Work 2.0

What will users need from a Cloud OS?

They will need more than just web based copies of their current desktop tools. A good way to understand this is to compare a blog to a word processor. They are both content creation tools, but writing information within a blog can lead to network effects. As more people comment on your article, it gains more value. As more people cross-link to your article, it gains value and gets a higher ranking on search results. The same is not true of content locked within a doc file.

For the enterprise, an OS combined with applications become the vehicle for doing the following

1. Creating content ( words, pictures, presentations, video )


2. Analyzing data ( Excel )


3. Communicating with colleagues ( Email, IM )


4. Storing information


5. Finding information


6. Running domain specific applications ( Expense tracker, CRM, ERP, IDE )

Cloud OS network effects will change how you work

Recently, Peter Rip said something like this to me:

Businesses think that their employees use IT systems to get information, but actually, it is more accurate to say that businesses use their employees to move information between their IT systems.

The point is that knowledge workers spend a huge amount of time not creating or analyzing, but instead on processing. Examples include:

• Sending emails that ask who has the latest copy of something


• Trying to find out who has the answer to a specific question


• Manually extracting reports from one system, only to have you, or someone else upload that report to a second system.

Cloud OS based productivity tools hold out the promise of improved process. Work is not a pile of concrete deliverables. Work is not collection of files. “Work” is a verb. It is a dynamic series of actions.

The Personal Server

The personal server is actually not one dedicated machine. Instead it is a collection of services that end users select, run, customize and connect over time. Get a blog at wordpress.com, get a page at Facebook, another at LinkedIn, etc.

The difference between Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 and the Enterprise 1.0 team collaboration solutions is self provisioning and the realistic promise of process integration.

That process integration will be delivered by new types of web services that take advantage of the open APIs and are capable of delivering useful tools to support process integration. My company, Teqlo, focuses on exactly that. We have been heads down in development mode for the last few months, but in the near future, we will be releasing some useful tools that help at least one targeted by of user with process integration.