Changing Face of Collaboration

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.