Forget Groupware

JP Rangaswami on his blog Confused of Calcutta decries the way we use email: "ninety per cent of e-mail is generated by the firm and never leaves the firm". JP sees this as evidence that firms are ignoring their customers. He says "whatever we do in the enterprise, we need to ensure that the walls of the enterprise do not keep customers out". It is the stuff which crosses boundaries that is interesting and important.

At least it is possible to email people outside the organisation. In other enterprise systems you can't contact people outside the organisation at all!

My university implemented a calendaring system some years ago. Many academics don't use it. They do however use doodle.com. Doodle lets them schedule appointments with their collaborators in other organisations. Our internal-only calendar system doesn't - so no wonder people won't use it.

Regular readers will know I believe in the importance of network effects. The value of a network grows with the number of connections in the network. Small internal networks became massively more valuable when they were linked to form the Internet, the network of networks.

We need to link our small internal collaboration tools to form the equivalent. To coin a phrase forget Groupware, think Globeware.