In conversation with a few people in the past couple of weeks, I have joked that my biggest fear about my new job is having to go back to using Microsoft Office. The thing is, I'm not even only half joking.
The experiences of the past 18 months have given me a view of not only the real potential for a post-Microsoft world for the first time in my career, but much more significantly of an internet-centric world of work. The seminar I ran recently at the UC Expo event at Olympia started with a story about how I am now able to do real business using the commodity tools provided for free on the web: Twitter, Linked In and so on are of as much value to me as any of the services that my team are delivering in to my business, and I can work just as (if not more) effectively using my own hardware (PC, smart phone and what have you) than that provided by my company.
Key to all of this is a fundamental shift in gear that we have made (and of which Google Apps has been a crucial part): namely, that any business application provided by Imagination has to be done so in a browser over the open internet, and that the purpose of our office networks is to provide robust and fast internet to every desk (or meeting room or lobby or roof garden or where ever else people choose to work). Whilst this is still very much an ideal at the moment, it its driving both infrastructure design and software procurement. The net result is a business that can exist wherever there is internet.
Being internet-based gives a new power never really seen before. I have written before about how multi-authored browser-based spreadsheets sound the death knell for a large proportion of traditional bespoke database applications; but there is also a joy to behold in things like Ben Goldacre's Nerdy Day Trips act of collaboration.
On the specifics of Google Apps, however, I do fear a VHS over Betamax victory on the horizon. In an effort to reach further into the Enterprise, Google seem to be increasing the number of staff drawn from traditional, big enterprise software companies. Their traditional ways of thinking about selling software risk making the product set less innovative as it becomes more like the competition to make it appeal to a broader set of customers. Meanwhile, in the non-IT world, doing business on Facebook becomes increasingly commonplace…
mmitII 