In the wake of Google's recent launch of Google Waves, which it sees as the future of online collaboration, Adobe recently took out its web based productivity suite, Acrobat.com, out of beta and introduced its version of online spreadsheets, Tables, to add to its already existing online word processor, Buzzword.   

As opposed to Google's minimalistic style, Acrobat.com presents a highly visually appealing environment where teams can get together in real time and collaborate on files. The service acheived great success in its beta phase, with Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management for Adobe's business productivity, reporting in his blog that a staggering 100k users were signing up every week. 

What interested me was a conversation in the comments area of Erik's blog about his conceptulaization of the future of collaboration. Erik sees it as a highly decentralized process, where teams can get together at the drop of a hat, and seamlessly collaborate on information with minimal obstruction. A commentor had suggested that such a collaborative environment was not conducive for businesses, which require a certain amount of structure and control. The commentor had suggested HyperOffice's online collaboration software for SMBs as an intermediate between Adobe's highly decentralized, self service, pure collaboration on information, to MS SharePoint's highly structured, IT oriented collaborative environment. 

I rather agree with the commentor's argument, as the ability to effortlessly collaborate on information, although a great asset, is not sufficient for organizations and teams. It is more suitable for temperory teams or ad hoc groups, which get together to work on something, and quickly disband. Ongoing teams, or departments, however, need to do work of recurring nature, which a productivity or collaboration software needs to cater to as well. I've listed them below, and the corresponding technological solution which cater to those needs.

The need to coordinate schedules	Group Calendars
The need to organize information by group	Group workspaces (as opposed to Acrobat's temporary workspaces) which club all of the groups information and tools in a single place
The need for control	Permissions management. The ability to control access to different levels of information and the degree of access to information
The managerial need to delegate and track tasks	Project management tools which allow delegation of tasks, scheduling of these tasks, and task tracking
Team discussions	Discussion forums which allow teams to have dicussions around collaboration or team issues, and store these discussions as organzational learning.
HR needs	The collaborative software should also cater to the HR needs of an organization, like the ability to publish announcements, policy documents, or motivate employees through awards or recognition.

To present pure collaborative features, within the structure of the above tools would be ideal from a business perspective. 

In my attempt to compare the cost of Microsoft SharePoint with a SharePoint alternative, I looked around to see what information i could find on SharePoint's pricing. If anything, I discovered that SharePoint's pricing is not for the faint of heart. It involves a assortment of SharePoint licenses each offering different capabilities, which often have to be purchased together for comprehensive capabilities. In addition there are CALs (client access licenses) depending on the number of users. Then there are support servers which need to be purchased to have SharePoint up and running (Windows Server, SQL Server, Enterprise Search Server) and their CALs! ARGHHHHHH!

It is terribly hard to come up with a cost estimate for SharePoint for a specific scenario (for example 1 year and 100 users) as it depends on what you already have, what capabilities you are looking for, what capabilities within those capabilities! But one thing is for sure - it costs helluva lot!

Multiple searches across the net turned up cost analysis which were simplistic,dubious, and comprehensive. My personal favorite was an analysis by CMSWire, who seem as frustrated as I was with SharePoint's pricing.

From a small to mid sized business perspective, why would I step into the labyrinth of SharePoint pricing, and the associated hassles,the hardware, the SharePoint developers, when I can get equivalent power - intranets and extranets, portal customization, document management, forums, calendars, task management and more - for a small monthly fee, in a ready to use online collaboration suite?

Late last month, McKinsey, the big daddy of research, did a study on web 2.0, an arena no-one can ignore nowadays, and correctly identified it as having the potential to have a more far reaching effect than the mega technologies (remember the tens of thousands of dollars implementations?) like ERP, CRM and supply chain management. (what have we been saying all this while eh?)

The study, titled "Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work", identifies and wonderfully articulates the impact and potential of web 2.0. McKinsey identifies the democratic and participative nature of web 2.0 technologies, which according to them "have a strong bottom-up element and engage a broad base of workers." The reason for it is that they're just so simple to use, (HyperOffice a case in point) and the benefits they provide so obvious, that they're compelling for everyone to use. technology is suddenly taken out of the domain of IT experts talking forbidding jargon, and huge server rooms whose whir scares the hell out of you.

These technologies are also light weight in every sense of the word as "earlier technologies often required expensive and lengthy technical implementations, as well as the realignment of formal business processes."  but "the new tools are different.  While they are inherently disruptive and often challenge an organization and its culture, they are not technically complex [and I might add, or expensive] to implement.  Rather, they are a relatively lightweight overlay to the existing infrastructure"  

McKinsey also has great expectations of the growth of this industry which "is a relatively modest $1 billion," at this point, but expect that the level of investment, despite the recession, should grow by more than 15% annually over the coming 5 years. Companies who are well entrenched in this domain are certainly sitting on a gold mine.

McKinsey also identifies six key factors that they believe are critical to the success of efforts to implement Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise.  

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top
2. The best uses come from users, but they require help to scale
3. What's in the work flow is what gets used. 
4. Appeal to the participants' egos and needs, not just their wallets. 
5. The right solution comes from the right participants. 
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk. 

McKinsey closes by saying that the "acceptance of Web 2.0 technologies in business is growing.  Encouraging participation calls for new approaches that break with the methods used to deploy IT in the past."  

HyperOffice recently rolled out HyperMeeting, a powerful and easy to use web conferencing service targeted at the small to mid sized business segment. Like HyperOffice, it is a web based service that users simply need to sign up for online and start using.