Welcome to the #Cloud, @Apple. How we might work together…

Wow, kudos to Apple on their iCloud announcement today. I for one am extremely keen on trying out their new OS’s and iCloud service. Apple has often been highly successful at building a coherent vision from many disparate threads, and executing flawlessly on that vision. I think this is one of those moments.

Apple is taking the abstract concept of the cloud to millions of consumers, and making it real by demonstrating how they can sync their content across devices, and no longer lose precious photos, favorite music and phone data in the inevitable “toilet tumble”. Microsoft’s “take it to the cloud” campaign attempted to do this, but Apple makes it a reality by solving everyday problems beautifully.


At my employer, KnowledgeTree, we're now looking forward to working with the many more companies that have been educated on the enormous value that the cloud brings.

KnowledgeTree helps companies derive value from their business content. We’d love to work with Apple in doing so. We love their devices, we love their software. And so do our customers.

We work with mid-market and global 2,000 companies who want to share, control and drive actionable insight from the content they create. They want to do so across their organizations, or within smaller departmental or team groupings. And they want to use their browser, mobile device, Office applications, and / or desktop.

Their IT and risk teams are concerned about how to manage and control this content. They want to ensure that access, retention and destruction policies are adhered to across the enterprise. They’re very nervous about shadow content and data. We know Apple gets this as we’ve seen the evolution their mobile operating systems have gone through in support of IT’s objectives here.

KnowledgeTree would love its customers to be able to use the new iCloud services alongside their enterprise managed business content. And just as easily.

So, Apple, below are some thoughts on how you and KnowledgeTree might work together.

1. Move beyond the individual
   
   Content does not exist in a vacuum. At the office, we work in teams. Whether these are project-based, or entire departments. We need iCloud content to be shareable, and iCloud to be group aware. This ties into point (2) below.
2. Support rights and policy management
   
   IT hates losing control, even in the cloud. You’ve given them tools to control user’s mobile devices, but you need to go further by giving IT tools to control their user’s cloud content. Allow IT to authorize business and personal content segmentation, and to drive policy around public and group distribution, storage and retention of business content. We’d hate for our personal photos to end up in the enterprise-wide document vault, likewise that strategy document really does have its place.
3. Expose customer content via the API
   
   From today’s announcement, we know there is going to be an iCloud API. We get that you don’t want iCloud to be a walled garden. Allow this content to be exposed, searched and secured, all via the API. Imagine the creative apps that will spring up around this content (including KnowledgeTree’s ability to support some of your user’s business objectives).

I think KnowledgeTree’s collaboration and other business features, leveraged alongside the iCloud offering on your gorgeous devices would make for a beautiful relationship.

Oh, and Apple, please approve KnowledgeTree's iPad and iPhone apps. It’s been a long wait, and as you’ve seen from the above, we’d love to play with you. And so would our customers.