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| The cloud in business: from simple storage to shared work |
One of the transitions that, in my capacity as professor and business advisor, I am able to observe in greater detail is the movement of companies towards services based on the so-called cloud computing or simply "the cloud": officially or , In many cases, simply by way of fait accompli, many companies are starting to find themselves in a highly confusing environment, where many employees adopt consumer-based solutions like Dropbox to obtain distributed work benefits that the company In many cases, it does not provide them.
A couple of days ago, GigaOM claimed, citing a Nasuni study titled "Shadow IT in the Enterprise," that one in five employees used Dropbox for work documents, even though more than half of them knew that such use Was contrary to corporate policies. With more than 100 million users, Dropbox has become the authentic secret of many companies, in the weapon that employees use to work in conditions of certain comfort with their documents from different places, from home or in mode shared.
My doubt, however, is to what extent this type of use is a real advantage. Let me explain: In the first phase of corporate work systems, that Paleolithic in which many companies unfortunately still find themselves, documents were created in the Microsoft Office: managers absurdly used almost more of their precious time in formatting them than in Write them, and if they wanted to share them with other users of the company, they sent them as an attachment in an email. The system, obviously, is aberrant in terms of productivity: every time the file is sent a copy of it is generated, that it has "own life", to be potentially altered in different versions, and that it is necessary to reconcile later Either manually or through version control (I honestly doubt the mental stability of anyone who has been forced to use version control frequently).
The use of Dropbox is an evolution from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic: instead of carrying out an absurd process of successive duplication, or worse, of managers who seem to be schizophrenic with personality splitting constantly sending themselves documents, the file "is made Sedentary ", is uploaded to a location centralized in Dropbox and is shared from there. A breakthrough in terms of performance, even though IT managers may think it's an aberration in security. But is it really a breakthrough in terms of workflow? In the background, the file is downloaded by each user, the use is not concurrent, and the work is still uncomfortable and cumbersome when we reach the point, often necessary, to reconcile different versions. Dropbox and similar cloud storage systems are undoubtedly an improvement, but except for certain one-off uses, I'm not sure they are what businesses need in their workflows.
The true evolution takes place when the element that is shared is a document with which it is really working in shared mode. Google Drive, Zoho or similar systems completely revolutionize working methods by proposing that a person simply send a link to others with whom he wants to collaborate, and that, when they open the link, they appear in a single document in which Can see in real time the movement of their cursors and the evolution of their changes, and also have chat tools in a window on the right of the screen. This methodology, which in the case of IE Business School many students began to adopt long before we finally offered it officially, is the one that really revolutionizes the methodology of work, but is what I still see as a great stranger in the Majority of companies.
When companies adopt a methodology based on shared documents - or even beyond, in doc-less models on which we will speak another day - is when the result is truly noticeable. That several people collaborate in a single document has some "revelation": from a minimum period of adaptation, it looks as natural as if it had always worked well, and to return to the version system is completely unthinkable. Everyone believes they understand what it means to work on a single document, but few have done it seriously and have seen what that philosophy really brings. In fact, my experience is that, on many occasions, a shared document with a reasonable number of people working on it and the open chat window can advantageously replace a work meeting, both in terms of productivity and degrees of Freedom for its participants. We speak, simply, of a superior methodology.
If we really want to provide tangible benefits to our employees and take advantage of technology advantageously, we must move from a philosophy of documents residing on users' hard drives to one in which all documents, by basic principle, reside in a personal repository With the possibility of being shared at the level of each document with the corresponding permissions. Storage on a remote hard drive, to the Dropbox, may seem like it has its advantages, but it is not, as such, a breakthrough. At least, compared to what we can get in the next phase. And again, we talk about options that any employee can adopt easily regardless of what the corporate IT department says, with all that entails. In the hands of these departments, it is not enough to ensure that this productivity and benefits revolution takes place, but also with a minimum of control and in the right conditions: if they do nothing, the adoption will eventually take place, as In the case of Dropbox, by way of fait accompli.
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