Chrome OS and the enterprise - Updated x 2

(See bottom of page for updates)

As OM Malik noted on his blog, there appears to be a lot of hot air and not a lot of substantive analysis of the news of the week (?) the Google Chrome OS.

You can find some of that hot air here, a list of Google Blog search results for 'Chrome OS':

There is plenty of comment about low spec'd netbooks and cut down OS's not cutting the mustard etc, and why not, the Google 'press release' blog posting does afterall mention netbooks as a specific market. However no one seems to have thought about the bigger picture here, what about the enterprise market ?

Remember Sun and the 'network is the computer' - oh yes, we could be heading back round that circular argument again. I have blogged previously before on the fact that the 'cloud' is not reliable enough for many corporations, but that hosted apps such as GMail, Google Docs, and in the future Google Wave is (or will be) good enough for many smaller businesses - but where are the Google Apps Appliances to sit in the rack next to the GSA ? EMC has certainly talked about 'private enterprise clouds' - building your own 'cloud computing' type environment on your corporate backbone and inside the firewall.

So why would you not put Chrome OS onto desktops, conventional laptops and smaller netbooks (and lets not forget Android powered phones !) to provide the latest in 'thin client' experience in a corporate environment ? Simpler and cheaper support than Windows ?

Stephen Arnold sticks to his theme of looking more deeply into what Google is up to, and is maybe closer to drawing some similar conclusions in his post: Chrome, a shiny wrap for the plumbing of Google

Does anyone else think that when this vapourware becomes solid in 2010, it might be as part of a major push into the enterprise IT scene by Google ? Your own Gmail box versus Exchange ? Wave and Docs versus SharePoint and Office ? GSA versus FAST ? A YouTube appliance as Digital Asset Management ???

Who knows, only time will tell, but personally I think it would be very interesting to see a Wave and Docs based ECMS taking on the big boys in the space ;-)

Meanwhile on my nice new corporate IBM Lenovo ThinkCentre, with its locked down corporate Windowws desktop I am realy missing tabbed browsing, Digsby, Tweetdeck etc............

UPDATE - The Register actually seem to agree with me to some extent, they remember the Network Computer (NC) and wonder if Google might cosy up to Oracle for NC-redux ?

UPDATE #2 - Steven Vaughan-Nichols at ComputerWorld also seems to have caught part of the bigger picture in his posting: Why Google Chrome OS Matters Already on Day 1

iPhone for business use

Not entirely an ECM topic, but to be honest I am getting a tad weary of reading analysts and pundits putting the iPhone down and saying it can't be used for 'business' because it does not have 3G etc, so I have decided to blurt out my thoughts on the subject.

Many seem to think the iPhone could never be used for business as it does not have 3G and because Apple have not released the SDK yet, so 'business' apps won't run on it. What applications are they getting at exactly ? I own a brand new Toshiba Portege 3G capable 'Windows Smart Phone' and an iPhone. Which one crashes, hanges, has various 'foibles' * that I have to put up with ? Well it aint the Apple 'toy' ! Which has the biggest and best screen and one of the most useable UI paradigms and user experiences ever - well its not the Windows powered device thats for sure.

However everyone seems to think the inability to receive 'pushed' Exchange email or run specialist apps means the iPhone is not a serious business device. Have any of these people ever connected by free "coffee shop" wi-fi sat down and used a 'real' browser on good size screen ? The only reason I have an iPhone is because it was part of the great 'Office 2.0' experiment at last years conference of the same name. Specialist apps were written for the conference and used to prove the utility of the mobile web paradigm. So, I can understand the complaints about lack of 3G, but as I understand it public (even free) wi-fi connectivity is a lot more prevalent in North America than it is here in the U.K.

Its all about 'web 2.0', 'office 2.0' and 'enterprise 2.0' ! Yep, it doesn't have a hardware keyboard, but I have 'live blogged' from conferences, fill in web forms, used Outlook Web Access as well as the built in Gmail, etc etc the list goes; all with the on screen keyboard - its 'good enough' for a mobile device of this size and form factor. As for the user experience - well my 4 1/2 year old son loves to use my iPhone - he can look up the weather in Toronto, find clips of Lego Knights on YouTube and do his ' 2 + 2 ' on the calculator. I know 44 year olds who can't wrap their heads round Smart Phone interface !

So can someone please tell me categorically with a good argument, why you can't use an iPhone for 'business' use - please ? Either that, or for goodness sake shut up !

* = Foibles that include not telling me when I have messages, not vibrating when its set to, not turning off silent mode when you try to, and on and on.....