Forum software and wikis are ideal collaborative tools for managing projects that span countries and time zones. They facilitate a follow the sun model. To date they have found most use in open source software development. However their applicability goes way beyond this and they’re potentially very useful for any multinational organization.
Wikis provide structured and easily searchable information about a project. They can be extended and maintained by any team member. Forum software enables team wide discussion about issues and objectives. It provides a context for decisions and a historical record.
Although proprietary solutions are available there are plenty of highly effective open source alternatives.
However using these products creates organizational and cultural problems. They require a degree of project transparency that not all team members will be comfortable with. More dangerously they tend to undermine traditional organizational hierarchy.
Nevertheless the benefits are immense and intelligent anticipation can normally resolve the organizational issues.
Nick Carr has some gentle fun at the expense of Tim O’Reilly who responds in a good humoured way.
Carr’s views are generally worth listening to and I agree with him that Twitter is a profoundly superficial medium. It’s currently most fashionable as a marketing tool for media celebrities. I’m surprised, however, that corporate types haven’t yet realised it’s potential for staff monitoring and control.
On this occasion however Carr’s implicit criticism of O’Reilly is inappropriate. Surely a superficial medium demands a superficial guidebook or as O’Reilly puts it “you pick the hat to fit the head”
The consulting company McKinsey has produced a report on the status of cloud computing that’s well worth reading. It provides a much needed discussion on the nature of “cloud computing” and proposes a sensible definition, including a useful distinction between cloud computing and cloud services.
The report concludes that while cloud computing makes sense for small and medium sized businesses, substantial hurdles need to be overcome before it can be used by large enterprises. In particular it’s claimed that most large enterprises still enjoy lower TCO’s running private data centres. Additionally the report suggests that the cost of private data centres could be even further reduced if CIO’s were to pursue a policy of aggressive virtualization. The impact of such a policy on the sales revenue of sever vendors is not discussed.
Throughout their analysis McKinsey treat cloud computing as essentially an optional deployment strategy. At the moment they are right. However it’s only a matter of time before services are available in a cloud environment that cannot be duplicated in private data centres. Businesses that see these services as providing competitive differentiation will place substantial pressure on CIO’s to migrate to a cloud environment.