Apple iCloud: An IT nightmare

If Apple’s iCloud has anything to offer IT, it’s that iOS 5 works just fine without it.

Just in case nobody has mentioned it to you, iCloud is Apple’s latest version of “it just works” — a service aimed at seamlessly synchronizing data among your computing devices.

Except there’s no “just” about it. While Apple’s iTunes software has won Advice Line’s prestigious Software Most Likely to Crash My Computer Award for five years running, its worst offense is forcing me to reboot when it gets in a bad mood — which proves, among other things, that bad moods are contagious. 

iCloud is nowhere near that benign. Install it on your Windows/Outlook system, and it takes your carefully organized contacts, moves them into a single iCloud contacts folder, and leaves your old Outlook Contacts folder empty — and you wondering how to reverse what it has done. (Wonder no more — the answer is, uninstall iCloud and then restore your .pst file from backup.)

Consistency not being an Appleverse virtue, it copies all of your calendars into a parallel set of iCloud calendars while leaving the original alone. Just what you needed: two of everything.

It does all this without asking your permission once you check the sync contacts and calendars checkboxes in the iCloud control panel and press Apply — not surprising, given that the whole point is that “it just works.” Whether it does what you want it to do is a whole different matter. Therein lies a valuable lesson for IT organizations looking to spur user-driven innovation.

How Apple’s approach falls short

If I lived entirely in the Appleverse, perhaps I would feel differently about iCloud. But I don’t. I own and use an iPad, but my laptop runs Windows and my smartphone runs Android. I still need to keep everything in sync.

Let me clarify that: I need everything to keep itself in sync. This being the 21st century, connecting devices with cables and having to launch programs to synchronize data is too anachronistic to bear.

For me, “everything” means more than just email, calendars, and contacts. I have these things called “files.” It sure would be nice to keep the ones I need most synchronized as well. But when you use iOS you leave that behind, because Apple doesn’t believe in file management. If you are working on a project and want all of your project files available on your iPad, think again. — which got me thinking about Google.

Google: Multiple configurations to suit your needs

Unlike Apple, Google offers no configuration that “just works.” Instead, there are plenty of configurations that work the way you need them to if you’re willing to put in a bit of effort.

Google calendar and Gmail work quite nicely as synchronization hubs for calendar and contact information, regardless of whether you make Gmail your primary email system. You can find quite a few alternatives for syncing your various devices to these services. Google’s calendar sync does a great job keeping Outlook and Google calendars in sync, and I use Outlook4GMail to sync contacts — one of several solutions suited to the task.

To be fair, Apple has put excellent integration hooks into iOS, limited as these hooks may be. But it’s Google that tells you how to use these hooks. It makes setting up iOS to keep both calendar and contacts synchronized pretty simple, without messing up your data. It’s almost as simple as Android, which takes care of itself.

Whatever criticisms apply to Google, you can’t say that its system architects tell you what platforms to use. Quite the opposite: In Googleland, all technologies are welcome and more or less supported. Luckily, it appears that Chrome OS is going nowhere. It’s entirely possible Google would take a different approach, one more similar to Apple’s, if Chrome OS catches fire.

Microsoft: Rich tools for high-end customers

Trendspotting notwithstanding, most of us who use computers for work purposes use Microsoft Windows and Office to do it, and so we should also bring Microsoft into this conversation.

Yes, Microsoft appears to have lost interest in helping out consumers and very-small-business customers, judging by the products and services it makes available compared to what Apple and Google have to offer. But in an enterprise setting, when it comes to calendar, contacts, and email, Microsoft offers a rich set of tools for integrating iOS and Android. For access to files, a number of third parties offer iOS and Android apps for SharePoint access. (Full disclosure: Not having used any of them, I can’t testify as to their utility.)

If you’re running an enterprise and want to maximize user capabilities, you’ll find the best collection of core technologies in Microcountry. With Microsoft, “it just works” is not what you get. And it shouldn’t be. In an enterprise setting you want tools that let you configure things to work the way you need them to, not the way the vendor has decided you should need them to.

Punchline No. 1: “It just works” isn’t good enough for business

Let’s assume the consumerization of IT is the big trend many think it is. But using consumer tech in a business environment is a very different matter from being satisfied with consumer tech in a business environment.

One of IT’s legitimate gripes is that we’re often asked to turn consumer-grade technology into business-grade technology with a wave of our magic wands. On top of the intrinsic technical challenges, there’s this: IT doesn’t have anything that even resembles a methodology for performing the business analysis we need to figure out what it means to put consumer tech to productive day-to-day use.

Punchline No. 2: What employees want isn’t always what’s good for them

Consumers want iCloud to be simple and foolproof. Many employees want the same thing. Does that mean you should give it to them?

That depends on the employee. You probably should give production employees, who are paid to perform well-defined tasks over and over again, access to simple, foolproof applications. With production work, there is one right way to do a task — and lots of wrong alternatives. Your software should make sure employees do things the right way. Flexibility isn’t considered a positive attribute in most production settings.

Executives, managers, and knowledge workers are another matter. Many might want simple and foolproof, too. But that’s just another way of saying, “Don’t ask me to figure out better ways of working.”

You certainly have employees with that attitude. That doesn’t mean the tools you provide to your employees should frustrate those who take a more forward-looking approach to their work. Quite the opposite: The tools you provide should encourage user-driven innovation. Often, “it just works” does the exact opposite.

This is the 21st century. And while iCloud might rely on 21st-century technologies, it caters to a 20th-century attitude.

That isn’t an attitude you can afford to encourage.

This story, “Apple iCloud: An IT nightmare,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.