Why is Squork better than Google Wave? ..and other good questions

YOUTUBE videos on Squork are getting some attention and the first few bits of feedback we’ve received ask some very pointy questions on what makes Squork better than Google Wave and free source software.

Rather than answer the same questions a hundred times a day I thought it probably a good idea to answer them here;-). My thanks to Aravind for summarizing the key questions!

QUESTION – “What is Squork?”

Squork is a secure and live business social operating system. It enables communities to develop and operate virtual social network operating spaces for their business or community of interest.

QUESTION – “Where has Squork come from?”

ANSWER - Squork is a deployment of the Encanvas Secure&Live Integrated Software Platform (which itself can take some explaining). With Encanvas people can design, deploy and operate their business applications using a single integrated platform without needing programming or scripting skills. It obviates the need for traditional enterprise portal platforms and means people can publish directly to their favored cloud computing platform or web server (although at the moment we’re only supporting Microsoft Azure). Encanvas produces ASP.NET web spaces.

Because Squork is built on Encanvas, organizations benefit from what we call ‘frictionless IT’ – i.e. Once they’ve deployed the Encanvas platform they don’t need to buy any more applications as it becomes easier and more cost effective to build applications than purchase them. Using Encanvas also means organizations no longer have to suffer with upgrade costs.

The fact that Encanvas underpins Squork means that organizations (and communities) can use Squork to extend their networks and processes beyond the boundaries of the enterprise without compromising security.

QUESTION - “I could understand that you deliver data security, aggregating information, making everyone work on the same page...but my question is how is that different from existing stand alone usage of social media. What advantage will it provide me as a customer ahead of ones who aren't using squork?”

ANSWER – While most social media tools are ‘applications’, Squork is a complete Social Operating System.

Here’s what I mean: Social media technologies like twitter and YouTube represent exciting new forms of communication but like the telephone, email or letter, they don’t organize data for you or integrate together in a common environment. What Squork does is provide users with access to the communications tools they want to use in a trusted environment that they can tailor precisely to how they want to work. Users own and manage their data on Squork - not Google, Facebook, Skype or Microsoft.

Squork provides users with the tools they need to create secure user groups and communities. Within these communities, users can serve themselves with the collaborative tools and applications they need to meet the needs of the community (or project). Today, users are coming to realize that social media isn’t architected to provide a trusted workspace that enables organizations to manage their social ties, their intellectual property, business applications, or govern projects but you can find out more by reading my book ‘Cloud Coffee House’ ;-)

“It would be of great help if you could explain why someone should go with your product ahead of using free source software. Tell precisely the differentiation factor that your product delivers and how it could be an added value as a customer for me.”

ANSWER – The Encanvas community is about helping individuals to lever their talents and skills by applying technology in new ways, so we don’t want to discourage people from using their own flavors of social media. It's great to experiment so please try out these new ways of communicating and sharing ideas. The role of Squork is to provide the best user experience and the best way of creating a virtual workplace where people want to spend their time. Our plan is to integrate with as many social media tools as we can (including Google Wave) but Squork will also include its own embedded functionality – so users don’t need to go anywhere else for the different forms of communication (such as live webchat or RSS feeds) unless they want to.

There are many benefits of a thoughtfully designed architecture as opposed to creating sites by mashing together multiple tools where the designer does not have full control over the components. Because Squork is built on Encanvas, it uses the same ‘LEGO brick’ approach to integration and deployment, so there’s no need for scripting or coding skills and all of the capabilities you might want to add to your site – such as dashboarding, charts, visualizations, maps, data entry forms etc. – can be easily added.

And what’s its advantage over Google Wave?

In fairness to Google, that’s not a fair question at the moment because the clever people at Google have already got Wave ‘out there’ while we’re still working on the first version of Squork but I would say adopters of Squork will like that its architected on Encanvas Secure&Live and leverages the Microsoft ASP.NET platform while users will love the usability, integration of different communications vehicles and ability to bring everyone together on the same page. I guess the best answer is ‘try it and see’.

“When will Squork be available? (Wasn’t it meant to be out already?)

ANSWER – We expected to launch Squork in October 2009 but we delayed the launch because we had some fundamental learning lessons from the initial beta that we wanted to apply prior to launch in order to make the technology more adaptable and easier to use. We’re expecting to make Squork available to people who are interested in trialing it some time mid 2010 but we won’t have a release date confirmed for a few weeks yet.

Google takes another step towards turning into Microsoft - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

Google takes another step towards turning into Microsoft - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-02-14-google-takes-another-step-towards-turning-into-microsoft

There are occasions when the true colors of corporate arrogance show themselves and it's not pretty. Google has done well to steer clear of being tarnished with the image as an uncaring 'corporate giant' that has hit so many other large corporations that only do things for money.

That's why I found this article so interesting to read. Google isn't a charitable organization and its willingness to try to cut off smaller players at the ankles by using its market penetration shows what happens when youthful exuberance turns into a cruel corporate game. Fortunately, cloud computing is opening the doors to European and Asian innovators and it is in these far flung parts of the planet that innovation is taking hold.

Perhaps we should all think a little more about the negative consequences of Google's dominance over the Web.

Well done John Naughton for presenting this thoughtful perspective.

Enterprise mashups and de-risking software development projects

One of the main uses of Encanvas and other enterprise mashup platforms is in custom software development.

Traditionally, business software applications have been purchased as shrink-wrapped products that serve a specific process or functional business area. The fundamental problem of this approach is there are so many processes in a business.  Attempting to purchase a shrink-wrapped solution for every one of them is hugely expensive. Another problem is there's no guarantee that each of the shrink-wrapped packages is architected to use the same building block components of technology - so organizations have to contend with supporting a variety of different database engines, workflow engines and reporting tools (that all work differently).

The alternative to buying read-made software solutions of course is to build your own. The problem in doing this is the high cost and risk of project failure. Developing bespoke software applications has traditionally been performed by programmers and IT professionals in back-rooms working on a common plan that's been drafted as the 'best guess' of what the outcome should look like. Programmers find themselves working in parallel on different parts of the same system. No surprise, when the project team tries to bring all of these development strands together and present it to the users and stakeholders, it's not uncommon for lots of re-working to be needed. Primarily for this reason, organizations make do with buying shrink-wrapped software and coping with the high expense of operating a plethora of different software applications that still don't really fit their business need or how they want to work.

Encanvas, and other composite applications design products, overcome these issues by providing IT leaders with a common toolkit of ready-to-use technology components so they can develop applications across the enterprise as the need arises. What makes Encanvas particularly unique is that it doesn't require coding or scripting skills. Its design environment is completely 'point-and-click'. Even its data integration and mashup features and logic building features are created using drag and drop methods. Another feature is that unlike other Enterprise Mashup products, Encanvas is supplied with ready-made design elements for mapping, forms capture, social networking, reporting, file transfer, dashboards etc. - so there's no need to rely on third party components. This is important for developers because they can see developoment projects all the way through to delivery of a robust and scalable system in the knowledge they have full control over design components and can modify every aspect of the user interface design and application functionality.

By removing the time and complexity of coding in development, Encanvas reduces project risk by enabling business analysts to develop their applications in real-time with stakeholders in workshop environments. With everyone on the same page, it's possible to architect right-first-time deployable solutions.

Time to value on Encanvas is greatly reduced by it use of existing data resources (with its ability to mashup data from existing IT systems) and its ready-made building blocks for complex technology components like geo-spatial mapping.  It means that IT leaders can embed IT-centric business analysts into process improvement teams and provide these individuals with a single design, deployment and operational environment with the dexterity to cope with all of their enterprise information management challenges.