Office Redefined in the Age of Cloud and Mobile Computing

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Office productivity tools have come a long way from the days of the Wang Labs (assuming you even know what that is in reference to.) MIT's Tech Review has a series of articles on what constitutes an office in today's mobile and cloud computing world. A global and flattening global nature of interaction, ubiquitous and instantanious accessibility, and how to better define and protect data are some of the oft-heard observations.

These observations also lead to some interesting questions.

Roll Up a Flattened World

In a flat and global world, while it is true that people from different corners of the world can be part of the same virtual team, it is also true that virtual team is difficult to manage. Although cloud and mobile computing have made life easier. From a business perspective, how to get a team to perform at a high productivity level remains an art.

In other words, now that people are collaborate across oceans, does mobile and cloud computing offer new opportunities to close the physical distance?

Going Off the Grid

The convergence of mobile and cloud is accidental. For the early cloud folks, the emergence of a touch based device was not expected. Similarly, mobile designers only considered tapping the vast processing and storage power of Cloud as an after-thought. As users become more comfortable using smart mobile devices as the primary "office computer", how to address the productivity needs while offline will become an issue.

Adding more processing and storage on the mobile device can only get you so far. What is not clear is what are the buseinss policy tools. For example, what data can you take offline to protect privacy and security. What if several people are working on the same document, can you take it offline and work on it?

The Rise of the Virtual Office: http://www.technologyreview.com/business/38169/page1/
Tiny, Cloud-Powered Desktops: http://www.technologyreview.com/business/38171/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-08-04
How to Secure the Virtual Office: http://www.technologyreview.com/business/38170/page1/