Chris Saad used to ask me questions about tech in enterprise due to my history (I’ve got the battle scars rolling out web2.0 at PwC), but he asked me after he wrote this post. So instead of telling him he’s wrong by email (ironic given the topic), I’m going to shame him to the world!
Why Google Wave will take over ten years to turn into a trending wave
As I previously wrote when the news of Google’s new technology was announced, there is a hidden detail Google hasn’t announced to the world: it requires massive computational power to pull off. It doesn’t take a brain to realise it either – anyone thats used a bloated Instant Messenger (like Lotus Same Time) probably understands this. All that rich media, group chat, real time – Jesus, how many fans are we going to need now to blow the steam generated by our computer processors? Mozilla pioneered tabbed browsing – and it’s still trying to pioneer on the same idea – from your computer crashing when you have more than a few tabs open!
Don’t get me wrong, Google Wave is phenomenal. But it’s only the beginning. The fact Google has opened this up to the world is a good thing. But we need to be realistic, because even if this technology is distributed (like how email is), the question I want to know is how many users can one server support? I’d be surprised at these early stages if it’s more than a dozen (the demo itself showed there’s still a lot of work to be done). Do I have inside knowledge? No – just common sense and experience with every other technology I’ve used to date.
Why Google Wave won’t hit the enterprise in the next 12 months
Now to the point where Saad is *really* wrong. “20% of enterprise users will be using wave in the first 12 months for more than 50% of their comms (replacing email and wiki)“.
Yeah right. It’s going to take at least three years, with a stable and mature technology, for this to work. Email sucks, but it also works. IT departments, especially in this economy, are not going to try a new form of communication that’s half working and is not a mass adopted technology (wiki’s are a new thing – there’s a cultural battle still being fought within enterprises).
The real time nature potentially might even scare communications departments. Entire divisions exist in firms like mine, to control the message sent to employees. If you are revealing a message before the final message has been crafted, you’ve given away control to that message – the process now becomes just as important as the final message. I understand this functionality can be turned off, but I’m raising it to highlight how enterprises think.
Google Wave rocks
Again, don’t get me wrong. Google Wave blows my mind. But let’s be realistic here – big ideas take time. It took a while for Google the search engine to domiante. Heck, Gmail has taken nearly a decade to get to the point of being called dominant. And you can fix bugs, deploy software, and roll out sales teams – but sometimes with big ideas, it’s a generational thing.
Wave will dominate our world communications – one day. But not for a while.
My 12 Month Time Frame starts from public availability of the product – so it assumes that any technical/scale issues are worked out.
We will soon see 🙂
Ha! Have you thought though that the reason Google is opening it up so early, is because they are hoping the developer community can help them work out the scale issues.
Yes – in fact that fact has been confirmed to me by a number of sources. But that doesn’t change my point.
When it scales (not if) and goes public, it will change the Enterprise very quickly!
I think we will see an impact on the enterprise once IT departments grapple with the broader cloud computing trend.
Another thing that’s going to be required for enterprises to support it: a mature product, backed by established companies, with a reliable support function. Google has the opportunity to do that, as does IBM and Microsoft. But that’s going to take at least 36 months, if we were to be optimistic.
So yes, change it will – but slowly. I reckon enterprises will disable some of the functionality, so the full Wave potential will itself take time as enterprises culturally get used to it. For example, I know there is a large division in my firm that actually wants to shut off the IM program we use (Sametime).
Elias, you may have a point in that the adoption predictions Chris makes are most likely overstated. As always with technology, short-term implications are overrated and long-term ones underestimated.
Your comparison with GMail is fairly weak, though. Most of us didn’t have a massive need for another web-based email client, even if it did have the features Gmail did from the start. I still don’t, as a matter of fact.
Wave on the other hand is a game changer. Unlike the one-trick pony GMail just thinking about Wave for 30 minutes allows anyone to come up with half a dozen new usage scenarios, and that’s on the basis of a single demo.
Displacement of other technologies by Wave (or even just its adoption) I find difficult to predict as we don’t even quite know what else it could be used for.
Fair point Tom, but I disagree to some extent. Gmail was disruptive when it came out. But yes, it will be hard to predict its future.
I am with you in the company argument; being the late adopters they are, it is going to take quite a while to switch over from email to any other form of communication.
In addition to that, Wave has a very unofficial and colloquial touch to it. It’ll be a while until it’s not just seen as distraction and the real-time potential gets discovered.
It is without question a game changer, but there have to be notable enterprises pioneering this idea before it gets fully adopted.
Speaking of pioneers:
Opera pioneered tabbed browsing – Mozilla brought it to the mainstream – Google fixed it.
One thing that caught my attention (beside the awesome posibilities explained and hinted on the demo) was tha they said they are talking with other companies.
If by the time the make Wave public they have implemented, or have robots to interact with, services like Facebook, Flickr, Joomla, IMAP and POP email, other IM applications, WordPress, RSS, MS Exchange, etc… I think that could be huge.
The killer would be to integrate and sincronize Word and Excel docs into a Wave.
Thanks for the correction Jan – brilliant phrase!
Esteban – good pick up. Yes, it will be huge. The partnerships developed with other companies (and getting them excited) will be the key thing that drives this technology forward. Google can’t do it alone.