The current trend in mobile device use at work leads to install ever increasing numbers of apps, for multiple uses, from Business Intelligence to Messaging. Some corporate tools are connected to centralized information sources and hence do not result in duplicated data silos. Other don’t.
When apps help users produce valuable data, it is a problem when this data cannot be seamlessly exploited by other, maybe future unknown processes. Disconnected data silos yield disconnected processes. Disconnected processes increase total cost of ownership far beyond the expected initial price tags.
The reason why apps create isolated data silos is because they are not designed to share the data they create. Most often the data is uploaded to the cloud for exploitation, or sometimes stored in a local database. More specifically, SaaS web apps just cannot by design freely access the local drive for obvious security reasons. So data must go to the cloud or a local database. Of course, syncing, collaboration applications must use data cloud stores to present the data to multiple parties.
So the situation is as follows: we need (collaboration) apps for productivity, but using the new trendy (and probably best) app will add one brick to future disconnected processes.
One solution to this problem is to reverse the perspective: instead of placing data inside trusted organizing silos, place trust and organization inside data, so that data can live in the open, outside of any silo, available for unlimited processes, unlimited future exploitation. This is what we are doing at KeeeX.