Recent advancements in technology, including the rise of cloud computing, indicate that it’s now time to move past the unbridled use of email for everything. That's the message delivered by the recent GigaOM Pro whitepaper, "Practical business content collaboration: Personal tools show the way."
A new era of content collaboration is dawning. And, while email is still perfect for simple and quick communications, companies are now increasingly sending and sharing content rich files including graphic-heavy documents, complex spreadsheets, photos, video and more. As file sizes continue to grow exponentially, issues for email users arise because nearly all email clients are equipped with default size limits for attachments, the whitepaper noted.
"The problem with email is that over the past five years, it has become a choke point," according to the report. An answer for companies comes in the form of collaboration tools that store information in the cloud and allow professionals to share very large files inside and outside the firewall. Furthermore, these new-age platforms are now "email easy," while providing more robust features than old methods.
In order for their adoption to take off, information sharing tools must meet myriad of user collaboration objectives (see diagram). Specifically, these tools should require little to no training, come equipped with an intuitive user interface, support productivity and help cut costs. Finally, of course, they must overcome the painful size limitations—and email bouncebacks—that professionals have had to typically work around.
So far, as GigaOM Pro's research showed, these tools have experienced modest adoption rates. But that only means there remains plenty of growth opportunity, as companies begin to move past their reliance on email and search for a better platform to serve their information sharing needs.
Click here to download the entire GigaOm report, “"Practical business content collaboration: Personal tools show the way."
