Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools promise us a different way of working: instead of a company’s knowledge being locked up in A4-formatted MS Office documents and being ping-ponged back and forth via point-to-point email we begin to use collaborative workspaces (like those offered by Zoho, Google Apps, Clearspace, Traction Teampage, Atlassian Confluence, Onesite, Socialtext, Central Desktop, Brainkeeper, Neartime, Wetpaint, ProjectSpaces, Blogtronix, PlanHQ, Joint Contact, Zimbra, Project360, Mindtouch, Community server.org, Citadel, Airset, Systemone, ProjectForum, Taskbin, Firestoker , 37signals (Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire), and even Microsoft Sharepoint (Johnny come-lately playing catchup)).
For the single best explanation of how the new enterprise collaboration tools work in corporations (and other organizations) check out Wikipatterns website and book.
Collaboration happens online, and is trackable and taggable. Email is for brief, personal missives. Or HR-related matters. Everybody publishes to the enterprise portal easily–it’s a read/write application, not a read-only application. And you don’t need a HTML wizard web-master. Or a team of gnomes in the basement indexing documents (who’s cost never gets included in the business case somehow).
But there’s a fly in the ointment: Blackberries are so darn convenient and we all are so darn mobile that a lot of collaboration is still going to happen via emails. Until we have portable ubiquitous access to our Enterprise wikis/portals via a browser. To me, this is why the iPhone will matter to large enterprises. It’s a way to browse and create content in full robust SaaS, Ruby-on-Rails web pages (hosted either on enterprise servers or in the cloud–immaterial). Yes, possible in a Blackberry or Nokia–but a bit like repairing a watch with mittens on. iPhone makes it easy to browse full-sized complicated web pages, via zooming via pinching and tapping (one of those things you’ve got to try to understand; very sci-fi-esque). If you don’t believe me, believe Stephen H. Wildstrom, who compares the web browsing experience in the much-hyped “iPhone killer” Samsung Instinct vs. the iPhone in a BusinessWeek article entitled “Why iPhone Wannabes Don’t Cut It”:
The iPhone’s Mobile Safari browser is in a class by itself: It is the only handheld browser I have used that makes it pleasant to view Web pages designed for big computer displays. The Instinct browser benefits from a big screen, but it is otherwise typical of the lame software found on other non-Apple handhelds. It offers a choice of displaying a page at magnifications labeled 1/2x, 1x, or 2x, a dramatically inferior option compared with the iPhone’s ability to smoothly enlarge and shrink the page with a gesture. As a result, full-size Web pages that the iPhone handles easily are very difficult to read or navigate around on the Instinct.
So, now the 3G (i.e., speedy) iPhone is here. But we’re going to be overcharged by the telcos. Check out this excellent article on Read/Write Web: Telco Greed Overshadows iPhone 3G Launch. Here here! Hats off to Read/Write Web blog for calling a spade a spade… And I’ve heard that Hutch is going to be gouging us similarly in Hong Kong. Readers or Hutch would be most welcome to prove this rumor I’ve heard wrong.
Great article…enterprise collaboration software has no doubt come a long way.