8 . 3 Groupware
"I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent."- Q, Star Trek
Groupware,(8) the software that assists in the collaboration of groups of people, is one of the latest application areas to get into the mainstream. It has been around, most notably with Lotus Notes for a while but the Web and ubiquitous access to the Internet is fueling its grown.
Clearly, the grand-daddy of groupware products is Lotus Notes. Notes, however, provides much more than is currently viable with the Web. Enterprises use Notes in secure environments to support business processes. Product development, sales, order processing, and technical support need the support of sophisticated work-flow software. Routing information through discrete phases and through a management chain is the key. Web/Notes interoperability is moving towards this end with the InterNotes product, which can publish a Notes database on the Web.
"Groupware Grows Up," the cover story of the March 4, 1996 issue of Information Week,(9) points out that Lotus Notes is not the only game in town any more. Products from Netscape, Microsoft, Novell, and Hewlett-Packard all address this growing market. In addition the links between collaborative work products and the Internet are getting stronger.
Microsoft is going after Lotus Notes with its Exchange product. Clearly, Exchange is not as robust as the timetested Notes. However it does have clear advantages in its integration with Microsoft Office. Most significantly, the Notes server can run on several types of platforms, whereas the Exchange server is tightly bound to Windows NT. "Exchange Versus Notes" by Sean Gallagher also in the March 4, 1996 issue of Information Week does a thorough comparison of the two.
Netscape's acquisition of Collabra Software with CollabraShare conferencing software gives Netscape a running start in this frenzied market. Collabra Share lets you organize information into a set of "forums." In each forum, groups can discuss relevant topics. Information discussed in the topics can later be retrieved via a search engine, and related topics can be linked. An important feature is the flexibility of forum management. The forums can allow anonymous input and moderated information and can be used for brainstorming or customer support.
Collabra Share's presentation of "forums" for collaborative discussions
DEC is also entering this market with the Workgroup Web product. It, too, allows for on-line conferencing. It also provides tools for reaching consensus and decision making, such as a real-time polling feature to give a group instant voting results. It works with many existing Web browsers and servers. An interesting development feature is the Software Development Kit (SDK), which is based on the Tcl scripting language (widely used in the UNIX and X windows world).
A new product called CoolTalk by InSoft is being bundled with the new Netscape Navigator (version 3) called Atlas. CoolTalk is a suite of utilities for collaborative computing. It contains a realtime audio facility like the various Internet phone programs. More significantly, it includes a whiteboard so people can draw on a shared surface and see what each other is doing.
CoolTalk utilities, audio tool, and shared white board
The ability to communicate using audio and shared data spaces like a white board should improve communications among geographicallydispersed groups. The amazing part is that this all functions on a PC! Only a few short years ago, these capabilities cost many thousands of dollars, and you had to have a high-end workstation.
