Office 2.0 From a Distance

On Wednesday, the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco will begin, and an amazing list of well-known and less well-known speakers will present their ideas and companies. I won't attend the conference, but I spent some time looking at the long list of Office 2.0 startups that will introduce their products.

While there now seems to be more agreement on what "Web 2.0" is, the meaning of "Office 2.0" is as blurry as ever. Fortunately, the conference organizers share their own definition:

"Imagine a computer that never crashes, or gets infected by a virus. Imagine a computer onto which you never have to install any application. Imagine a computer that follows you wherever you go, be it at school, at work, abroad, or back home."

Well, that would not be "Office 2.0", that would be computing heaven. So, back to reality.

The product ideas range from wikis on steroids to platforms that wildly combine about every single idea in the Web 2.0 playbook. Judging from the list of companies presenting on this event, there seem to be the following types of Office 2.0 startups:

• The good-old days enterprise plays: Wasn't there a time (long ago, about six months) when Web 2.0 had a counter-culture ring to it and was all about simplicity? When you look at some websites now, you don't see any difference in terms of communication style to very conventional enterprise software companies. The same lingo, the same generic improve-your-productivity slogans, the same confusing diagrams. Example: iUpload
  
• The secretive ones: There are some companies that have announced groundbreaking applications that will forever revolutionize the way humankind uses information. But unfortunately they won't show their product to anyone (example: Foldera). There are also some that have very nicely designed websites with lots of great buzzwords, but never really tell you what they actually do (example: System One). Reminds me of some Web 1.0 companies (BroadVision...).
  
• The recyclers: Enterprise content management. Whoa. A totally new concept? Of course not, but brush it up with a bit of social wikiness and some open source philosophy, and violà: Content Management 2.0 (Example: Alfresco). Or just take del.icio.us' idea, call it "enterprise social bookmarking", and you have a Office 2.0 startup (Example: ConnectBeam).
  
• The collaborators: Sure, collaboration is important. That's probably why there are so many products that allow you to share/task-manage/conference/integrate/collaborative-create just about anything with your colleagues and clients, all on a strictly web-only, subscription-oriented basis of course. (Example: CentralDesktop) Great, but I had most of this functionality back in 1993 on Lotus Notes, and let me tell you: The lack of software is not the biggest obsctacle to successful collaboration. Still, the advantages of simple web-based solutions are promising, but most companies are still way to tech-focused. No wonder that 37signals got most of the mindshare so far with their extreme focus on simplicity.
  
• The feature builders: An old VC rule is: Be a company, not a feature. Some startups are still very much on the feature side, and although some ideas are really clever, there's not really a good reason why Google or Yahoo couldn't simply build this functionality on their own (examples: Wufoo, Dabble DB) or already have built them (example: Pageflakes).

But, sarcasm aside, there are also some really good ideas. Nice vertical applications like ShareMethods or FreshBooks, powerful suites like Zimbra or ThinkFree, clever little services like scanR.

The conference shows one thing very clearly: It's much too narrow to think of Office 2.0 as simply "web-based competition for Microsoft Office". Very few of the Office 2.0 companies try to target Microsoft's ubiquitous suite, but rather leverage the specific advantages of web-based applications in other domains. This is a very vibrant space that certainly will hold a few surprises in the near future.

Comments

[Marc Orchant]

Hi Andreas. Just a point of clarification about Foldera. We're happy to show the application to people, we're just not ready for a general release. So far this year, we've been at eTech, CTC, Future of Web Apps and will be at both Office 2.0 and Web 2.0 showing how Foldera addresses organization and collaboration in a way we think is unlike anything available today.

We will be broadening our beta test community significantly later this year with a significant milestone release and look forward to a general release to the public that we hope to have ready after we've tested the improvements we've been making based on our testers' feedback.

I'm sorry you won't be able to join those of us at the conference but I will make sure you are on our list of interested bloggers and will let you know when we have a release that is ready for public review.

To your closing point - we're in complete agreement. What people are looking for Office 2.0 to deliver is not a web-based clone of what's already available on their desktop or laptop. They want a new approach to work - both personal and collaborative - that takes advantage of the strenghts of a public network and a variety of devices to deliver a level of portability, mobility, and collaboration.

I'll be moderating a panel at the conference discussing the role that APIs and feeds play in this emerging space. I have a terrific group of panelists to work with and I hope the discussion will be both engaging and fruitful. One of the things that drew us to sponsor and participate in this event is the organizer's intent to generate consensus and a shared vision of how participants in this industry can make the use of multiple tools as easy and meaningful for the people and organizations that adopt them.

[Patrik]

you write:
"There are also some that have very nicely designed websites with lots of great buzzwords, but never really tell you what they actually do (example: System One)."
Well, you made me wonder. So I went over to System One, clicked around, watched their Screencast - and kind of understood, what they are up to after less than 5 minutes. kind of a clever "ajax-y enterprise knowledge management system / groupware", I guess.
So I don't get, why you think they don't tell, what they do?!?! Just wondering.

[Andreas Goeldi]

Patrik,

Well, two things:

- I'm not sure the screencast was there when I wrote this, at least I can't remember one. Might be a recent addition, or maybe I just missed it the first time. Anyway, I personally think screencasts are a terrible way to communicate the basics of your product. I might be ready to watch a five minute screencast if I'm really interested, but not to simply find out what the product really is about.

-System One's website uses way too much marketing bullshit lingo. Just read the very first sentence: "System One provides a holistic strategy perspective that enables organizations to be more successful, adaptive and flexible in today's ever-changing market environment full of fragmentation and increasing commodities."
Huh? Probably about 98% of tech companies could use this sentence, it says nothing at all. I don't think a vendor should waste people's time with this kind of empty lingo.

Just to be clear: I have nothing at all against System One or their product. They just make it much too hard to find out more about their offerings. As a contrast, just look at SocialText's homepage (the products seem to be somewhat similar). You just need to read very little text, and at least you get an idea if this product is for you.

[Patrik]

Ok, I agree! Thanks for the clarifications.

[Nicolo Totti]

article about collaboration tools, very cool