquires another product and puts (vendors will say "integrate") that tool within an existing “suite,” it usually comes with a key side effect: overlapping features across multiple products within the suite