Google and
Facebook are now focusing to grab the attention of the world’s office workers.
Workers in America and across the globe utilize an array of products for their
day to day needs. Tools for email like Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc. and Microsoft
Office are considered default tools for every individual. Lately there has been
an inclusion to these “default” tools by services like group chat, internal
social networks and shared online document editing.
During my time
at JP Morgan & BNY Mellon, I was exposed to group chat client from
Microsoft called Lync. Pretty much everyone in the firm used that as a de-facto
tool to talk with anyone else in the firm. Companies have also started setting
up internal social media platforms similar to bulletin boards in order to
encourage communication between company employees sitting in different part of
the globe. At JP Morgan, the bulletin boards were used to come up with ideas
for the Hackathon, new tools in order to increase employee productivity,
educate employees on various corporate policies and many additional uses.
Companies use tool called Microsoft SharePoint in order to enable online
document editing. As noted in all the examples above, these tools are supplied
by Microsoft. Google has been trying for years to break the grip of Microsoft
from corporate America. Now it has a partner with the same motive in Facebook.
This week
Facebook announced its ambition to create a version of its social network
specifically focused for the office. Facebook is entering the territory which
is highly dominant by Microsoft and where even Google has had trouble making
its presence known. Google’s sole motive when it launched Gmail was to enter
the market which was at the time dominated by Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Once
Gmail was chosen as the de-facto email client for individuals, it set sight to be
the de-facto email client for white-collar workers. Unfortunately even to this
day, Microsoft Outlook still is reigning champion among office workers. Google
also launched its own version of cloud-based equivalent to Microsoft Office
suite of software tools. Yet just like Outlook, Office still reigns supreme.
The spread of
mobile devices is forcing deeper changes, particularly in the way groups of
workers communicate and share information. Microsoft’s decision to reverse
course this month and make Office free on Apple devices may not be enough to
give it the foothold in mobile it needs. As the pressure on workers mounts, the
many tools for creating, storing, sharing and collaborating are starting to
converge. Start-ups like Slack, whose service is used by groups of workers to
communicate and share information from different sources, are becoming
increasingly popular. Currently for my senior design project, I recommended to
my team to use Slack and it has been a wonderful experience so far. With the
available integration to source hosting tools like BitBucket & Github as
well as with project management tool like Trello, Slack is a powerful tool at least
for software development teams.
Facebook will
face other challenges as it looks to break into the world of work. The security
aspect of Wall Street customers, strict rules about data privacy and data
integration with companies’ existing IT systems will all impose a heavy burden.
But it is hard to argue with demographics. A generation that started using
social media networks and mobile messaging apps, rather than the Word documents
and email used by their parents, is likely to exert a powerful influence over
working life. For now, with most new services in their infancy and dominant
consumer companies such as Facebook and Google still to make an impact, that
end-game seems a long way off. But if Facebook’s plans bear fruit, the world of
work, for millions of people, may never be the same again.
Sources:
- http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30080970
- http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/17/source-facebook-is-testing-facebook-at-work-separately-hosted-version-to-roll-out-in-a-few-months/
No comments:
Post a Comment