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.

Social Operating Systems: The rise of social oriented architecture

As the term suggests, a social operating system is a computing platform that supports the formation, management and use of social relationship ties. In my opinion, social operating systems will have a fundamental impact on both society and business - but my interest is how they change the way people work and are empowered in their roles.

My next business book is due out in October 2010 and studies the growing influence of social operating systems in computing and considers their impact on the business world. I'm hoping to add a few early examples of how early adopter organizations are going about developing their social operating systems, the challenges they're encountering and the benefits they're seeing.

(So, to the big question!!!) Do you have a great example of an organization that has implemented (or is in the process of implementing) a social operating system. If you do, then I'd love to hear from you.

The more I get involved in IT modernization, the more I see a close relationship between the new 'social oriented architectures' on the technology horizon and the 'services oriented computing architectures' now in the throws of adoption by many corporations. In fact, social oriented computing and services oriented computing are two ends of the same subject.

Here's what I'm getting at:

There's a great deal written about Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). This term describes an approach to business information management and computing that opens up the 'information fibers' of  tightly matted corporate computing systems so that business people - and cross cutting processes - can serve themselves with applications that access the rich silos of data held within the enterprise (and also from public sites on the Web).

Sounds great doesn't it? Hmmm - but then I'm thinking, for me, when it comes to business value the point of emphasis in this IT architectural vision is on serving data rather than consuming it to bring real value to business people and the organizations they serve.

It is quite easy when working with IT to start with the answer rather than the question. People interested in IT are normallly pro-technology and want to find good reasons to do more with it. Sometimes this means doing 'clever stuff' in advance of any real demand for IT from consumers. But IT projects without strong sponsorship normally topple over at some point. Now, as I understand it, the idea of services-oriented computing is to serve up data from back office systems (and other such sources) in such a way that it can be made useful to lots of people (and processes) for many different reasons. If not properly thought through it's a bit like creating your own library of books without working out who wants to read them and why.

Social operating systems - on the other hand - start with 'what matters most' to the consumers of information, and giving these people the capability to form and support their social relationship ties, develop interest groups, share insights and applications - and one day I'm sure these workspaces will be sufficiently secure and trusted that organizations will run their business processes through them too.

If you're interested in social operating systems or social oriented architecture and have a story to tell, do please get in touch. I'd welcome your perspectives, thoughts, experiences and ideas! I'll even take predictions;-)