Continuations: It Is 2009. Why Is "Groupware" Still So Hard?
ewiesen
· 2 months ago
This is a great question, and in a sense it's a lens through which we should look at all products that require behavior change. I think there are a handful of reasons why this hasn't worked.
On the one hand (especially in 2009) every user comes to the table with an ingrained set of behaviors. I might be on gmail, twitter and google docs whereas you might be on exchange, MSFT office and sharepoint. That's one set of issues. But more abstractly, we each have personal processes in place to do our work, and getting us to change them (even with organizational mandates) is deeply challenging.
Separately and more simply, there has never been a truly compelling "groupware" product that is enough of a jack of all trades to be unified while at the same time offering sufficient functionality to be both broadly applicable and powerful enough to satisfy users across the functionality curve.
Lastly (and to your final point), companies are wary about opening up too much for fear of becoming middleware layers and part of a stack where their particular segment can't extract margin. The alternative may be worse (low usage) but the fear is fairly legitimate.
All of which rolls up to your original observation that over 15 years after "Windows for Workgroups" we still don't have a solution to this problem. Looking at it, my instinct is that the only companies really able to develop and deploy something this broad are the large platforms - Microsoft, Google, Apple. Which isn't to say they haven't tried, but to my point above, this is actually pretty hard.
If I had to bet, I'd say Google is the most likely to come up with a suite that accomplishes these aims. Gmail + Google Apps + Calendar with Wave as the collaborative glue may actually be the solution for a lot of groups. But the behavioral and onboarding issues are still very real.
albert
· 2 months ago
Great example of a comment that's way better than the original post! You are spot on - this is a *harder* problem now than in the past because of ingrained habits. Thanks.
Aleksandras
· 2 months ago
I like how you pointed out Wave as part of Google's solution to the problem as it slipped out of my mind almost entirely. And Google has the resources to be able to open up the platform (which it did) to outside developers and not be afraid of the risks you mentioned. In the end, the question of whether Wave will get traction or not is a somewhat different matter.
David Semeria
· 2 months ago
Thanks Albert. When people ask me why applications really need to be so interoperable, I'll just point them to this post :)
albert
· 2 months ago
Indeed!
maxkalehoff
· 2 months ago
I'd don't want to rely on one service for anything, but definitely would like the different services to inter-operate. Portable profiles will bring us closer that, no?
albert
· 2 months ago
Agreed - if and when we get portable profiles ... We are only making slow progress with authentication and deeper profile portability seems a ways away, but I am rooting for it!
We need new tools, simpler and more versatile tools. That is why I developed NotePub.com
albert
· 2 months ago
Will check it out!
albert
· 2 months ago
I like the idea of simple focused tools that could be combined as needed. For that I think you should support sign in with Facebook, OAuth, etc and have an API also. Btw, typo on home page (extra l in below).
All Comments
On the one hand (especially in 2009) every user comes to the table with an ingrained set of behaviors. I might be on gmail, twitter and google docs whereas you might be on exchange, MSFT office and sharepoint. That's one set of issues. But more abstractly, we each have personal processes in place to do our work, and getting us to change them (even with organizational mandates) is deeply challenging.
Separately and more simply, there has never been a truly compelling "groupware" product that is enough of a jack of all trades to be unified while at the same time offering sufficient functionality to be both broadly applicable and powerful enough to satisfy users across the functionality curve.
Lastly (and to your final point), companies are wary about opening up too much for fear of becoming middleware layers and part of a stack where their particular segment can't extract margin. The alternative may be worse (low usage) but the fear is fairly legitimate.
All of which rolls up to your original observation that over 15 years after "Windows for Workgroups" we still don't have a solution to this problem. Looking at it, my instinct is that the only companies really able to develop and deploy something this broad are the large platforms - Microsoft, Google, Apple. Which isn't to say they haven't tried, but to my point above, this is actually pretty hard.
If I had to bet, I'd say Google is the most likely to come up with a suite that accomplishes these aims. Gmail + Google Apps + Calendar with Wave as the collaborative glue may actually be the solution for a lot of groups. But the behavioral and onboarding issues are still very real.
http://www.cynapse.com/cynin
-- MV