Congrats to Tom Malone for the launch of The Future of Work, a terriffic look at how decentralization is affecting the nature of the organization, the structure of business and our work lives.

When we first launched Lotus Notes in the early 90's, it was an era of Reengineering The Corporation, in which companies were reducing the cost of coordination internally through business process reengineering.  Companies embraced Lotus Notes, an advanced communications technology for the time, reflecting the changing nature of the organization from centralized hierarchical structures toward more decentralized work flows.

When I left Iris/Lotus/IBM in 1997, I did so primarily because in '95-'96 I saw, in our customers, the beginnings of something quite significant: they were extending their core business processes and practices outward to partners, suppliers, and in some cases even customers.  When we launched Groove's V1 product in 2001 and began selling it to enterprises, our primary focus was on how it was an advance in decentralized communications that would reduce the cost of coordination externally in a manner not possible with technologies primarily designed for enterprise use.  The fact that enterprises and government have embraced Groove truly reflects the changing nature of business from centralized structures toward networked, decentralized organizational relationships.

Over the past 12-18 months, we've seen some other very significant technology-catalyzed changes occurring in business, in society, and in our everyday lives.  Last year was most certainly the "year of the laptop".  Broadband is now ever-more pervasive, and 2003 was also undeniably the "year of WiFi".  Our PC usage patterns have been transformed: we carry them to meetings, use them at hotels and on client sites and at home.  Whereas most of us used to do most of our work in our "office" or "cube", our most important work is now done in our "virtual office" - the one that is implemented in software on PC's and a variety of devices tucked away in our backpack, briefcase, purse and pocket.

This isn't a small trend: its impact on business, society and our lives is huge.  I would strongly recommend that you spend some quality time with this presentation based on a landmark study done in 2003 on the pervasiveness of off-site work.

I sit here writing this as we're about about to lift the veil from what I believe you'll find truly represents the next generation of communications software, Groove v3.0.  Our primary design goal for this product, based very specifically on how it has been being used by our customers over the past three years, was to implement, for its users, the essence of their "virtual office".  Where we do our work together, and where we want to do our work together because of how it feels and just works.  We now live in an era of extreme mobility, where the attributes of secure communications, coordination, and synchronization are core to most everything we do in terms of information work.  An era where our tools and mobile devices must be specifically designed with advanced, elegant awareness & notification to help us to efficiently swarm around our joint activities, and to aggregate and prioritize notifications in ways that help us to conserve our attention and cope with information overload.

Think of how you yourself work, on a day-to-day basis.  This era is one of virtual work performed by a highly decentralized workforce.  Technology's role in this era is to bring us effective horizontal fusion - reducing the cost of coordination between us in a manner not possible with centralized technologies.  It should reflect the changing nature of work, from the physical workplace, toward the decentralized workspace.  And it most certainly will. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
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