Saturday, May 27, 2006

ActiveSync, SyncML and the evil empire

I have always admired Microsoft. I guess I am one of the few open source people with sincere admiration for Microsoft. Not really for the quality of their software (you need open source for that), but because they have been able to hold on a cash cow while they could afford to make a lot of mistakes to find the new revenue stream. When they have been successful, they have made it with a Trojan horse.
What is the last success of Microsoft? I would say Internet Explorer. It was ten years ago. And it was free (as in beer) software. Mediocre quality, never improved for lack of competition (now it is coming, so they are moving again). But it was its Trojan horse to control the web. And they still control it (even if Google is putting up a good fight).
The cash cow are Windows, Office and Exchange. Period. Enough to create a monopoly of insane magnitude.
What's next? Mobile, of course. There is a paradigm shift to mobile, they cannot miss it.
What is their Trojan horse there? ActiveSync. Forget about Windows Mobile, they know they will not be able to control the mobile OS market, as they did with the desktop market. They tried with the server market and failed. Nobody will allow them to succeed in it. I heard a nice story once: "I told my daughter not to use the hammer because she could get hurt. She used anyway. She got hurt. She cried. She came back and said she won't do it again. I know she won't." Mobile device manufacturer will not allow Microsoft to do what they did to PC manufacturers.
So... why ActiveSync? Because it is the link between the mobile and the fixed world. It is the glue that ties the two worlds, which cannot live separately. Because data synchronization is for mobile what the browser is for the Internet.
On ActiveSync, you move your PIM data (contacts, calendar, etc.), you do messaging (Pocket Outlook), you move files, you move applications, you develop the new crop of mobile software. Applications will be resident on devices. ActiveSync is the trick that Microsoft is using to power the mobile Internet, based on mobile widgets.
ActiveSync is not only on Windows Mobile devices. They are licensing it around like crazy. Symbian has licensed it. Nokia has licensed it. It is on Palm. They are playing with the hammer in their hands...
How good is ActiveSync? Mediocre, as usual. It has been built for desktop synchronization over serial and USB. They extended it to over-the-air synchronization but it was not built for it. It is ugly. The Microsoft Direct Push technology is even worse. It drains the battery on the device and requires an IT Manager to expose Exchange on the Internet. Though, it is getting everywhere. Monopolies have some power.
Now, who is fighting ActiveSync? Is Sun doing it? Is Google doing it? Is IBM doing it? Is Red Hat doing it? Is Oracle doing it? Nope. They haven't seen it coming. The only alternative in the market is SyncML, an open standard by the Open Mobile Alliance. It is installed on 700 million phones, 80% of the devices sold last year. It does what ActiveSync does and much better (built for over-the-air sync from day one). It is a grass root movement, probably also because of Funambol with our huge community and our 500,000 downloads. It is a phenomenal success. We are fighting the evil empire on its new battle. We discovered the Trojan horse. We are pointing to it. However, we do not have the marketing power of Microsoft... I guess we could use some help ;-)
Do not let ActiveSync get into your network...It is the new Trojan horse of the evil empire. Go with SyncML. Do not let them lock you in once again. Man, they are good!!
Posted by Fabrizio at 09:28  

6 Comments:

Blogger rolloelvetico said...  

So let me see if I've understood well ... ActiveSync's the Dark Side of the Force, SyncML's the Light Side of the Force ... well, if that's correct, then it comes that Microsoft's the Empire and Funambol's the Jedi Order, and eventually Bill's the Emperor (or Darth Vader ... as you prefer), so, you, Luke, use the Open Force! :-)

Comment Posted at 09:59

Anonymous Matthew said...  

Funambol is crap. After trying it I try to uninstall it and it fubared XP. Then I couldn't log in after it forces me to reboot! Why does a sync platform need a reboot to uninstall! WHY WHY WHY!

And that aside, a 50+mb download, wtf?

It wouldn't find my phone when it was connected via USB, so what the hell good is it?

While I was trying to use it I put in the device code and tried to sync, it would say "oh yeah, synced 3 contacts". Of course it did nothing of the sort... so it's lying.

On top of that... it's frickin java. I hate the non standard crappy UI. All these extra spurious borders around everything. Looks like a dogs breakfast.

Comment Posted at 23:37

Blogger Fabrizio said...  

Hi Matthew,
thanks for your comment. I can't say I can relate to the tone of youyr comment (it's software, after all :-) but I would be interested in talking more.

I am not sure what problem you experienced:
- we do not having anything running with a USB cable. It is all over-the-air. Maybe you were using a different product ;-)
- I guess there are other platforms that force you to reboot after an uninstall, to clean up some of the stuff left. I agree we could work on it a bit more.
- I am sorry you do not like Java, we do, so do many other people in the world.
- the devices actually sync, a good number of people are using our product. I can assure you on that
- a 50MB download is big, but we bundle everything on it, including Apache and a database. It passes the 5 minutes test to get everything up and running. We do have individual components on the site that you can download, if you want and have the app server and db already. It is a platform of a certain size, doing a good amount of things. I wish we could shrink it to 2MB, but I doubt we'll make it.

To summarize: if you were looking for a quick&dirty way of synching your contacts over USB on your laptop, that's not what our platform is for. If you were looking for an enterprise-grade solution to sync your PIM stuff and do push email for your company, that's what we are for.

I apologize if the message is not clear enough on the web site. We'll work on it.

Cheers,

fabrizio

Comment Posted at 12:01

Blogger saracen said...  

Though I am not much of a technical person but i would like to put across my experiance of using syncML.
I signed up with a free online backup service www.zyb.com which uses syncML to backup your mobile data. I obviously consider it a lighter side of the force (as mentioned by rolloelvetico) because its free, convenient and offers mobility.

Comment Posted at 08:17

Anonymous Anonymous said...  

>Not really for the quality of
>their software (you need open
>source for that),

Sorry, but this pretty much colors everything else you may say to me. The idea that the only vehicle for the creation of quality software is open source is, quite frankly, ridiculous and is the province of religious zealots. I like to keep holy wars out of my technology, thanks.

Comment Posted at 23:19

Anonymous Anonymous said...  

Just a note that Oracle is fighting the good fight. Oracle's email server product, called CollabSuite includes mail, calendar, contacts, tasks and even online meetings a la WebEx.

Collabsuite uses open protocols for everything including SyncML for calendar and contacts.

Unfortunately in the enterprise you can't use Funambol with Collabsuite. Why? Because most enterprises require SSL for SyncML and Funambol omitted support for SSL (at least on the iPhone build).

Comment Posted at 22:45

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