Back to the Future
Quite an interesting article on Vitamin about the ‘Office 2.0′ concept. In a nutshell, that free or subscription based online services may be the next generation of productivity software. I found IT|Redux the other day, which is a pretty thought provoking site on the subject.
Seems to me that between the likes of Google Docs, Backpack, Thinkfree, Zoho etc there’s a real race on to be the dominant player. Where the likes of Google Docs fall down for me is a) their functional simplicity b) arguably, their clunky UI and most importantly c) If you buy into them entirely, if you have no access to the network, you’re completely stuffed as I found one weekend when my NTL was on the blink.
It’s as if (on the free software side) some sort of OpenOffice/Google Docs hybrid with a nice UI needs to appear. Where you can work either online via your browser, or locally in an application based… I dunno… on Java perhaps for cross-platform compatibility. Data replication would handle keeping your local versions of your work up to date with your online copies.
I mention this to the likes of Dave at work, and he scoffs and says “That’s Lotus Notes 1.0.” He’s probably right, but mention Notes to most people and if they know about it, they have Steph’s response:
“Yeah, I’ve used that, it’s an email program.”
Notes is doomed to always suffer this perception. Now that its daddy, Ray Ozzie is a big cheese at Microsoft, it may be though that MS themselves define this new generation and Notes’s vision is fulfilled by its biggest rival.
Office is dead, long live Office?
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November 2nd, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Tom Hollander wrote an article on Office 2.0 earlier last month (http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2006/10/12/the-emperor-s-new-web-based-office-suite.aspx) and I tend to agree with much that was said.
It is a lot of the same criticism one can level at 37Singals’ apps too.
Yes, lightweight, but lacking in features and in particular Tom mentions :
“some of the “Office 2.0″ startups are trying some interesting things. However I don’t see why these features are limited to, or even better on, web-based apps over desktop equivalents”
I remember not so long ago, thin-client architecture was suggested with many decrying it (including myself) as a horrendous idea. Office 2.0 is entirely that architecture, but with that word ‘free’ tagged on. To me that just re-iterrates the old saying about getting what you pay for.
And when you look at the collaberation tools and workflows being offered by MS’ future view for Sharepoint (a tool I’m rapidly ramping up on) you realise the only people who are going to get excited by this are FF users who get their rocks off by ‘Sticking it to Microsoft’.
I’m not saying nothing good can come out of it, Tom mentions Outlooks’s web based tool (which is nothing less than stunning) and that’s a great example of how to properly execute the ideas put forward. However, for everyone implementation that gets it right, we’re going to see thousands that do it very, very badly and simply get ’sold’ on the fact they are Office 2.0
“He’s probably right, but mention Notes to most people and if they know about it, they have Steph’s response…”
You missed a bit :
“Yeah, I’ve used that, it’s an email program. It’s shit
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm
You might like to read a point I make before you contradict it?
My point was that it isn’t dead, and nothing claiming to be the ‘Office 2.0′ has a chance of displacing it, at least not for a very long time. I thought I made it pretty plain that I reckon the only thing liable to displace Office is the next version of Office.
Obviously some next gen productivity solution that provides you access to the information you want whereever you happen to be is going to arrive at some point, and things like these are evolutionary steps toward it.
“Talk to a Domino admin and their list of grievances won’t be short.”
I sit in the same room as two Domino developers all day long.