I am probably not the only one out there wondering if there will be a 2009 Office 2.0 conference. Certainly, I could just ask Ismael instead of this post. If the event does not happen this year, it may be because of Intalio's explosive success. Or perhaps because last year was a little quieter, and less energy-filled, than 2007.
But upon reflection, it isn't because Office 2.0 is dead or over.
With Microsoft having recently bought "office.com" and finally preparing to launch its own, 100% web-based simplified version of its Office suite, one could argue the battle was won, much like Salesforce.com's battle for "no software" clearly is over (hence, their need to shift to a cloud paradigm, since the world pretty much agrees SaaS is fine for most enterprises and businesses).
In fact, thinking about it, I would propose it's about a 10-12 year journey. It seems to me there are two ways technology and software experience paradigm shifts. The first is to create a new category or experience that did not exist before. When done right, this can explode. Look at Facebook or Twitter's or YouTube's growth in just a few years.
Office 2.0 however is not about doing something never possible before. Even its most exciting elements, collaboration and visibility, exist in on-premise solutions in one form or another. Rather, it's about making your core business applications 10x more useful than before, with the web as the vehicle to do so.
Those paradigm shifts, from one way of doing something, to a new way (vs. a brand new segment) seem to take about 10-12 years. Take a look at digital photography for example. The switch took over 10 years to go mainsteam. In the beginning, analog film was hardly broken. But now, it's somewhere between a joke and the refuge of an extremely small number of art photographers.
Looking back at Office 2.0 circa the end of 2005, it was defined by Ismael in a very narrow fashion, as a sort of Network Computer 2.0 used to run core businesses applications entirely on the web. A nichey concept at the time. Today, that idea has become mainstream and even so obvious to not even to be a distinct concept.
Penetration, however, remains similar to where digital photography was around 2001. We are 30-40% along this journey and road. Whether there is an Office 2.0 conference this year or not (in its past form), I'd challenge us all to rethink how we can collaborate together on its next phase, from mainstream to ubiquity.
