Businesses today have many new channels to collaborate like never before.
Users have plenty of choices ranging from email to tweets to VoIP calls or
even waves. UC or online collaboration is not just about cost cutting, it's more
about enhancing productivity. A real world example of this is how enterprises
are using public social networks to create a direct relationship with their
customers. The landscape of collaboration is now changing very fast unlike the
earlier days, when email was be primary source of communication.
Real time communication offers many advantages to enterprises. It not only
results in quick decision making but also saves a lot of time for employees
resulting in better productivity. Here we take a look at some of the upcoming
trends and apps, which are all set to redefine the way we communicate.
Google Wave
Though under preview tag currently, many feel it's going to take real time
communication at new levels. In Google Wave, other users can see what a user is
typing instantly, which allows users to respond faster Wave enables users to
work on the same document or project at the same time. Google Wave has already
got Telephone Conference call (from Ribbit) and Video chat extension
(from6rounds.com). One of the unique features of Google Wave is playback,
through which you can easily view how the entire conversation took place (who
said what and when). This is much easier than a email thread, wherein tracking
who said what becomes difficult for one who joins little later. Another useful
part is that, entire conversation or wave can be embedded on a web page, for
future reference. Just in case you don't know this already, Wave is an open
source project that enables you to create your own wave server and host it on
your own servers instead of Google's. This makes it a good choice for
enterprises, where employees from can have messaging, email, audio-video, etc,
all in a single workspace. So, are we soon going to witness, send me a wave,
instead of send me a mail? That's something Google would want for sure. Let's
see how far Wave goes. Let's look at some of the apps which will be working with
Google Wave in future.
Prototype of Gravity on google Wave. It allows users to perform business process modeling in real time. |
SAP Gravity
If you are still thinking that Wave might now work in an enterprise
scenario, than this prototype would clear all your doubts. SAP has created
Gravity prototype for Google Wave. It's basically a gadget for Google Wave which
allows users to perform business process modeling in real time with all
participants present in the wave. Anyone present in the wave can edit the model
or instantly speak their opinions about it. With this approach, one can easily
reduce the time spent in sending the model, getting feedback, making changes
and sending it again, etc.
One of the unique features of Google Wave is that the user can playback the entire conversation to see who said what. |
Novell Pulse
This is a real-time collaboration platform meant for enterprises from
Novell. According to the vendor, Pulse and Wave users will be able to work
seamlessly. Novell Pulse comes with e-mail, social messaging and document
authoring. It's likely to be available in the first half of 2010.
Cloud based collaboration
Collaboration like Cloud computing is one of the most happening areas
today. Many UC solutions are already available as a service. And now several
vendors are coming up with native cloud based collaboration tools. IBM recently
released LoutsLive, which is an online collaboration and social networking web
application. Acrobat.com is finally out of its beta, which offers a range of
cloud based collaboration services such as web conferencing, online office
applications, file sharing, storage, etc. Another evolving trend is cloud based
file sharing applications with the likes of Posterous (which allows users to
post anything just through a email, without any registration), or drop.io (which
allows users to share files through web, email or mobile and collaborate in
real time.
Twine is a example of Web 3.0 collaboration. It allows users to collect and share content on any subject. The semantic part of it understands the users interests and make customized recommendations & connections for users. |
Salesforce Chatter
Currently not many business applications have collaboration embedded in
them. This often means, a user has to switch between applications. Salesforce
soon will be releasing ' chatter social platform. This cloud based application
will provide real time collaboration to enterprises by combining external
social networking sites such as Twitter. Users will be able to create their own
profiles, set status and monitor what others activities. Possibly the best part
is it fetches the feed from other Salesforce application.