A New Blog Series: Next-Generation Web Applications

With Google Wave, the venerable web company is charting the course of new web-based application design, this time in the area of collaboration. If you ever wondered what the intersection of next-generation email, blogging, instant messaging, and wiki-like collaboration might look like all inside a browser, this new open source project is for you. You can watch the entire Google Wave announcement (at the I/O Conference) here.

I see Google Wave as another strident reason why harnessing the power of information, inside an enterprise, will begin to look more and more like the consumer-oriented web. The next-generation knowledge worker won’t struggle with the trade-offs that those of us who grew into computers and the Internet during the course of our careers have had to deal with. And, this transition will occur just in time – as the aging workforce in the world’s most developed economies retires at its fastest pace ever, only to be replaced by younger workers with consumer-like expectations for the way IT systems and applications should behave. You might recall that I’ve referred to this phenomenon in a past post as “The Consumerization of Information”.

In my next four posts, I’ll describe the major web-based application design points that help define the simplicity and usefulness of this next generation of web-based applications. So, to prepare any application project for a much-less bridled future, everyone should deeply understand:

I. Ubiquitous Access to both systems and data

II. Elegant Presentation that leverages the power of the latest web technologies

III. End-user Customization that enables personalized improvements, mash-ups and combinations that appeal to each individual

IV. Integrated Collaboration that helps connect people with information and ideas simply and intuitively.

I’ll use my next four posts to expand on each, in order. And, I’ll look forward to your comments and suggestions to make these four points more powerful and complete. I’ll be looking for ideas on Twitter (follow me at @BrianG_Jasper or @Jaspersoft), as well.