Web collaboration trends & amp; forecasts

Everybody’s thinking about the future of his business, trying always to innovate and to optimize it. So, we thought we’d do a little thinking ourselves, regarding the web collaboration industry we’re serving. Here’s what came out of it:

1. Completely move into the cloud – an advice to consider for group collaboration

When we addressed the issue of “to cloud or not to cloud”, we didn’t need much time to decide. We’re obviously in favor of the cloud: no set-up required, accessible from any location, directly from your browser and more. What’s not to love about it? With all the ongoing globalization, the need for an accessible collaboration solution – for your entire team, wherever they may be – will push the development of the cloud even further. So we believe that pretty soon all collaboration solutions will be available entirely online.

2. Real-time group collaboration

Everything moves faster now. The Internet is getting faster, our computers are faster, we drive faster cars. So it only makes sense for collaboration projects to move further into real-time co-editing or co-reviewing. There are some text editors that have already developed such features. And we expect to see more of them soon.

3. Data security – a better addressed issue when it comes to web collaboration

We keep seeing poor protection for users’ passwords and contact details. And even worse protection for the content these users share privately (we’re not going to link to anything, in order to avoid creating bad publicity. However, I’m sure you can remember at least two recent incidents regarding these issues). Secure collaboration is something we take very seriously, and as we’ve seen, many users are starting to do the same. You wouldn’t want that confidential document you share with your client get to the competition, would you?

We’re betting a lot will be done this year to cover these problems with online collaboration.

4. Focus on organizing capabilities

We frequently find ourselves wishing we could do a thousand things at a time. The effective management of the time we have (or, in some cases, don’t have) is becoming increasingly important. So the future in online collaboration should include more management solutions integrated with the basic products. For example, a web collaboration solution should offer the possibility to schedule reviews and assign them to specific team members.