Think about enterprise software and collaboration. I think, collaboration is boring. It is complicated, requires lots of system configuration and implementation skills. Try to talk to your colleagues engineers about a potential new system for collaboration. How many will be listening? Probably something is wrong. What can be a new reality for “collaboration”?
MenloParkPatch announces, “Facebook Launches Video Chat.” You can see Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his livestreamed product announcement. Facebook will include video chat powered by Skype’s technology. I found the following Zuckerberg passage interesting:
“I actually think the driving narrative for the next five years or so is not going to be about wiring up the world, because a lot of the interesting stuff has already been done,” he said. “It’s about what kind of cool stuff you’re going to be able to build… now that you have this wiring in place.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_64PPvxzY
As you can see Facebook is not alone in this video chat race. Google just came with a new feature in Google+ called Hangout.
What is my conclusion? I think, an average manufacturing company already implemented way too many enterprise systems. Maybe we need to stop trying to re-invent “collaboration” by introducing new names and set of complicated user interfaces? Let just think about adding some cool features. Think, video chat is one of them. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
