Collaboration Broadens Access To Appropriate Information

Technology convergence and consolidation, coupled with an increased emphasis on workplace communities, are the key forces keeping the worldwide web conference and team collaboration software market revenue on pace to reach $2 billion in 2008, according to Gartner. This represents an increase of 22 percent growth in worldwide software revenue compared with 2007.

“This is the fifth consecutive year that the market has exhibited greater than 20 percent growth year-on-year as more organisations have moved from an experimental phase to a richer experience and engagement phase of use,” said Bianca Granetto, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Collaboration, through technologies, processes and actions, can broaden access to appropriate information and content, drive better group interactions, and improve team decision-making. “In the coming years, collaboration as a function will become more strategic for many organisations,” Granetto added. “Organisations will increasingly observe, manage, monitor and measure, and archive the artifacts of collaboration. Collaboration strengthens business processes and increases the value of personal interaction.”

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However, how people work in one scenario, at one time or with one group, may be different given a different context. Collaboration best practices, requirements and technologies will constantly evolve as people’s needs, behaviours and motivations change.

In addition, cultural differences play a strong role in adoption of collaboration technologies. It is more common in North America and Europe to have meetings and other forms of interpersonal communications supported by collaboration tools. In Latin America and the Middle East and Africa, e-mail is used as the primary mode of communications in lieu of horizontal collaboration technologies. In Asia/Pacific and Japan, face-to-face meetings are preferred, and at times, business travel for meetings is seen as a prerequisite.

Although, it is difficult to measure the business value of interactions, a strong and growing demand exists within organisations for real-time and team-based collaboration technologies. Technologies such as instant messaging (IM) are increasingly viewed as birthright technologies, akin to e-mail. Gartner anticipates that IM will become as popular as e-mail by 2010. Videoconferencing will evolve to the desktop to support ad hoc conversations and become better integrated with web conferencing, IM and voice over IP (VoIP).