Does the cloud mean enterprise relationships will mimic personal ones?

Until now, the usual behaviour for enterprises is that they work together for the duration of a contract then they part. The concept of the 'Virtual Enterprise Network' is a good example; a temporary affiliation of multiple enterprises to achieve a given aim.

Contractually that might be the case, but an enterprise doesn't actually do anything; it's the people that make up the enterprise that do things, and even though the affiliation is contractually temporary, the relationships between people are permanent. 

Cloud computing can change this; it can provide a common demilitarised zone that many organisations can share. Whether it's a virtual private cloud or a 'public' cloud is irrelevant; for the first time there is a place that's permanently online, always on tap and can be made to hold to common standards. Until now, it's been a case of choosing a partner and investing in development to connect and exchange data with that partner, hoping to offset the whole lot with an ROI calculation that someone with a pot of money believes. Now, you can describe the data exchange in a common standard, hook up to a cloud solution and wait for everyone else to join in - the investment is made by the guys the enterprise pays to host your cloud solution.

This allows enterprises to form links that are more like the links people forge between themselves. How often do you de-friend someone on Facebook or LinkedIn? You don't; you keep them in your network 'just in case'. Enterprises can keep others in their network, just in case.

So the position of the cloud between organisations should allow those personal relationships to be realistically represented at an enterprise level; the links between organisation can left in place indefinitely, to be used as required, with little cost implication.

This would support Kevin Kelly's argument in What Technology Wants that over time technology trends towards complexity, for if the cloud is indeed a common DMZ then the future looks very complex with every single organisation generating more connections and never deleting old ones.

The implications are many but here are some that occurred to me:

• The walls around an organisation are destined to become ever more porous. It's unavoidable that there'll be multiple external cloud solutions that the enterprise will want to connect to. 
• Independent consultants and SMEs (with the emphasis on the 'S') could find themselves on a level playing field with much bigger organisations.
• Ultimately the enterprise could become dominated a loose affiliation of knowledge workers, rather than dedicated employees.

And it means that there's no such thing as a 'virtual enterprise network', or a 'collaboratively networked organisation', or any other variant: there's simply a networked enterprise. 

Further thoughts on MMORPGs & collaboration

This is a great blog post:
http://shanleykane.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/online-collaboration-sucks/

For me, that's what blogs are all about; a personal mash-up of experiences shedding light on something new.

I totally buy it. Back in '92, MMORPGs were MUDs and were all text over Telnet; I was a heavy user of Razor's Edge (a CircleMUD in Liverpool) and Infinity (based out in the US somewhere) at the time. Now, at that time MUDs migrated into being 'talkers', which were literally just text chat rooms. This didn't have the same attraction to me because on a MUD you were doing something, whether it was trying to level-up, get hold of a particular bit of kit or whatever. The attraction was working (gaming) together, in a shared environment, with instant communication and the right toolkit for the job...

Anyway here's how I'd extend @shanley's blog into the corporate environment:

1. Collaborators need the raw data

Most workplaces are much duller than the environment created in WoW. Corporate life is spreadsheets and docs; it's data. So when @Shanley describes it as a 'shared experience', for the corporate it translates simply into access for all collaborators to the data that describes the work to be done. It absolutely can be a shared experience though; you just need a single place where everyone can get to the same data at the same time on their terms..

...which means that IT departments need to move from compliance and control, to enabling and de-obstructing; the modern IT department function is to get the business data to where it needs to be - which might be somewhere outside the enterprise...

Perhaps the one place where you could justify a rich graphical interface is where the physical environment is important, say, if you're trying to collaborate on a problem with physical constraints. This could be valuable in hazardous manufacturing, petrochemical or nuclear plants. Real potential for 3D WoW interfaces there.

But for most office workers I think that in practice the interface has to be a portal variant; whilst the experience may be shared, each user needs access to the data, tips and tricks that allows them to add value - in the same way that a user on a MMORPG has particular capabilities or tricks up their sleeve.

I think that's a pretty good analogy for a day at the office.

2. User Autonomy Means Increasing Complexity


So it's going to be awfully difficult to hold everyone's personal configuration isn't it? Well, I don't buy that. Technology has moved far down the path of personalisation but it's not going to stop any time soon. I accept that a corporate is going to want to set users off in the right direction (e.g., everyone in a particular role starts with the same UI layout) but if I can re-configure it to make it work better for me, why can't I?

As Kevin Kelly says in 'What Technology Wants', the technology trends towards increased complexity; that complexity is everyone in the world doing it their way.

If every user is forced to look at their work - a document, project or whatever - in the same way, you lose the illumination that a shift in perspective can provide. The data may not change, but I might choose to view it in a different way...of course, this will root out those who depend on presenting data in a particular format to support their position.

3. Communication Features != Collaboration App

Couldn't agree more. Every application trumpets it's collaboration capabilities. Without the sharing of the data that describes the issue/project/work item itself, you can't collaborate on it, because what you're actually doing is going after the data, copying and pasting it into a messaging system (email, OCS, Lotus Notes, Google Docs).

You have to have the raw data to hand so that you can have that 'shared experience' and truly collaborate.

If that's the case, how many collaboration systems are really out there?

4. Sounding Off

I think finally the technology is mature and the corporates are looking to the value and competitive edge of working closely with their partners, suppliers and customers. The solutions are just beginning to become available; the value propositions are only just being clarified and supported with case studies and benefits evidence.

The main obstacle is in the minds of the risk averse IT departments, who are still blocking Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, and have yet to realise the power of the network.