Internet-fueled network computing has wrought such profound effects on business communications during the last decade that it’s easy to overlook the continuing innovation in software designed to facilitate collaborative work. Interoffice mail pouches and “while you were out” message slips are distant memories, replaced by the cornerstones of computerized collaboration: email and voicemail. Yet, technology continues to creep, and in some cases gallop, into other facets of business communication. From informal forms such as instant messaging to more structured tasks such as presentations and meetings, technology is augmenting or outright replacing familiar office tasks from the watercooler chat to formal business meetings.

Types Of Collaboration Tools & The Usage Of Each

A convenient taxonomy for collaboration tools developed by Forrester Research’s Principal Collaboration Analyst Erica Driver itemizes them into four branches: messaging (principally email and calendar sharing), team collaboration or workspaces, real-time collaboration (voice and instant messaging), and social computing (largely Web-based tools such as blogs and wikis). Similarly, Mark Levitt, vice president of collaborative computing and the enterprise workspace at IDC, divides these tools into four major product categories. (See the Collaboration Categories & Products chart for more information.)

ICEs/groupware. The largest and most familiar are so-called ICEs (Integrated Collaborative Environments or groupware) that “provide a framework for electronic collaboration, typically within an organization, based on shared directory and messaging platforms” and include core integrated functions such as email, group calendaring and scheduling, shared folders, threaded discussion groups, and an API (application program interface) for customization.

The big two dominating the ICE market are Microsoft and IBM, and indeed, like Coke and Pepsi, battle in every segment of the collaboration market. Their mature and well-known ICE entrants are Microsoft’s Exchange server and Outlook client, countered by IBM’s Lotus Domino server and Notes client. According to recent IDC figures, combined these hold more than 90% of the $2-plus billion ICE market with each experiencing double-digit growth. Novell’s Groupwise is a distant third with a number of smaller players, including the Oracle Collaboration Suite, trailing with single-digit shares.

Instant messaging/presence. Instant messaging, or IM, is the next most common collaboration tool in IDC’s pantheon, with its ubiquity among home users fueling adoption in enterprises. According to Andy Nilsson, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, businesses use a mixture of consumer and in-house IM networks. A survey by comScore Networks (www.comscore.com) found that MSN Messenger (www.msn.com), Yahoo! Messenger (www.yahoo.com), and AOL/AIM (www.aol.com) control virtually all of the consumer IM market. Enterprises concerned with network security and uncontrolled file transfer can either deploy IM “hygiene” products, such as Akonix (www.Processor.com/AkonixIM), FaceTime (www.Processor.com/FaceTimeComm), or Symantec’s IMlogic (www.Processor.com/SymantecCorp), or run internal IM systems. IBM and Microsoft again compete head to head, with the former’s Lotus Sametime and the latter’s oft-renamed Office Communications Server battling a number of smaller vendors, such as Jabber, Bantu, and Parlano.

Team collaboration space. An increasingly popular tool, which expands upon the document-sharing capabilities of groupware, is team collaboration spaces. Like their ICE counterparts, so-called “team spaces” offer document sharing, calendars, and discussion groups; however, they usually add document version management, workflow, and content syndication, often using a Web interface. The big two lock horns again, Microsoft with its various incarnations of SharePoint and IBM with Lotus Quickr. As a less mature market, they face a host of competitors, notably EMC’s eRoom, but also from content management vendors, such as Vignette and Interwoven, and smaller companies, such as IntraLinks.

Live conferencing. The last major collaboration tool category, which is often deployed as a hosted service rather than an internally run application, is live conferencing—software that facilitates real-time meetings by providing document sharing, live whiteboards, and voice and video Webcasting. According to Wainhouse’s Nilsson, the best conferencing applications integrate all forms of real-time communication and provide the ability to escalate an established Web conference to voice and video if necessary. He notes that users need systems that allow them to “match the media to the message.”

Conferencing products can be segmented between hosted services and standalone servers. Microsoft targets both realms with Office Live Meeting (service) and Office Communications Server (server), while IBM counters with its server product, Sametime. The conferencing market is dominated by hosted providers, notably WebEx (scheduled to be acquired by Cisco in the fourth quarter of this year), although there are a raft of SaaS (software as a service) competitors, along with a few smaller application server vendors.

Collaboration Software Market Trends: What’s Hot

IDC projects worldwide revenue growth of the overall collaboration market of 17% this year and 26% by 2011, with the fastest growth in live conferencing and team collaboration spaces. Driver of Forrester notes that Web 2.0-based social computing technologies are experiencing an explosion of innovation and proliferation, with many vendors incorporating blog and wiki technology into their products. A related development, mentioned by both Driver and Levitt, is the ability of newer tools to create mashups—essentially hybrid Web applications that contain content from multiple sources in a single user interface.

While Microsoft and IBM dominate many segments of the collaboration market—promoting one-stop shopping and integration across their products—they are closely watching Google (www.google.com). The increasing breadth of its productivity software includes email, calendaring, IM, word processing, spreadsheet, and Web site building and will soon add presentation graphics and wikis—all embedded with collaboration features. Driver notes, “Google’s latest foray into making affordable messaging, collaboration, and office productivity tools targets business people worldwide and takes dead aim at Microsoft Office. . . . Google is not simply attacking Microsoft’s core email and office productivity applications business—Google is expanding the market for workplace productivity tools to include people who have traditionally been left without them.”

Effect Of New Tools On IT

According to IDC’s Levitt, ICE products will remain the most important collaboration tool supported by internal IT staff because email and groupware are seen as critical services. He notes that a majority of workers still do not use team collaboration, and thus its administrative overhead isn’t yet large and will be mitigated as usage increases because new product versions, such as SharePoint Server 2007, significantly improve scalability. While live conferencing applications will increasingly be available as standalone products, Levitt still sees them often procured as an outsourced service. Nilsson of Wainhouse cautions IT managers to carefully study the costs of insourcing, noting, “The economics are not always in favor of internal hosting.”

Enterprises face a multitude of options as they develop a collaboration strategy and an abundance of choices when selecting supporting tools. Although the plethora of vendors and products can be daunting, with overlapping functionality across product categories making comparisons confusing, key features are nevertheless converging toward a set of core application types—all in the direction of the collaboration promised land: unified communications.

by Kurt Marko