Lawrence Liu Jumps Ship

October 19th 2008 Posted to Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint, Social networking

Lawrence Liu has just announced he is joining Telligent, one of the small nimble competitors to SharePoint, his previous gig. Normally the comings and goings of various executives and staffers does not raise my eyebrows, but this one did. Telligent, Jive, Awareness, Central Desktop, and a whole horde of players are all gunning for SharePoint and Telligent just added a major weapon in that fight. So what does it mean for the market?

1. Pay careful attention to Telligent’s moves and marketing. If anyone knows where the warts are for SharePoint — and the upcoming refresh slated for 2009 — its Liu. Telligent should be dropping hints along the way.

2. Look for the whole market to benefit at SharePoint’s expense. While this does not change the fundamental advantages SharePoint enjoys — chiefly bundling and existing enterprise relationships — it does give all the smaller competitors another compelling argument for SharePoint’s insufficency as a true Enterprise 2.0 platform.

3. Telligent may see its relationship with Microsoft change quickly. It’s no secret that one of the best ways for a small Web 2.0 vendor to grab customers is to partner with SharePoint and so far NewsGator and Atlassian (and a few others as well, if I remember correctly) have done so to great success. I would expect Telligent to work out something simlar quickly unless the departure was messier than Liu has let on.

4. Liu and Sam Lawrence have to make up. Don’t they?

View Comments

  • Hi Lawrence, Please accept my apologies for catching you off guard with the blog post; I am in the process of setting up the blog and was looking to get some content in while I continue to fix the look and feel and add features. In this case the process was a bit out of order.

    As for the SharePoint/Telligent relationship, clearly the two applications can be quite complimentary. Community Server is a solution that Microsoft cannot offer today, and Evolution appears to be a substantial upgrade over the out of the box functionality in MOSS 2007. However over the long run I fully expect SharePoint and Evolution to come into direct competition and I have to believe that you personally are well positioned to navigate that competition in the future.
  • Oliver, I intend to help Telligent become an even better/bigger partner for SharePoint than less. During the past two weeks that I've been officially onboard, we've had numerous opportunities brought to us by the Microsoft field, many of which involve Community Server Evolution in conjunction with SharePoint. Both Microsoft and its customers of SharePoint see Telligent as complementary rather than competing.

    I believe that Telligent will (continue to) be tremendously successful in the market at the expense of our competitors much more so than SharePoint.

    Sure, I know all about SharePoint warts and gaps, but I also know its advantages and immense potential, which is why SharePoint customers (and partners) should look to Telligent as the go-to SharePoint partner for social computing and online community value add.

    My departure from Microsoft and SharePoint could not have been more amicable. I'm proud to be able to call *all* of my former Microsoft colleagues .. genuine friends, and I've already called on and talked with many of them about customer referrals and partner opportunities. And they know that they can call on me to assist with just about anything related to social computing, online communities, and beyond.

    Re: Sam Lawrence, we've met in person and shaken hands back in June, but we remain fierce competitors. I respect him, and I hope that he respects me. Competition is good because it pushes our respective companies and collective industry forward more quickly, which ultimately benefits our customers/partners.

    If you want to be briefed on Telligent's product plans and/or platform strategy, please ping me directly at LLiu@Telligent.com. Thanks!


    Lawrence Liu
    Director of Platform Strategy
    Telligent
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