Data Liberation and the Enterprise
September 17, 2009
I like the Google logo for the Data Liberation Front.
I was browsing EnglishRussia.com the other evening. When I saw the DLF logo, I thought about some interesting posters from another era. Take a look yourself under Art. I thought about the DLF and the image when I read “How Google’s Data Liberation Front Can Boost Google Apps” in eWeek.
Clint Boulton’s article suggested that data portability – that is, moving data from Point A to Point B – is one of the key services of DLF. Now if Point A is Microsoft file format and Point B is a Google cloud application, I think the point of DLF is laser sharp and aimed at building Google’s enterprise service array.
For me, the most important comment in the article was:
Google has been gradually making it possible for Google App business users to move data in and out of Google Calendar and Google Docs, with plans to “liberate” Google Sites and enable users to do batch exports of files from Google Docs. Specifically, Fitzpatrick and his team are working to let business users export their entire Sites wiki as HTML with microformats. Users would be able to take and drop it into an Apache Web server. For Docs, Google is working to let users select multiple Docs files and export them in OpenOffice, HMTL or Microsoft formats. Google’s servers convert these files into ZIP files, and Apps users can e-mail these payloads to colleagues for collaboration. Google hopes these portability efforts will foster good will among customers. This is an important part of Google’s strategy as it seeks to take on Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and others in SAAS collaboration.
I am not sure about the “goodwill” part, however.
Stephen Arnold, September 17, 2009
http://www.dataliberation.org/
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