CTO Blog
There only seems to be one point of consensus regarding Google Wave at the moment, which is: it’s different! The reason is that it’s supposed to be, but while I understand the logic for its development, it’s hard to rate it when your mind is struggling to relate it to what you already know. One blogger wrote: ‘I changed my definition of Google Wave three times in thirty minutes’ and he was at a Googleplex being given a personal demonstration! Google’s positioning is: ‘what would email look like if we set out to invent it today?’ Incidentally, the name ‘Wave’ is supposed to refer to people communicating with each other and creating a wave travelling around a community.
In other places I’ve seen the headline ‘Google threatens Microsoft SharePoint with cloud collaboration’ which suggests Wave is ‘just another’ ‘online’ collaboration package. I’ve also seen statements suggesting it is ‘Twitter on steroids’. All of these comments relate to an old way of product comparison, based around features and functions. Pushing aside my preconceptions, my starting point is somewhat different. From my perspective, Wave relates to changing working practices and the need for tools to support new ways of working which in turn are being driven by new trading conditions. Of course there is also a personal lifestyle scenario to it; hence the link to Twitter, but this is a business blog so I will stay with the business use scenario.
Let’s start by reminding ourselves what email was introduced to do. Email existed way back before the PC and the IT era and in those days it was part of a package of goodies called ‘office automation’ running on a mini computer. It was strictly an internal replacement for the good old-fashioned paper memo that was passed between separated offices or departments as a formalised communication to be read and carefully filed away. Paradoxically, the norm was to print out the email (having benefited from the new low cost, high speed delivery method) and handle it by dictating a reply to your secretary to type up and send. The working structure was hierarchal and there was just no way, or even no need, to support anyone working flexibly. Rigidity of organisation and procedure in a stable world equalled a successful business.
What the networked PC brought about was a revolution to this working environment – starting with the tearing down of walls between departments, in favour of optimising the end-to-end process across the enterprise. One of the aspects to make this work – and still further reduce cost flexibility in working practice – was matrix working. If you think about it, you will realise that there’s no way you could make such a flexible work arrangement without the support of email. In fact, you can and should argue that implementing email is a necessity for a matrix organisational model. However, even with matrix working, there is enough structure and stability for the various members of an enterprise to know to what, when and with whom they should be communicating (especially as in the beginning it’s still likely to have only been an internal environment). In fact, the norm was a point-to-point communication, involving just the sender and the receiver – free of all the copies that have become all too familiar.
Email was and is a great mechanism for supporting the administration of standard business processes and procedures. From it, people have defined roles and can therefore have a directory with this information to assist further in making the person, role and responsibility explicit. All of this assumes a great deal of stability in the organisation and its tasks, with a limited need for some supplementary clarification between participants.
Fast forward to today with the internet, then look at email in its new and uncomfortable role of connecting to other people in different organisations. As the web of personnel gets more and more complex, structure and organisation become much more fluid and changeable. The tremendous change in dynamics destroys the ability to have a structure and a meaningful directory. It’s way beyond the capabilities of email and business models based around Enterprise 2.0, (and for that I take the most popular definition meaning a dynamic and reactive online business using Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing). Email just cannot cope and we are all overwhelmed by the copied emails that are sent around the enterprise in the hope of finding just one recipient who might know the answer!
What we need is a way to combine relevant elements such as who is involved in what areas, with what the current event is. The objective being to get the right people with the right knowledge, experience or interest, to participate in the currently required task. This is not the same job as email sets out to perform. The metaphor I like to use compares this difference to the train for moving a large number of people over a set route at set times, versus taxis offering freedom for individuals to go where they need to go when they need to go, singularly or in small groups. I think we can go a little further into this to gain a further insight by trying to bring to the people issue of Web 2.0 into the same understanding we have seen in Web 1.0.
In Web 1.0 we learnt to understand the global nature of the content available to us on web sites and how to use search engines for ‘categorisation’. We also knew that we needed RSS to track the frequently changing information that was important to us. If we look at Web 2.0, we can see something similar. Communities provide the categorisation aspect and help us find the group of people sharing interest in the topic; but at the same time, if someone is uniquely important to us then good quality micro blogging is the equivalent of RSS. The challenge is that we usually need the people and the content to be connected plus the ability to have a recognisable trail of activity etc.
I think that’s the challenge that Wave sets out to address. But in so doing, it must address all of the pieces and so functionally it can be compared to everything else, whether that’s Twitter on steroids, a challenger to SharePoint and collaboration tools or lastly a new email system. For me, the challenge is to concentrate on how people and content want and need to interact across the entire internet, both for business and social reasons, then evaluate what Google Wave brings to this scenario. At the enterprise level that brings about the question of how we are organised to work effectively in today’s rapidly changing and dynamic environments. One thing is for sure and that’s Wave is worth studying as it gets refined over the next year, as it might just turn out to be a key capability for support new fluid business models.
About the author
Capgemini Global Chief Technology Officer, Andy is a member of the Capgemini Group management board and advises on all aspects of technology-driven market changes, together with being a member of the Policy Board for the British Computer Society. Andy is the author of many white papers, and the co-author three books that have charted the current changes in technology and its use by business starting in 2006 with ‘Mashup Corporations’ detailing how enterprises could make use of Web 2.0 to develop new go to market propositions. This was followed in May 2008 by Mesh Collaboration focussing on the impact of Web 2.0 on the enterprise front office and its working techniques, then in 2010 “Enterprise Cloud Computing: A Strategy Guide for Business and Technology leaders” co-authored with well-known academic Peter Fingar and one of the leading authorities on business process, John Pyke. The book describes the wider business implications of Cloud Computing with the promise of on-demand business innovation. It looks at how businesses trade differently on the web using mash-ups but also the challenges in managing more frequent change through social tools, and what happens when cloud comes into play in fully fledged operations. Andy was voted one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the world in 2009 by InfoWorld and is grateful to readers of Computing Weekly who voted the Capgemini CTOblog the best Blog for Business Managers and CIOs each year for the last three years.
cloud has major security issues. unless they are resolved there will reluctance on part of users
Absolutely true – but part of the challenge in this is creating an understanding around what requirements an enterprise has and how they relate to the available technology solutions to deliver. I say this because at the moment too often it seems to be Cloud is the answer – now what is the question? As in all things some new requirements with strong shared and external forcus can only be on a cloud as a services, whereas other existing applicaitons on mainframes involving confidential commercial data should not be on an external cloud.
i recommend the Jericho forum views on ideintifying different forms of clouds, their use and the security risks that can be found at http://www.opengroup.org/jericho as a download
andy
Interesting post Andy – for me what is so different and exciting about Wave is not the technology. It’s the human factor: Wave is a first stab at a tool that allows humans to interact and share information online as they do offline: in a fluid, multichannel, multi-contributor, real-time manner.
To me, it’s not a surprise that this appears to take on a number of different enterprise tools which are currently labelled under totally separate technologies; it in fact highlights that they each only able to fulfill part of the same overall purpose: bringing people with their skills, experiences and materials to an effective virtual table.
I personally wonder if the initial positioning of Wave as an email replacement is a little modest and misleading and designed to avoid criticism of excessive grandeur. I suspect the principles of Wave may change collaboration rather more than that.
you make an interesting point that I see else where as well. seems that the marketing people feel the need to position really innovative products that truly ‘change the game’ as you say in a manner that relates to a current product. I understand that they feel this is vital to get early sales momentum. yet it seems that we now have enough people with the understanding to grasp and use capabilities innovatively!
Google Wave is definately a great new way of collaborating. The demo is simply astounding. Really looking forward to working with it! The term Web 2.0 seems sooo 2006.
I wonder if it could not become a great companion to SharePoint services in the Azure Services Platform instead of a competitor though, especially from a business perspective.
If we manage to merge the two we will have a new wonderful and flexible communication channel combined with a more structured “traditional” backbone, for example an intranet that offers compliance, structural value and legacy support (to name a few).
Hi Daniel
The way i see it is that our lives have become more complex with a layering of new activities over older more ordered elements and that what we are seeing is Wave belonging to the new layer but this does not remove the need for tools to cope with the ‘older’ layer and its more structured or deterministic nature.
the interaction vertically between the layers, better perhaps to say navigation between the layers is a kinda of personal operating system as opposed to thinking of a more traditional technology operating system performing this task through the elements of the machine/software.
Greetings,
I’m actively paying attention to Google Wave for a number of reasons. My persistent impression is that it represents a badly needed solution in today’s multi-channel collaborative world.
In almost every project I’m involved in, or drive, there is the persistent head ache of keeping ‘the picture’ straight in one’s mind. Inputs come in so many disjointed forms, being email, collab site(s), project mgt tools, and in-person meetings. ‘Wave has a potential to pull it all together and create a functional document from it all.
Biggest concern, security. As enthused as I am over ‘Wave’s potential I’m also concerned it will get passed by due to a lack of trust. Not so much ‘dis’trust, as a ‘lack’ thereof. If you’re running large IT projects for a financial institution, a medical entity, or other particularly security-conscious concern, what would it take for you to trust Google and ‘Wave?
Its an interesting point the way security is usually given as the reason not to adopt many things that are people/web 2.0 oriented. in the post today ‘mind the gap’ i comment on the difference between the ‘rules’ that the IT dept was established under and how that makes this the only reasonable answer that they can give. On the other hand if a company openly provides price and delivery for its products on the web rather than negotiating on a phone call is that risking commercial information?
I am relaxed about it being public knowledge what i am paid why because i think it is fair within the market rates from what i see on surveys and acceptable to my colleagues but thats certainly not the norm for a UK employee as this is normally thought to be ‘secret’ for good commercial practice.
My point is that we may have to rethink what really needs to be secure on a military basis of when speed is more important than absolute security.
Hi,
I had used the google wave as a part of there developer preview. Well I would rather like to say it a tool which is enabling an user to participate in various stream of discussions. Well it is a new way of communication which is effectively catering the privacy, security and other aspects we care about.
In wave your inbox will be not consist of emails but with various private and public waves meant for you. You can create filters and search for the wave of your interest and participate.
Hi Kumar
this sounds very interesting as you actually have the benefit of personal experience. My take is that it allows you to communicate by topic as opposed to traditional email which is by person. is that correct? love to hear more of your personal view of the ‘experience’.
andy
well thats very kind of you Mike, and please join the party and post thoughts and comments too!