Can Google OneBox put the Joy back in Enterprise Applications?
(August 24 2006) Update: Podcasts are now available of the sessions from the symposium.
Last week Dave Girouard from Google Enterprise Services spoke at the 2006 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
His talk was entitled “Arming the Innovators: How Consumers have changed the game for IT.”
His basic argument:
- Consumer technology is driving innovation today - because it is fundamentally usable, while enterprise IT applications are getting less usable over time.
- The modern enterprise is driven by “Self-Directed Innovators” who need unfettered access to information.
- Google technology (Enterprise Search appliance, One Box) provides an interface to enterprise information that is so usable (like consumer technology) it will bring joy to those self-directed innovators.
In what follows, I recap Girouard’s presentation in a bit more detail and then use it as the occasion to consider two questions:
- Is the higher percieved usability and massive interest in google apps, including Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and related apps from Google and other providers, a sign of the fact that they are better meeting the needs of enterprise users?
- Will the increased availabilty of web-based alternatives which can be chosen with little to no involvement of centralized IT purchasing committees fundamentally change the role of the CIO and Enterprise IT?









