Warning: It Might Get Long

Blog posts are supposed to be short and punchy.  Sorry.  This might get long.  Document Management and Cloud Computing are both weighty topics and their intersection does not make for svelte Venn.

The Document Management Hurt Locker

For years, companies of all sizes have struggled to manage document creation, collaboration, distribution and storage in a way that is flexible, reliable, secure, and affordable.  At one extreme there have been complex, costly, centrally managed enterprise content management (ECM) systems like Documentum and FileNet, and their younger, cheaper web-based cousins.  At the other extreme is the free jazz jam of fat-client desktop applications suites like Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes, with and without orchestrating servers like Exchange or Domino.  And, scattered across the broad space between are literally hundreds of commercial and open source products and web-based services.

With so many different offerings out there, why is it then that for many organizations the solution of choice  is loosely-coupled word processing, email, shared calendar and, in some cases, additional archiving and security software?  Is it sloth?  Ignorance?  Penury?  Maybe for some; but many companies try or at least consider purpose-built document management solutions only to lose their grip on the vine and fall back into the swamp.  For one reason or another, it is just too hard to sustain the effort.

And for the rest, those who never even try, it is probably a symptom of what might be called Office Inertia Syndrome, a condition resulting from having Microsoft Office pre-installed on business and home computers, learning to use it to get things done, and never thinking too much more about it after that.  Given their chronic lack of IT staff, infrastructure and policies, small and medium businesses are particularly prone to this affliction.

Google to the Rescue?

There are few technological challenges these days for which Google does not offer or promise some kind of solution, and document management is no exception.  Google Docs is a free, completely web-based document publishing system that enables users to employ a web browser to create, edit and share text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.  The documents are stored exclusively in “the cloud” on Google’s servers from which they can be downloaded in various formats and where users can control who can access them.

Google Apps adds functionality to Google Docs through various editions for government, academic, and commercial users.  The free Standard Edition adds email, calendar, web sites and wikis, making it roughly a web-based functional alternative to Microsoft Office.  The paid Premier Edition adds groups, video, storage, security, administrative and support features for $50/user/year, comprising a web-based groupware solution that is more feature rich and less expensive on average than Microsoft Exchange.  Finally, with Google Apps Script and an API, any edition can be integrated with other applications and extended with custom functionality.

The growing battle of Google Docs/Apps versus Microsoft Office/Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino is less a fight about features and more one about fashion, the fashion in which computing and information assets are distributed, connected and used.  It is a battle of the entrenched model of on-premises fat clients and fatter servers versus the emerging model of thin clients and gargantuan servers, a.k.a. “cloud”.  Put more simply, it is the battle between facility computing and utility computing.