The new division line is collaboration tools

Veterans of the Windows era (and veterans of the DOS era) know all too well that the dividing line between tribes was the file format. Today, it is not the file format that locks in customers, but the ability to collaborate.

In the PC age, application programs ran on individual PCs, stored files on PCs, and used proprietary file formats. Microsoft Word used its own format, WordPerfect used its own format, Wordstar used its own format... you get the idea. Spreadsheets used their own formats too.

One could have several word processors installed on a single PC. Even though these programs ran on the same PC and stored their files on that PC, it was difficult (if not impossible) to move files from one application to another, because of the proprietary formats.

The idea was that once a customer (either an individual or a corporation) had created a lot of documents in the proprietary format, they would resist change to another vendor and stay with the original. It was a way to lock in customers to a vendor's product.

Some vendors allowed for their product to read the files of other products -- Word could read WordPerfect files, for example. Generally, such "interoperability" was limited to reading the files. Reading was easier than writing an "alien" format. (It is easier to pick out the important bits than create a file with all of the right internal tables and structures that will be acceptable to the other program.)

Today we have standard file formats, so a vendor cannot rely on proprietary formats to lock in customers.

But customers can still get locked in to a vendor's product.

Our tools are changing from stand-alone programs that store data in local files to on-line systems that allow for collaboration and store information "in the cloud". More than just sharing documents, today's collaboration tools let multiple people work on the same document at the same time. Microsoft's Office 365 suite allows this, as does Google's Docs and Sheets offerings. Other vendors offer this too.

But each collaboration environment is its own isolated garden. People using Google Docs can work with other people using Google Docs. People using Microsoft Office 365 can collaborate with other people using Microsoft 365. But one cannot mix products; one cannot cross tribes. A person using Google Docs cannot work (online, concurrently) with a person using Microsoft Office 365.

I expect that individuals and organizations will settle on a a single standard for their collaboration. Large corporations with an existing base of Microsoft documents will standardize on Microsoft's tools (Office 365). Small organizations with little or no existing documents (say, start-ups) will standardize on Google Docs because of the lower cost. Individuals will pick the tool that comes with their PC, when they buy a PC. (Several laptops now offer a free year of Office 365.)

Developers and contractors who work with multiple clients may find that they use both, picking the tool that matches their clients' needs for each project.

The "age of proprietary formats" lasted decades, roughly from 1980 to 2010. The "age of proprietary collaboration" may last just as long. Yet in the future I expect that the proprietary collaboration tools will develop interoperability and will not be used to lock in customers. Of course, vendors will find new ways to lock in customers.

Files no more

One difference between traditional IT and the new cloud IT is the storage of data. Traditional IT systems (desktop PCs) stored data in files; cloud IT systems store data in ... well, that's not so clear. And the opaqueness of cloud systems may be a good thing.

In the Old World of desktop IT, we stored data in files and used that data in application programs. Often, the data stored in files was stored in a format that was specific to the application: documents would be stored in Microsoft Word format, spreadsheets stored in Microsoft Excel format, etc. The operational model was to run a program, load a file, make changes, and then save the file. The center of the old world was files, with application programs orbiting.

In the New World of cloud computing, we store data in... something... and use that data in applications that run on servers. Thus, with Google Drive (the new name for Google Docs) we store our data on Google's servers and access our data through our browser. Google's servers recall the data and present a view of that data to us through our browser. We can make changes and save the data -- although changes in Google Drive are saved automatically.

Are we storing data in files? Well, perhaps. The data is not stored on our PC, but on Google's servers. That is the magic of "software as a service" -- we can access our data from anywhere.

Getting back to the data. Google must store our data somewhere. Is it stored in a file? Or is it stored as a byte-stream in a datastore like CouchDB or memcached? Our viewpoint on our local PC does not allow us to peer inside of the Google machine, so we have no way to tell how our data is stored.

Yes, I know that Google Drive lets us download our data to a file on our PC. We can pick the location, the name, and even the format for the file. But that is not the core existence of the data, it is an "export" operation that extracts data from Google's world and hands it to us. (We can later import that same data back into Google's world, should we want.)

With software as a service (SaaS), our data is stored, but not as files on our local filesystem. Instead, it is stored in the cloud system and the details are hidden from us.

I think that this is an advance. In traditional IT, storing data in files was necessary, a way to store information that would be usable by an application program. (At least, it was the method used by the original Unix and DEC operating systems.) The notion of a file was an agreement between the processors of data and the keepers of data.

Files are not the only method of storing data. Many systems store data in databases, organizing data by rows and columns. While the databases themselves may store their data in files, the database client applications see only the database API and manipulate records and columns.

I've been picking on Google Drive, but the same logic applies to any software-as-a-service, including Microsoft's Office 365. When we move a document from our PC into Microsoft's cloud, it is the same as moving it into Google's cloud. Are the bytes stored as a separate file, or are they stored in a different container -- perhaps SQL Server? We don't know, and we don't care.

We don't really care about files, or about filesystems. We care about our data.