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
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:
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.