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Quick review of different sync-share-store services, starting with DropBox and ending with three Open Source services. Very interesting. Things have progressed since I last worked on the SurDocs project for Sursen. No mention in this review of file formats, conversion or viewing issues. I do know that CrocoDoc is used by near every sync-share-store service to convert documents to either pdf or html formats for viewing. No servie however has been able to hit the "native document" sweet spot. Not even SurDocs - which was the whole purpose behind the project!!! "Native Documents" means that the document is in it's native / original application format. That format is needed for the round tripping and reloading of the document. Although most sync-share-store services work with MSOffice OXML formatted documents, only Microsoft provides a true "native" format viewer (Office 365). Office 365 enables direct edit, view and collaboration on native documents. Which is an enormous advantage given that conversion of any sort is guaranteed to "break" a native document and disrupt any related business processes or round tripping need. It was here that SurDoc was to provide a break-through technology. Sadly, we're still waiting :( excerpt: The availability of cheap, easy-to-use and accessible cloud file-sharing services means users have more freedom and choice than ever before. Dropbox pioneered simplicity and ease of use, and so quickly picked up users inside the enterprise. Similar services have followed Dropbox's lead and now there are dozens, including well-known ones such as Google Drive, SkyDrive and Ubuntu One. cloud.jpg Valdis Filks , research director at analyst firm Gartner explained the appeal of cloud file-sharing services. Filks said: "Enterprise employees use Dropbox and Google because they are consumer products that are simple to use, can be purchased without officially requesting new infrastructure or budget expenditure, and can be installed qu

Odd that the reporter mentions the importance of security near the top of the article but gives that topic such short shrift in his evaluation of the services. For example, "secured by 256-bit AES encryption" is meaningless without discussing other factors such as: [i] who creates the encryption keys and on which side of the server/client divide; and [ii] the service's ability to decrypt the customer's content. Encrypt/decryt must be done on the client side using unique keys that are unknown to the service, else security is broken and if the service does business in the U.S. or any of its territories or possessions, it is subject to gagged orders to turn over the decrypted customer information. My wisdom so far is to avoid file sync services to the extent you can, boycott U.S. services until the spy agencies are encaged, and reward services that provide good security from nations with more respect for digital privacy, to give U.S.-based services an incentive to lobby *effectively* on behalf of their customer's privacy in Congress. The proof that they are not doing so is the complete absence of bills in Congress that would deal effectively with the abuse by U.S. spy agencies. From that standpoint, the Switzerland-based http://wuala.com/ file sync service is looking pretty good so far. I'm using it.

Nice article from Scott M. Fulton describing Microsoft's iron fisted lock on government desktop productivity systems and the great transition to a Cloud Productivity Platform.  Keep in mind that in 2005, Massachusetts tried to do the same thing with their SOA effort.  Then Governor Romney put over $1 M into a beta test that produced the now infamous 300 page report written by Sam Hiser.  The details of this test resulted in the even more infamous da Vinci ODF plug-in for Microsoft Office desktops.   The lessons of Massachusetts are simple enough; it's not the formats or office suite applications.  It's the business process!  Conversion of documents not only breaks the document.  It also breaks the embedded "business process". The mystery here is that Microsoft owns the client side of client/server computing.  Compound documents, loaded with intertwined OLE, ODBC, ActiveX, and other embedded protocols and interface dependencies connecting data sources with work flow, are the fuel of these client/server business productivity systems.  Break a compound document and you break the business process.   Even though Massachusetts workers were wonderfully enthusiastic and supportive of an SOA based infrastructure that would include Linux servers and desktops as well as OSS productivity applications, at the end of the day it's all about getting the work done.  Breaking the business process turned out to be a show stopper. Cloud Computing changes all that.  The reason is that the Cloud is rapidly replacing client/server as the target architecture for new productivity developments; including data centers and transaction processing systems.  There are many reasons for the great transition, but IMHO the most important is that the Web combines communications with content, data, and collaborative computing.   Anyone who ever worked with the Microsoft desktop productivity environment knows that the desktop sucks as a communication device.  There was

Interesting stats coming out from the recent Forrester study on Office Productivity.  The study was conducted by Philipp Karcher, and it shows a fcoming collision of two interesting phenomenon that cannot continue to "coexist".  Something has to give. The two phenom are the continuing dominance and use of client/server desktop productivity application anchor, MSOffice, and, the continuing push of all business productivity application to highly mobile cloud-computing platforms.   It seems we are stuck in this truly odd dichotomy where the desktop MSOffice compound document model continues to dominate business productivity processes, yet those same users are spending ever more time mobile and in the cloud.  Something has got to give. And yes, I am very concerned about the fact that neither of the native XML document formats {used by MSOffice (OXML), OpenOffice and LibreOffice (ODF)} are designed for highly mobile cloud-computing.   It's been said before, the Web is the future of computing.  And HTML5 is the language of the Web.  HTML is also the most prolific compound-document format ever.  One of the key problems for cloud-computing is the lack of HTML5 ready Office Productivity Suites that can also manage the complexities of integrating cloud-ready data streams. Sadly, when Office Productivity formats went down the rat hole of a 1995 client/server compound document model, the productivity suites went right with them.  Very sad.  But the gaping hole in cloud-computing is going to be filled.  One way or the other.

Nice infographic!  Shows that great transition from Windows desktop client/server to Cloud Computing is well underway.  I've tried RingCentral, and it's very good.  But i much prefer Google Voice - especially since i have an HTC Android.  RingCentral only offers one advantage over gVoice; they have integrated fax.  Everything else about RingCentral seemed like a throwback to DOS applications.   gVoice is slowly evolving.  Seems like it's taking forever to complete the integration with gMail, gSearch, and gDocs.  But i can see the incredible potential of Cloud integrated communications, content and collaborative computing.  gVoice has a potential like no one else. excerpt: The results are in from our annual smartphone survey! We polled 300 RingCentral SMB customers about their mobile device adoption and cloud use. The key takeaway: 57% of business owners said the majority of their business-critical applications currently run in the cloud.

Google "Innovation Nation" Conference in Washington, DC had an interesting conversation thread; that the move to Cloud Computing embraces a move for individual productivity to group productivity.  Not sure i agree with that.  The Windows Desktop-WorkGroup Productivity environment has dominated business since 1992.  Maybe Google might instead focus on the limited access of desktop workgroups and the fact that productivity was horribly crippled by the the PC's lack of communication.  The Web/Cloud magically combines and integrates communication with content and computation.  This is what makes cloud collaboration a genuine leap in productivity - no matter what the discipline.  Here's a question for Google: What's the productivity difference between desktop collaboration and cloud-collaboration? excerpt:  The meeting is the staple of corporate life. The whole day revolves around when a meeting will be, who will be there and what needs to be discussed. Yet, is this rote practice may have become counter-productive in today's world of the always on, always connected workplace. Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Take all those individuals, put their output together and have a meeting to sort it all out. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission. A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result. "The main message is that to be an effective [enterprise], we need to change from individual productivity to group productivity,"

Byron Deeter is right, but perhaps he's holding back on his reasoning.  Silicon Valley is all about platform, and platform plays only come about once every ten to twenty years.  They come like great waves of change, not replacing the previous waves as much as taking away and running with the future.   Cloud Computing is the fourth great wave.  It will replace the PC and Network Computing waves as the future.  It is the target of all developers and entrepreneurs.   The four great waves are mainframe, workstation, pc and networked pc, and the Internet.  Cloud Computing takes the Internet to such a high level of functionality that it will now replace the pc-netwroking wave.  It's going to be enormous.  Especially as enterprises move their business productivity and data / content apps from the desktop/workgroup to the Cloud.  Enormous. The key was the perfect storm of 2008, where mobility (iPhone) converged with the standardization of tagged PDF, which converged with the Cloud Computing application and data model, which all happened at the time of the great financial collapse.   The financial collapase of 2008 caused a tectonic shift in productivity.  Survival meant doing more with less.  Particularly less labor since cost of labor was and continues to be a great uncertainty.  But that's also the definition of productivity and automation.  To survive, companies were compelled to reduce labor and invest in software/hardware systems based productivity.  The great leap to a new platform had it's fuel; survival. Social applications and services are just the simplest manifestation of productivity through managed connectivity in the Cloud.  Wait until this new breed of productivity reaches business apps!  The platform wars have begun, and it's for all the marbles. One last thought.  The Internet was always going to win as the next computing platform wave.  It's the first time communications have been combined and integrated into content, and vast dat

Today Microsoft announced an open source cloud collaboration that may surprise some people, but not our customers and partners who have relied on our interoperability solutions over the past few years. Today Microsoft announced that it has partnered with Cloud.com to provide integration and support of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V  to the OpenStack project, an open source cloud infrastructure platform. The Hyper-V addition provides enterprise customers running a mix of Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies greater flexibility when using OpenStack. Until today, OpenStack only supported several open source virtualization products. Comment:  Microsoft needs to slow down Google and keep Apple's focus elsewhere.  Contributing a Windows only hypervisor to the OSS Cloud.com OpenStack project is one way Microsoft can hedge their own flailing Azure Cloud effort.  Read the Ray Ozzie good-bye letter.  The combination of Cloud, Web and Mobile Computing is the end of the Windows OS.

Microsoft last week launched its first serious effort to build IT into its cloud plans by introducing technologies that help connect existing corporate networks and cloud services to make them look like a single infrastructure. The concept began to come together at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference. The company is attempting to show that it wants to move beyond the first wave of the cloud trend, which is defined by the availability of raw computing power supplied by Microsoft and competitors such as Amazon and Google. Microsoft's goal is to supply tools, middleware, and services so users can run applications that span corporate and cloud networks, especially those built with Microsoft's Azure cloud operating system.

FeedHenry provides a cloud Mobile Application Platform that simplifies the development, integration, deployment and management of secure mobile apps for business. This mobile platform-as-a-service (PaaS) allows apps to be developed in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS and deployed to multiple mobile devices from a single code base. The node.js backend service offers a complete range of APIs designed to simplify and secure the connectivity of mobile apps to backend and third party systems. The platform can be deployed to private, public or hybrid clouds. FeedHenry's PaaS offers developers speed of development, instant scalability, device and cloud independence, and the ability to easily integrate to backend information. ................................ If, say, a company uses both Sharepoint and Salesforce inside a mobile app, to get that data into one app they need multiple levels of API integration. Because of the enormous boom in mobile and tablet apps, so-called 'back-end as a service' (BaaS) platforms like FeedHenry - which solve these problems - are hugely expanding. Thus, today FeedHenry has secured $9M (€7M) in a funding round led by Intel Capital, alongside a "seven figure" investment from existing investor Kernel Capital. Other existing investors VMware Inc., Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated and were joined by new investment from ACT Venture Capital. The funds will be used on an international roll out. FeedHenry's mobile application platform - built between Ireland and the U.S. - helps businesses build mobile apps that integrate securely to their business through the cloud. This is a competitive market that includes StackMob, Usergrid, Appcelerator, Sencha.io, Applicasa ,Parse, CloudMine , CloudyRec , iKnode, yorAPI, Buddy and ScottyApp.

The king of clicks returns!  No doubt there was a time when the mere mention of ODF and the now legendary XML "document" format wars with Microsoft could drive click counts into the statisphere.  Sorry to say though, those times are long gone. It's still a good story though.  Even if the fate of mankind and the future of the Internet no longer hinges on the outcome.  There is that question that continues defy answer; "Did Microsoft win or lose?"  So the mere announcement of supported formats in MSOffice XX is guaranteed to rev the clicks somewhat. Veteran ODF clickmeister SVN does make an interesting observation though: "The ironic thing is that, while this was as hotly debated am issue in the mid-2000s as are mobile patents and cloud implementation is today, this news was barely noticed. That's a mistake. Updegrove points out, "document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage." He concluded, "Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed on an ongoing basis will competition in the present be preserved, and the availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured. Without robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals will be impossible to attain." Updegrove's right of course. Don't believe me? Go into your office's archives and try to bring up documents your wrote in the 90s in WordPerfect or papers your staff created in the 80s with WordStar. If you don't want to lose your institutional memory, open document standards support is more important than ever. "....................................... Sorry but Updegrove is wrong.  Woefully wrong. The Web is the future.  Sure interoperability matters, but only as far as the Web and the future of Cloud Computing is concerned.  Sadly neither ODF or Open XML are Web ready.  The language of the Web is famously HTML, now HTML5+

Amazon Releases Developer SDKs One interesting and important exception is Amazon's recent release of its Software Development Kits (SDK) for Google's Android and Apple's iOS. With these kits, developers are provided with tools that will simplify development of cloud applications stored on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform, or AWS. Developing apps that can use many of the already popular AWS cloud services offers many new opportunities for the developer community, especially due to its low-barrier-to-entry and affordability, enabling more developers with limited resources  to build and provision new mobile cloud services. The new SDK includes libraries that simplify handling of HTTP connections, request retries and error handling, which used to be complex and arduous. Integration of applications with several AWS cloud services, like the Simple Storage Service (S3), SimpleDB database, Simple Notification Service (SNS) and Simple Queue Service (SQN) will be much more accessible than before. For example, it's going to be interesting to see whether developers will build a viable messaging solution atop the AWS SNS service that can actually compete with mobile SMS services - which have been a long-time major cash-cow for many mobile network operators.

Good comparison of Microsoft and Google "Cloud" initiatives.  Sure, Microsoft has the numbers.  They own the legacy desktop productivity platform.  But their execution in the Cloud is horrific.  Businesses will always opt for integrating existing desktop apps with Cloud productivity systems over rip-out-and-replace platform alternatives.   But the benefits of highly interoperable and universally accessible Cloud communications and collaborative computing have to be there.  So far MS has failed to deliver, and miserably so.   excerpt:  With Office 365, Microsoft has finally delivered an end-to-end cloud platform for businesses that encompass not only its desktop Office software, but also its server software, such as Exchange and SharePoint. Contrary to Google's narrative, cloud based office software is still a wide open market. The three million businesses that have "Gone Google" - proclaimed on billboards in San Francisco airport's new Terminal 2 - are for the most part Gmail users, who are still happily using Microsoft Office and even Microsoft Outlook. Gmail is a fast, cheap, spam-free and great solution for business email, especially relative to the expensive, lumbering email service providers. Google Apps has definitely found a niche for online collaboration, but generally for low-end project management types of spreadsheets and small documents. The presentation and drawing Google Apps are barely used. Yes, there are definitely Google Apps wins, since it seems cheap. On implementation, businesses find that switching to Gmail is one thing, but switching their entire business infrastructure to Google Apps is a completely different animal that goes far beyond simply changing how employees are writing memos.

Microsoft announces a new plan, "Microsoft Dynamics", to accelerate the transition to replace their traditional / conventional software systems with cloud-ready infrastructure. Dynamics also serves as a migration guide, providing "seamless integration" of services from old IT to new Cloud. Competitors mentioned include SalesForce.com, SAP and Oracle. Lots of focus on integrating CRM into the full line of business applications. This is somewhat similar to the Visual Productivity challenge of integrating gMail into a working productivity system based on the Google Apps platform. Embedding the full range of Visual Web Communications into productivity apps and services is the key at all levels. One thing to consider in this article is that the only Cloud - Productivity - Business systems contenders are SalesForce, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. Google Apps isn't mentioned. Nor is Amazon, RackSpace or VMware. Apple, Cisco, HP and Facebook are also left out.

Comment posted 1 week ago in reply to Zzgomes .....  by Ed Carp.  Finally someone who gets it! OBTW, i replaced Windows 7 with Linux Mint over a year ago and hope to never return.  The thing is though, i am not a member of a Windows productivity workgroup, nor do i need to connect to any Windows databases or servers.  Essentially i am not using any Windows business process or systems.  It's all Internet!!! 100% Web and Cloud Services systems.  And that's why i can dump Windows without a blink! While working for Sursen Corp, it was a very different story.  I had to have Windows XP and Windows 7, plus MSOffice 2003-2007, plus Internet Explorer with access to SharePoint, Skydrive/Live.com.  It's all about the business processes and systems you're part of, or must join.   And that's exactly why the Linux Desktop has failed.  Give Cloud Computing the time needed to re-engineer and re-invent those many Windows business processes, and the Linux Desktop might suceed.  The trick will be in advancing both the Linux Desktop and Application developer layers to target the same Cloud Computing services mobility targets.  ..... Windows will take of itself.   The real fight is in the great transition of business systems and processes moving from the Windows desktp/workgroup productivity model to the Cloud.  Linux Communities must fight to win the great transition. And yes, in the end this all about a massive platform shift.  The fourth wave of computing began with the Internet, and will finally close out the desktop client/server computing model as the Web evolves into the Cloud. excerpt: Most posters here have it completely wrong...the *real* reason Linux doesn't have a decent penetration into the desktop market is quite obvious if you look at the most successful desktop in history - Windows.  All this nonsense about binary driver compatibility, distro fragmentation, CORBA, and all the other red herrings that people are talking about are completely irrelevant

Good article on the increasing use of HTML5 for business apps.  The focus is on mobile devices, even though HTML5 clearly targets anything capable of running a WebKit class browser.  The article also demonstrates, albeit unwittingly, the use of HTML5 as a cloud platform "Compound Document" model.  Something far more important than the comparatively limited focus of BI and CRM mobility apps.   A Cloud Producitvity Platform will replace the legacy Desktop Productivity Platform anchored on Microsoft's Windows-MSOffice workgroup networking.  Just as Compound Documents were the fuel of desktop productivity apps and services, a new breed of compound documents will fuel cloud productivity based workgroups.  The article even demonstrates the basics of embedding charts, interactive feeds, media  and database streams in HTML5 document interfaces.  Still missing real time messaging between apps, but clearly the HTML5 cloud compound document model has arrived. excerpt: HTML5 will lead to richer mobile BI and CRM apps that can be used across browsers and devices. HTML has evolved considerably since it was first mapped out by Tim Berners-Lee more than 20 years ago. Now we're up to HTML 5.0, which could have a significant effect on the business intelligence and CRM landscape.

Notification of this article also appeared in the Diigo Document Wars Group..... WebODF...   An especially interesting project that was presented is WebODF, which wants to bring ODF to the web. Jos van den Oever started from the observation that a lot of office suites are moving into the "cloud". Examples are Microsoft Live Office, Google Docs, and Zoho. But where are the free software alternatives for the cloud? For OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiWord, and Gnumeric, there are none that have a cloud version with ODF support. That was the motivation for Jos to start a project to fill in this gap and let users view and edit ODF documents on the web without losing control of the document into some company's servers. The strategy Jos followed was to use just HTML and JavaScript for the web application. The application then loads the XML stream of the ODF document as is into the HTML document and puts it into the DOM tree. Styling is done by applying CSS rules that are directly derived from the and elements in the ODF document. That is how WebODF was born; it is a project with the initial goal of creating a simple ODF viewer and editor for offline and online use, implemented in HTML5. The small code base consists of one HTML5 file and eight JavaScript files, each of which is a few hundred lines of code. The most interesting part is that it doesn't need server-side code execution: the JavaScript code is executed in the user's browser and saving the document to the web server is done using WebDAV. It supports both the Gecko and WebKit HTML engines. There is also an implementation on top of QtWebKit, which is for better desktop integration, and an ODFKit implementation. This means that WebODF is an easy way to add ODF support to almost any application, be it in HTML, Gtk, or QML. KO GmbH has received funding from NLnet to improve the current WebODF prototype and see how far the idea goes. Interested readers can try the online demo

I'm not convinced that iCloud will eliminate Windows, MAC and Linux desktops.  I've been using DropBox, SyncDocs, Live.com while testing a number of backup-store-synch-share file services. IMHO, it's all about the apps that act on your data.  And these can come from the desktop, the Browser, or the device.  The best app platform for Cloud hosted data seems to be moving towards HTML5-JS.  Not Win32, .NET, C#, Java or Cocoa (iOS).  And Google clearly has he best platform of integrated services and API's.  They are best positioned to win the Cloud Wars if HTM5-JS and Native Client can close the deal on Cloud apps.  IMHO. excerpt: Apple's announcements yesterday about OS X 10.7 pricing (cheap), upgrading (easy), iOS 5, and iCloud storage, syncing, and media service can all be viewed as increasing ease of use, but from the perspective of Apple CEO Steve Jobs they perform an even more vital function - killing Microsoft. Here is the money line from Jobs yesterday: "We're going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device - just like an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod Touch. We're going to move the hub of your digital life to the cloud." Just like they used to say at Sun Microsystems, the network is the computer. Or we could go even further and say our data is the computer. This redefines digital incumbency. The incumbent platform today is Windows because it is in Windows machines that nearly all of our data and our ability to use that data have been trapped. But the Apple announcement changes all that. Suddenly the competition isn't about platforms at all, but about data, with that data being crunched on a variety of platforms through the use of cheap downloaded apps.

Not sure what to make of this news.  XP continues to rule the desktop, Office 2003-2007 the productivity sweet spot.  I have used and researched Office 2010 and emphatically insist that it is a honey-trap for SharePoint and Live.com cloud-computing.  The MS-Cloud becomes THE default hard drive for Office 2010, with social networking-Facebook like contagion based on shared documents, crap collaboration and in-your-face insistent Live.com/Hotmail eMail.  Everytime i wanted to do something in Office 2010, there were 20 road blocks and hurdles MS put in the path forcing their Facebook-virus on my associates and myself.  Incredibly anti-productive.  Yet it's the only cloud-productivity solution capable of easing the difficult transition from desktop to cloud productivity environments.  Office 2010 does this by integrating into legacy desktop productivity  systems just enough that users will not realize until it's too late that a mine filed of hurdles and gotchas lies ahead. excerpt: Businesses are now deploying Office 2010 five times faster than they deployed Office 2007. Office 2010 is also the fastest-selling version of Office in history. "Nearly 50 million people worldwide use Office Web Apps to view, edit, and share their documents from anywhere with a browser and an Internet connection," added Numoto. Microsoft previously revealed in October that the company had sold six million copies of Office 2010. The company didn't reveal any additional sales figures on Wednesday but reaffirmed that the software is selling well. Office is currently used by more than 750 million users worldwide according to Microsoft.

I wonder about those numbers. 6 million copies of Office 2010 sold; total of 750 million users of all versions. That makes 0.8 per cent of Office users who had upgraded between June and October of 2010? Five times faster than Office 2007 would make Office 2007 sales in the same period of its release cycle 0.16 per cent of the 750 million, assuming the number of users had remained constant. I suspect there are some apples and oranges in that wood pile, to mix a metaphor. E.g., retail sales that exclude sales to OEMs?

Soonr is an extremely well done document management service alternative to DropBox, Box.net, SyncDocs and a host of other services in this new Cloud sector of integrated document services.  What makes Soonr different is there focus on project management, with resource management for documents, collaborative notes and workgroups.  Nicely done.  Great iPAD interface.  Needs wikiWORD in the worst way.  Especially in the wake of Jive's purchase of OfficeSync. excerpt: Soonr is the first cloud file storage service to offer integrated editing for Microsoft Office documents on the iPad. Unlike cobbling together of file storage apps such as Dropbox and SugarSync with editing apps such as QuickOffice and Documents-To-Go, Soonr brings it all together so you can directly edit any files stored in the cloud using a single app. No configuration, no hassle, no cross-app interdependency. It also works offline when you don't have a Wi-Fi connection and will sync back up when you do. And you can store, share, access, search, edit and sync your files from any tablet securely through Soonr.

With the increased interest in cloud, software as a service (SaaS), and mobile computing, applications are jockeying across multiple networks, both in terms of how services are assembled, as well in how users in different environments access and respond to these critical applications. Indeed, cloud computing forces a collapse in the gaps between the former silos of private, public, and personal networking domains. Since the network management and governance tasks have changed and continue to evolve rapidly, so too must the ways in which solutions and technologies address the tangled networks environment we all now live and work in.