Introduction
Collaboration tools have failed to address the fundamental requirements of the organisation. Part of the problem is that the term itself has been misused, and this Report describes what companies need to do to achieve efficient Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration.
Within the collaboration stack, Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration is sandwiched between individual collaboration and inter-enterprise collaboration, and is, we feel, the area of greatest potential value. It refers explicitly to the use of collaboration-facilitating tools and processes within the organisation. The remit for such solutions has clearly changed - organisations no longer want or need a series of disparate and standalone products for, messaging, file and document exchange, virtual workspaces, conferencing, and presence detection and awareness. Solutions have to be delivered that directly address the problems facing the organisation. This requires flexibility, customisation, and adaptability, both from a technical point of view, and from that of the business culture.
Butler Group's view is that collaboration solutions therefore need to be focused on delivering a rapid Return On Investment (ROI), yet be deployed with an awareness of the future strategy, and be open to new and unexpected benefits that come from increased productivity and efficiency of information handling. In other words, a framework is needed for Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration.
The most important issue to address with Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration is why an organisation should bother investing in it. Our view is that, if approached properly, with the backing of a supporting culture and appropriately deployed technology, collaboration can help the organisation unlock the vast reserves of knowledge capital held by the collective experience, knowledge, and wisdom of its employees.
In addition, Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration can assist with:
Business Issues
Collaboration is an activity - it is not a piece of technology. Where the technology fits is in supporting or facilitating different styles of collaboration, each of which is focused at helping to solve a particular business problem. Traditional collaborative tools, such as the telephone or fax machine, have enabled remote users to interact at great distances, but do not lend themselves well to the scalability that modern business typically demands. In addition, the essentially unstructured nature of communication via these tools limits the ability for decisions to be documented, without which workflow processes supporting further action cannot be relied upon.
The most important business issues to comprehend when it comes to Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration can be clarified through an understanding of what we have termed the 'collaboration paradox'. This recognises that the concept of collaboration belies the reality of actually making it work. The expectations of a collaboration solution promote an environment where individuals actively share ideas and information freely in a fluid and dynamic fashion.
However, the reality is that we are all driven by the basic premise of 'what's in it for me?' and people are generally not willing to share information.
Butler Group has identified two main approaches to the deployment of Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration, termed the 'project-based' approach, and the 'embedded' approach.
Just as much of the value of an organisation's data is held in unstructured data, so unstructured collaboration is often of the greatest value. Structured collaboration, such as workflow, requires the hard coding of knowledge as rules. This is great in terms of improving automation and routing of information, but rules constrain and do not allow for innovation. On the other hand, ad hoc, unstructured collaboration can dramatically improve personal productivity, reducing the time spent searching for information or chasing answers. However, it needs to be encouraged at the right place and the right time and with the right tools to capture the results of such exchanges.
The culture of the organisation therefore needs to be supportive of collaboration, in terms of identifying where, why, and how collaboration can yield business benefits.
Technology Issues
There is a trend towards asynchronous, and more lately synchronous technologies to be embedded within applications in order to increase their effectiveness. The collaboration market has also experienced increased demand to support virtual meetings, as organisations cut back on non-essential business travel. The same holds true for e-Learning, with its ability to obviate travel to a physical classroom.
The most important trend, from a technology point of view, is that of a continual maturing of the stack. IBM and Microsoft's domineering force on the messaging and infrastructure layer is essentially rendering this layer a commodity - albeit a resource-intensive one. Consequently, there is no value in other vendors developing their own e-mail clients, as the barriers to entry can no longer be scaled.
There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this. When it comes to the convergence of asynchronous and synchronous communications, e-mail and IM, these two behemoths hold all of the cards. Our opinion is that the likes of AOL and Yahoo! will not get a foothold in the corporate messaging market. We anticipate fully unified messaging solutions within the next 18 months, which will completely revolutionise the way we handle information on a personal basis. Interfaces will seamlessly integrate different communication mechanisms, allowing users to communicate with one another depending on the context, not the availability of a string of disparate tools.
Secondly, the market needs to move to a higher battleground in order to find opportunities for clear differentiation. It is clear to us that this new battleground is centred on the role of the enterprise portal. The portal holds the key to bringing all of the elements of collaboration together. It provides a technical platform to support the creation of collaboration solutions that can be deployed modularly and controlled centrally. In particular, the combination of an application server and relational database can act as a powerful collaboration platform. Furthermore, extending the native collaborative capabilities of many off-the-shelf portal solutions leverages the investment that will have been made.
Market Issues
We feel that the previously lacklustre market response to collaboration has little to do with the technology itself, which can offer more capabilities to adopters and deliver various cost-related benefits. Most organisations are simply not in a position to risk investment in new technology where the benefits and returns are not clear. This has contributed to a more realistic and moderate uptake for the area; this means smaller initial solutions with a focus of generating rapid returns. However, as we move forward, we are seeing more tightly packaged solutions targeted precisely at delivering benefits and ROI.
Our view on vendor ratings, as indicated by our Product Performance Table, is that no single vendor is currently deserved of an Outperform position. None of the solutions we have reviewed combines all of the required capabilities and functionality to support Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration. However, we believe that the market is about to experience a significant shift, which in turn will allow market adoption to occur in a very short space of time - from 2004-2006. The principal reason for this is that Microsoft and IBM will release fully integrated unified messaging solutions, allowing, for example, e-mail and IM to be truly integrated into a single environment. Presence awareness will be a boon to the market, and we will see the availability of applications that have built-in presence capabilities. This will revolutionise ad hoc collaboration. Thus, at this point, IBM and Microsoft will clearly outperform the rest of the market, due to their technical dominance in e-mail and messaging and the barriers to entry they create.
Der komplette Bericht kann bei der Butler Group bestellt werden.