Collaboration. Magic and one of the most confusing words. People are using it in so many contexts that it became meaningless. One of the main trends that was dominant for the last few years was social collaboration. Social networks and social tools went mainstream and it impacted the way business applications and tools think about collaboration. I outlined it few years ago in my post – PLM Collaboration Social Trends and Lotus Notes Memories.
To bring the experience and techniques of social tools in business domain became one of the trends in many application and system developments. I can bring you multiple examples of systems that were created for the last 2-3 years to implement social collaboration – Salesforce Chatter, SAP StreamWork, Oracle WebCenter Social, Autodesk Qontext and many others. Social Applications are coming to design tools as well. Navigate your browser to one of my previous posts – From Design Collaboration to CAD Social Tools to read more.
At the same time, new trends are coming. Have you heard about OTT messages buzzword? OTT term was originally used to define the over the top content that you can stream by passing multiple operators. In the context of mobile messages, it used to define messaging application running on mobile phone, but bypassing regular SMS/Text messages. Techcrunch article – The Future Of Mobile-Social Could Spell The End For Social Networks speaks about trends around OTT messaging applications and social networks. The following picture is showing clear trends towards OTT messaging application to capturing the conversation.
Another interesting viewpoint – migration from social platform and networks to point messaging applications running on top of mobile devices. Here is an interesting passage:
The ground has been set for a fascinating next few years as the web-based social platforms seek to own mobile-social messaging and the mobile messaging apps seek to extend into more fully integrated social features. As of this moment the mobile-first apps have the lead measured by number of users and levels of engagement. To keep it they will need to continue to innovate. The human race is already social, and the smartphone has everything needed to enable them to act on their social needs. As the growth of OTT messaging and media sharing shows, a user’s social needs are being met with no need for a social network. In this mobile-social world the only question is, whose software will we all use to enable human social activities?
You may ask me – what is between OTT and PLM? Here is the thing. PLM adoption in organizations is a hard topic. How to make customers using PLM applications beyond engineering (the core domain where PLM is originated in many situations)? One of the possible ways is to come with ad-hoc OTT mobile application allowing to downstream users to get access to data in PLM system for decision making or other workflows.
What is my conclusion? OTT messaging is a new behavior we discover for the last 2-3 years. People are experiencing it in their personal life. In the past, PDM/PLM used File Explorer and MS Outlook user experience to drive user adoption. Similar to that, PLM applications can use the familiarity of people with OTT mobile applications to help driving PLM downstream adoption. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
