My mind is racing with the possibilities.  However, with all the buzz, I think there are some pitfalls with Wave that I have already seen people walking towards.

What, exactly, is Google Wave and why should my business care:  

• Get this concept: "Wave" and "Google Wave" are ultimately two different things.
  • Wave is a service, just like e-mail is a service.
  • "Google Wave" is just like saying "GMail."  Google doesn't own E-mail, but they have a service (Gmail) based on the service called e-mail. Google Wave is an open source platform that will be "federated" and open to public installations and development.
• Google Wave (GW) is the new e-mail and it will supplant e-mail.  But, in all reality, calling GW the "new e-mail" just doesn't do GW justice.  While it has allot of the characteristics of e-mail, it is better defined by saying it is a "mashup" of several technologies, such as chat, document processing, Instant Message, presentation software, e-mail and this list really goes on and on.
• This being said, it will take Wave several years to do so:  More than five, and maybe as much as 15 years. 
  • The reason I say this is because it always takes a long time for things like this to happen.  E-mail is 40 years old and in my industry, transportation, it has only really taken a foothold in the past four years.  I will grant to the detractor of my time frame for Wave dominance that today, when it takes "hold," things move much more quickly than ever.  But, that is why I said as little as 5; especially since it took e-mail 20 of the 40 years to truly become ubiquitous.  
• This is like the "hot new car" that GM is about to put on the market: When GM turned out the GMC Acadia almost three years ago, they couldn't keep the vehicles in stock.  Dealers where selling the cars to other dealers for over the MSRP sticker price and thusly, the price for the end buyer was crazy. The first year of the vehicle, you couldn't go on a lot and see an Acadia.  Or there might be ONE and it was some ugly color or mal-equipted that no one wanted the car.  But, you saw the vehicle, test drove it and were advised that a "well equipped" model would be in "on the truck" in two days. You and 30 other people had to vie for that car and the 10 salespeople had those 30 people on speed dial!  BUT NOW, three years later, you can go to most GM dealerships and find anywhere from four to 24 brand new Acadias' (and four used ones, too).
• Don't worry you'll eventually be able to get Wave service.  You can buy an "invite" on eBay, as my brother-in-law did, or you can wait until somebody you know with Google Wave has invites and does do so for you.  You could also wait for things to "pan out."  GMail was the same way.  10 million people wa nted in and they did a small roll out which was very painful for allot of people.  Now you just go to the GMail site and sign up!  Google Wave will be the same way.  Eventually your ISP will hand out wave accounts with your service plan, just like they hand out e-mail accounts.  
• Some Sources for Reading about Google Wave:
  • Gina Triponi, a well respected programmer and tech/Google enthusiast, has written a book which is a primer on Google Wave. A Complete Guide to Google Wave.   I believe it should be mandatory reading for you and anybody in your organization who is thinking or talking about Google Wave.
    • Gina has some "case studies" where people compete against one another or a group of invites by detailing how GW would improve their collaboration for business, community or personal use.  Some of the uses include the Philadelphia Airport (KPHL) FAA Control Tower controllers using wave for traffic flow and hand-offs, an hospice care giver collaborating seamlessly with a patient's family which is strung all across the country, the folks behind the CDC's H1N1 vaccine distribution planning (the neatest to me, personally).  
  • Mashable: On September 5th, Ben Parr of Mashable.com published a list of "Google Wave: 5 Ways it could change the web."  The list covers social media, business, custormer support, educaiton, content management.  I think the idea that Ben had was this was his "first take" on the service.  But, this article is a fantastic place to start jumping around the web from as it has allot of links.
  • Mashable: Google Wave Gets Explained by Christina Warren.  Video!
• BIG STATEMENT: "Federated Wave Servers" (FW) will change the world as we know the world.  And I do mean the world.  You will literally have to be in a cabin at the base of Mt. Saint Helens and be swearing off everything but your 15 cats for this not to impact your life (Such as H. Truman, click for more info).  Read the link I put up to CNet on what Federated is all about.  This is big.
• Extensible and Open: There will be a Google App Store for the Extensions, "robots" and plugins that developers will and are developing for this GW platform.  Just exactly like there are people who make really good livings just writing Visual Basic Script for Outlook, Exchange and other e-mail platforms, people will do the same for GW.  The difference will be that instead of writing code in VB Script, C# or using whatever you want to write code, Wave is going to be completely extensible in Java Script and HTML 5.  This is also the reason that Wave only works well in Fire Fox or Google Chrome which are fantastically HTML 5 compliant.  Internet Exploder (not a misspell) is not HTML 5 compliant, whatsoever.  In fact, the Wave developers were so frustrated by IE's lack of HTML 5 compliance they actually wrote a plug-in into IE that fundamentally makes IE run Chrome, kinda like VMware.  Click here for the article on the GoogleWaveDev Blog.  So, the bare bones of the "extensible and open" part of GW is that you can take GW or W in any direction you so desire.  Gaming, collaboration, business, community, and on and on and on.
• When your company has the ability to have it's own internal FW server, just like they have their own e-mail server, in house or in the cloud, you will quickly find this technology will spread quicker than "ants in a flood."  When everybody inside of an office, including their remote users (outside sales, developers, telecommuters, ect), are connected to Wave and are Waving the following information it will be like crack to a crack addict - you won't be able to stop the momentum: business strategy, tactics, information, risk assessment, real time location information, mapping assistance, remote support, and the list goes on and on and on, right into oblivion.
  • When two business that work in a B2B environment in two or more different offices and have FW servers in each office which, even still, are separate servers (just like two business would have two separate e-mail servers) you will find an unmatched and unprecedented collaboration experience.
    Case Study:
    • Transportation as the example (but a real good one):
      • Players: Plant, Transportation Provider (TP) (trucking co), Brokerage.
        • The Plant produces products that need to be shipped to customers
        • TP is a trucking company that provides trucks to the Plant directly to fulfill the needs of the Plant
        • Brokerage is a 3rd party logistics company that finds other TPs that aren't directly affiliated with the Plant to fill in the gaps left by a direct TP, such as the one above.
      • Situation: Plant has 10 loads to ship out Monday. 
        • It is Friday, basically the day before Monday, in a business environment such as this.  
        • The transportation director starts a Wave on their internal FW server (which also has access, like e-mail, to the outside world) to collaborate with the others in the office on who should get these 10 loads.  
        • The Plant Trans Dir decides that the loads should go to TP and that if TP can't cover all loads, then the Brokerage should be brought in for the remainder.  All of the discussions so far are on the internal Wave.  
        • The subordinates involved in this process then start a new Wave and bring the director of dispatch at the TP over into a Wave.  
          • The Wave at this point is directly between the TP and the Plant subordinate.  TP is presented with all available loads and the times of pickup and delivery with a single document inside of the wave.  
          • At which point the TP makes the decision on what is chose and what is left. In this case, the TP chooses 8 of the loads.  
          • All documentation is electronically signed, instead of e-mailed or faxed.
        • This Wave "thread" stays open between the two companies and all collaboration dealing with these loads are maintained within this Wave, even on Monday.  
        • Creating a Wave for every load, the TP dispatcher Waves the drivers involved via mobile Wave apps.
          • Including all dispatch information.
            • PU/Del times
            • PU numbers
            • Telephone numbers
            • Address for both PU/DEL.  
            • ComData information
            • Searchable: Of course all of this is searchable for future reference.
      • The Plant subordinate Waves in the original Wave with the Plant Director and they collaborate on the preferred brokerage to handle the remaining two loads.
      • The Plant Subordinate starts a new Wave with the Brokerage that has been chosen.  
        • Again, the loads are taken and electronically signed for within the Wave - just like that.
        • Plant Subordinate gets back into the internal Wave and notifies the Dir of the results
      • The Brokerage opens a new Wave with two, three or a dozen trucking companies and books the loads.  
        • Using Waves to communicate with the small trucking companies and their drivers via mobile Wave apps. 
          • Including all dispatch information.
          • PU/Del times
          • PU numbers
          • Telephone numbers
          • Address for both PU/DEL.  
          • ComData information
          • Searchable: Of course all of this is searchable for future reference.
        Here are two simple, yet effective examples of how the GW interface looks
• The Pitfall:
  • Financial Gain due to this "cutting edge" and massively entertaining and paradigm shifting technology:
    • If your business model would make money 50, 40, 30, 20, or 10 years ago, it will still make money.  However, if your business is already tinkering with disaster, then this is not going to make hardly a dent or a hill of beans.  Your problem, more than likely, isn't collaboration.  Your problem is lack of having "soap suds to sell."  
    • Your business will be able to make quicker business decisions and hopefully they will be better business decisions; because you have instant, real-time, information.  But, your not going to install a Wave server and the money just start rolling in because of that installation.
    • Wave, as a service, is nothing more revolutionary than the fax machine.  While the fax machine did make things much easier, those things would have gotten done without the fax machine.
      • A CEO of a local pickle company told me that back in the late 80's they were negotiating with a huge publicly traded company for the possible (and eventual) buyout of the pickle plant. They used the fax machine for 90% of the negotiations and even signed a preliminary contract that firmed up and made the deal valid.  
        The same deal would have been made 30 years before or 200 hundred years before the fax machine.  Why?  Because the plant was a valuable asset and it was on the market.  People that recognized the plant to be a valuable asset saw this and negotiated via new technology.  However, they could have got on a plane in Wisconsin and came to Faison, NC to do those negotiations or drove down for that matter.  
        And you know what?  Even in the day and age of "Go to Meeting" software, people still get on a plane to negotiate multi-billion dollar takeovers.  
    • If you "made it" before Wave, you'll make it after Wave.  But, if you have nothing to offer, Wave just lets you offer your "nothing" easier.