Forrester is set to release a new report about Web Office, which ReadWriteWeb got a sneak peak at. The report offers new data on office productivity innovation and cloud productivity suite adoption. The full data will be presented at Forrester’s IT Forum, to be held in Las Vegas May 19-22, 2009. The data shows that while enterprises are looking forward to innovation in web access and collaboration, they’re not so forward-looking when it comes to data integration. Also we discover that the vast majority of IT departments still support Microsoft Office, but very few support Google Premier Apps right now.
Forrester asked 152 IT decision makes what innovation they are looking for in future Web Office applications. Web access and better collaboration solutions both scored near the 50% mark. More mundane office tasks like document management and provisioning were in the 33-36% range. We’re a little surprised that more IT decision makers aren’t looking for more data integration between apps, which scored just 33%.
As we have been explaining in recent posts, this current era of the Web (which some have termed “Web 3.0”, a term we’re ambivalent about) has a big focus on using data and making it smarter. As Marshall Kirkpatrick explained in a post today about Google making more public data searchable, “the coming era of the web is based on data, on drawing patterns and meaning out of a far larger body of data than the human mind alone could ever comprehend.” In the enterprise setting, much of the data may still be locked behind a firewall – but there will still be much more data in the future than today, so enterprises will need solutions to gather data from different apps, integrate between apps, and use it.
In another slide, Forrester concluded that cloud computing adoption within enterprises is still low. 80% of respondants still support crusty old Microsoft Office, while just 3% claim to support Google Premier Apps. It really does seem like the whole enterprise industry is sitting back and waiting on Microsoft to roll out their long-awaited Web Office offerings. By these figures, it doesn’t appear like Google is making too much of a dent in the market. However we’re sure it is just a matter of time before Web Office suites are common in the workplace – even Microsoft has acknowledged that cloud computing will be an important driver for enterprise software.
Let us know in the comments what you think of these statistics. Are you seeing different adoption and expectations inside your workplace?
