Reinventing Teamwork
Thursday, May 25th 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
The ‘Project’ family in the Office 2.0 Database now includes 10 entries. In reality, these could be broken down into sub-families, such as Groupware and Time Tracking. Problem is, Office 2.0 is blurring the boundaries between categories that had been clearly established in the past. This raises the following question: what should we call such applications?
In this family, the applications that I find the most interesting are Basecamp, Central Desktop, CollectiveX, Foldera, and the newly-released GroupSharp. While they differ in terms of user interface philosophy and target users, they all share in common the ability for groups to work together better by conducting conversations, sharing documents, and publishing calendars online.
Where things are getting interesting is that data managed by such services is becoming more and more structured. While blogs and wikis deal with unstructured data, Office 2.0 groupware applications are adding the ability to manage calendars and databases. One of the best examples for this development is GroupSharp, which supports the shared development of spreadsheets, databases and forms, into a single package.
Where things get tricky is that once you put all these features together, you get something similar to what AdventNet is building with Zoho Creator on one hand and Zoho Virtual Office on the other. What this really means is that group collaboration is not an application per se, but rather a capability offered by well-designed Office 2.0 applications through collaboration-enabling features such as publishing, sharing, and syndication.
As a result, such applications should just be called Office 2.0.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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Hi Ismael,
Thanks for the mention of our product (although the name of it is actually “GroupSharp”, not “GroupShare.”) I’ve enjoyed reading all of your Office 2.0 posts, this is an exciting area and we’re happy to be a part of it. I think that this post touches upon a very interesting point - the web office is not going to look like the desktop office. You’re not going to open up your online spreadsheet program, then switch to your online word processor. It’s going to have different models of integration and different features. We’re listening to users and working our butts off in trying to develop this new type of office.
I think we are in a period of experimentation, nothing more. No scale business today could possibly use a bunch of these ad-hoc services as a replacement for their currently managed desktop services.
Patrick,
I totally agree with you. The typo has been fixed.
Howard,
I agree with you, Office 2.0 still is in its infancy, and users fall into the category of bleeding-edge pioneers. Mainstream adoption is several years away. That being said, I believe that some large businesses will find niche applications that work for them. Salesforce.com’s largest customers are a good example for this I believe.
Ismael,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Office 2.0, and we’re delighted that you include Foldera in your “most interesting” list. I entirely agree with you regarding some of the Office 2.0 applications handling more structured data types vs. unstructured approaches with blogs and wikis — that’s definitely what Foldera is all about. Things like calendar items, workflow cycles, and to dos are very structured things that can be fudged in a blog or a wiki, but not done perfectly. Nonetheless, blogs and wikis definitely have a big role to play in Office 2.0, either as a replacement for authoring documents using Microsoft Word, or as a brainstorming mechanism for collaborative input. Some of the “Office 2.0″ applications use wikis as a tool within a more structured environment.
Finally, prior to joining Foldera, I prepared a model for thinking about and designing collaboration tools for the enterprise. If you are interested in how I structured it, see 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity. It is a vendor-neutral way for thinking about where different types of collaborative capabilities are needed by a work / project team.
Kind regards,
Michael Sampson
Global VP of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Foldera, Inc.
http://www.foldera.com
Michael,
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated!
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