Spreadsheet Wars! Microsoft, Google and SocialText
Ken Fisher says that Google’s new spreadsheet is about file formats, not MS Office.
It’s an interesting article, and worth a read, but I am not sure I agree with Ken about the importance of file formats.
In a Web 2.0 world, file formats don’t matter. Access matters. Context matters. That means the information has to be on the web and have a common API. (Ken might say that a common open standard file format is a common API. And that would be a good point, but overstating controversies makes for more interesting blog posts)
Google is fighting Microsoft to define the web based API to spreadsheets, not for the actually spreadsheet file formats.
Real world business example: management reports
In a real world business example, think about building monthly management reports. Today, in most companies, the CEO ends up seeing reports that are build by knowledge workers who cut and paste information from spreadsheets and word docs into a final report.
In most companies, this can’t be automated because the process is not fixed. The boss always wants to look at something different, or examine things in a new way. The nature of our highly competitive global economy means that companies have to behave like this: always changing the way they do things to stay ahead of the competition.
The problem becomes connecting all that information, and not having to repeat cut & paste effort. In a world of Sarbanes Oxley, companies also have to limit edit access control, and create audit trails for these ad hoc reports.
How do you solve this problem? If every spreadsheet was on a web server, with a distinct API, and access control tools, then solving the problem would be easy.
Further, if every spreadsheet was contained in context, with descriptions of what it was being used for, even more value would be added.
Social Text - Wiki plus Wikicalc
SocialText now sells an enterprise class solution that does exactly that.
Michael Arrington has a great article on it at Tech Crunch: SocialText/wikiCalc: More Interesting Than Google Spreadsheets.
To continue with our example of the management reports, imagine you are running a chain of donut stores. You have each store manager create a Wiki page each month, with information about sales. The information can include both contextual information and raw performance data in a Wikicalc spreadsheet.
Rolling this information up to a central source becomes easy. Just link the cells in a summary Wikicalc spreadsheet.
When the store manger updates the figures, you have the latest information. Adding an extra report on an ad campaign becomes trivial. Showing the auditors an input chain is just a matter of giving them the ability to click through the system.
Creating an audit trail of all changes to the information in the reports is done for you. SocialText offers that straight out of the box.
Both Microsoft and Google can learn a lot from SocialText here.
The best Web Office solutions will blur the lines between wikis, blogs and existing office tools to create a simple, structured mashup platform that empowers knowledge workers and facilitates a new level of flexibility, reusability, searchability and internal cooperation and communication.
So far, SocialText is a lot closer to realizing that vision than Google or Microsoft.
You should also check out what Zimbra are doing in the business space with their ALE (http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/images/zimbra_ajax_linking_embedding_0.2.pdf) idea and technologies, this fits the profile that you speak of. (They also have an ALE spreadsheet)
regards
Al
Al, Check out Rod’s Web Office paper - he talks about Zimbra and many other Web 2.0 tools: The Next Wave in Productivity Tools It’s a great article.
Rod,
Excellent review. In a way Google’s launch helps the small players like SocialText, Zoho, etc. as people start evaluating and understanding what online spreadsheets can do for them.
My take on this slightly longer term though- more from a disruptive innovation perspective. It is immaterial that Google Spreadsheet’s is inferior today to Microsoft Excel. In fact, I would argue that most Excel customers use it only for basic tasks. In addition, there are millions of users that do not use a spreadsheet for tasks that they could use it for. If Google focuses on the non users and the low-end users, it can beat Microsoft by changing the game. However, if Google tries to take Microsoft head on I would bet on Microsoft. Clayton Christensen in his ground-breaking book Innovator’s Dilemma lays out these scenarios quite perfectly. I have an analysis of Google vs Microsoft on my site from this perspective (Google Spreadsheet: A case study in disruption.)
File formats, in the “Old World” of a couple years ago, meant one thing. These days, think of “File Formats 2.0″ in the same way as you think about everything else 2.0. You say, “Common API.” OK. Doesn’t that mean, to a degree, a file format that will mean something on my hard drive, USB fob, iPod, and Web site? Something that will mean something to a PDF file, a database, a word processing file, a “flat text” file, a graphic file, an email?
What is “Format 2.0?” Where does the metadata live? How does the single date field that I embed in my reply in an email-RSVP to your web form then slip seemlessly into the database and spreadsheet that your admin needs to use to print out name-badges and do the menus for the event?
Some companies are working towards a totoally open “format” so that all documents cal “talk” to all others; fields, metadata, etc. would all live in peace and harmony; the lion shall lie down with the integer and so forth. But if OpenOffice’s data is equal to Microsoft’s data is equal to Google’s data… and everyone’s content talks to everyone elses content, with no need for translation, etc….
Somebody gonna get disintermediated. Again.