Excerpts

Preface Groupware: Technology and Applications was released only 15 months ago. That book covered the groupware industry, before Lotus was bought by IBM, before Collabra was bought by Netscape and before the word intranet was part of the common vernacular. In fact, the book was almost obsolete as soon as it was released. In part, that is characteristic of paper publishing, however, it is also due to the increasingly frantic pace of technologic change in our world. In order to release information in a more timely manner, I often publish the results of my work as a Hot Tip of the Month on my firm's web page at www.collaborate.com. Even so, traditional book publishing gives us the opportunity to collect the thoughts of industry leaders and quantify them in a form that is not dependent on being connected to a computer. Therefore, when Prentice Hall suggested an update to Groupware: Technology and Applications , the opportunity to report on the changes in collaborative products and technologies was not to be missed. There are two other reasons why a new edition is valuable at this time. First, the increased velocity of change presents new challenges to organizations, and there are no established procedures for dealing with these changes. Change comes so fast and so often that when technology is introduced and updated, people hardly have a chance to get used to one new way of working before they are confronted with another new way to work. One of the side effects of working in this dynamic environment is that people have increased their resistance to these changes, effectively undermining the project. Almost every chapter in this book addresses the issue of change management in one form or another. Our goal was to provide business readers with the benefit of other's experiences, in a risk-free manner. The second reason for a new book is the new reality of doing business on the Internet and intranets. When the first book was written, the Internet was just emerging as being a curiosity for hackers and geeks. Some companies had posted web pages as marketing tools, but most of those companies were hi-tech organizations. The Internet had still not hit the mainstream. Today, having Web presence is essential to doing business and almost all major corporations have well developed web sites. Additionally, intranets have become the infrastructure of choice for intra-enterprise collaboration. Groupware, which was initially LAN-based, has rapidly moved its functionality onto these IP networks. The result is that technologies that were counter-intuitive, expensive, and difficult to learn, administer, and maintain, have now become more visual, easier to use and very inexpensive. Consequently, groupware on the Internet and intranets has become one of the hottest trends in computing today. The first section of this book provides an introduction to groupware and some of the major issues businesses face when adopting collaborative technologies, either on a LAN or Web-based infrastructure. Additionally, a full chapter is devoted to the results of research performed by Collaborative Strategies. In this study, we spoke with CIOs and other MIS executives about how they are currently using the Internet and intranets to support electronic collaboration, and how they want to in the future. The second section focuses on specific collaborative technologies, such as e-mail, workflow, group calendaring and scheduling, electronic meeting systems, and video conferencing. These chapters provide significant detail about how the products were developed, what business issues they address, and where they are going in the future. The third section contains chapters contributed by major groupware vendors who discuss their design philosophy, current product offerings, and their plans for the future. Vendors discuss both their web-based functionality as well as their tried and true LAN-based functionality. The fourth section focuses on user case studies and user stories. Many of these case studies are about Notes, because Notes is the most mature collaborative product in the market. However, the purpose of this section is to show how many different collaborative technologies are used. Also, many of the ideas about the organizational aspects of groupware which I introduce in the opening chapter are explored more fully in these case studies. Finally, the fifth section provides a comprehensive reference source for information on groupware, collaboration, organizational development, management consulting, intellectual property, re-engineering, BPR, workflow and many other things. The primary goal of this book is to provide timely information on all aspects of electronic collaboration. The trend toward distributed workforces, project teams, and collaborative strategies will increase well into the next century. We find collaboration is different in each culture, each corporate culture, and with each technology. This makes for a very interesting mix, an interesting field of study, and a formidable challenge to the vendors in this area. Questions, comments and feedback on this volume are welcome, via e-mail, at davidc@collaborate.com Excerpted from Groupware: Collaborative Strategies for Corporate LANs and Intranets by David Coleman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.