[thechat] Cloudy Collaboration Apps

[Luther, Ron]

S.M.German noted:

>>But if you are really asking about selling medical equipment and tracking customer info in an ad hoc  manner, in a system without proper privacy safeguards, where an employee is a >>single point of failure risking loss of the ability to track and contact customers in case a notice or recall is necessary, my first response is HECK NO.  My second response is, you or >>employees A and B need to meet with someone from your validation and regulatory departments.


Hi Sean!

I agree.  I have also worked in a heavily regulated industry.  (Telecommunications - before, during, and after the breakup, or 'divestiture', of AT&T.)  I even spent some time supporting telecommunication sales in the health care industry.  So perhaps 'cloudiness' may be an area where the disciplined mindset of regulated industries to insure that those safeguards and separations are in place might be beneficial.

Perhaps that is the key.  A good home architect will talk about and design for the need to separate 'public space' and 'private space'.   However, what I think I see trending today on our devices, (particularly in a BYOD environment), and in our social media, and (I suspect) in our collaborative cloudiness ... is an increasingly messy blending of business and personal, of public and private.  [Perhaps Google's overlapping circles is a good paradigm?]  I mean, it's not like there has been a single article about some exec shooting themselves in the foot for mouthing off about business issues, directions, corporate secrets, or simply contradicting official press releases on their personal blog, right?  And obviously none of us have felt the slightest corporate effort to influence and manage our own personal social media.


I still have concerns about the potential cloudiness impact in less regulated industries.  And with the various dynamics that can come into play.  A conglomerate with multiple 'siloes' could easily find that each division has chosen to use a different cloudy service ... and they will have customers who attempt to deal with multiple divisions.  In that environment, there will be a 'helpful' service tech or salesperson who consolidates that information, in yet another place, to satisfy a customer request for a 'single point of contact'.  That individual will get an attaboy and a pat on the back.  For now.  But what happens after they leave or lateral to another group?  When that site stagnates or becomes abandoned?

And that doesn't even start to address where these trends leave the individuals who are interested, motivated, and actively working on 'looking out for number one'!


Let me try a simpler angle.  Am I the only one who runs into internal link rot?  I can't tell you how many internal share points, share drives, and websites get orphaned during every blessed corporate re-org.  You want to go back and review information from a project you completed two years ago?  Good Freakin' Luck with that!   I'm betting that externally shared information/sites/tools will be managed equally well.

Cheers,
RonL.

PS: Heh.  How fortuitous!  I just ran into the following:  (a) the 'world-wide' team placed a PowerPoint deck out on a cloudy share service,  (b) the Asia team edited the deck down to just their region and shared it out to their staff,  (c)  [Oooopsie!]  the Asia team accidentally saved the edited deck overtop of the world-wide deck ... (d) the rest of world wonders why the deck contains no data for their region.    ;-)   Yeah, Baby!   Collaboration FTW!