Making things public by default

One of the trends which has absolutely astonished me in the last 12 months is the way in which information technology is being made available for free. Obviously, this trend has been growing for several years, hotmail and yahoo have been offering email to anyone who wants it, and blogging systems - such as Blogger - have given people personal website publishing tools. However, in the last 12 months, there has been a definite and dramatic shift away from free consumer tools and into a much more serious, and professional, level of software. Just by way of example, consider the following systems:

1. Google mail
   • unlimited storage,
   • professional Spam and anti-virus filtering,
   • very powerful full text searching
2. Google Calendar
   • multiple calendars - private and public,
   • synchronises with your phone/pda,
   • integrates with many desktop calendaring systems on most operating systems
3. Google Docs
   • unlimited storage,
   • collaborative word processing, spreadsheeting, and - soon - powerpoint type slide creation,
   • full text searching
4. LinkedIn
   • expert location system,
   • community of practice discussion groups

The point about this list is not to sing Google's praises - although they probably deserve the praise, but rather to question the wisdom of building internal IT systems. The list covers many of the key business needs of lots of organisations - no matter how large they are - and it does it for a fraction of the price which most organisations pay for their technology infrastructure. So why bother building our own stuff? Well, one of the main reasons cited, particularly by larger companies, is the need to maintain confidentiality. Clearly, there are some situations in which that is important: medical records, personnel details and secret master plans to dominate the world, are just some examples. However, there are a couple of other points which might play against this position. First, your security isn't that good! I don't care who you work for, your data is still leaking. Google is bound to let things slip too, but will they be any worse than you? Second, what if your organisation could actually be more effective by sharing with the outside world? What if, there were potential collaborators who found new, and interesting, ways of working with you. Maybe, just maybe, going public might be more beneficial than we think. Anyway, this post was provoked by an article on Steve Richards site. And, it would be ironic if the businesses which were so busy protecting themselves were suddenly put out of business by those who were focused on opening themselves up to the world.