October 2, 2000

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Vendors Upgrade Groupware For The Web

By Charles Waltner

roupware vendors have been trying to address computing collaboration needs longer than most other software. But ultimately, groupware functions on an E-mail model, working on closed enterprise networks and large client software.

The Web gets the credit for many of the breakthroughs that make data communications with partners and customers outside an enterprise network ubiquitous.

Traditional collaboration players such as Lotus Development Corp. and Novell have taken notice and are scrambling to extend their LAN-locked products onto the Web and out to customers and partners, where they can offer benefits to users.

Leif Pedersen, director of product management for portal collaboration at Novell, realizes these new software and services providers have hit a nerve. His company's customers are asking for more knowledge-collaboration services, he says.

"What we're seeing is a new generation of collaboration that takes place over the Web," Pedersen says. "It will be very interesting to see how the first generation of these solutions evolve."

His company, as well as groupware competitors such as Lotus and Microsoft, now provide Web versions of their client-server software, but fall short of offering the collaborative capabilities of the upstart products. However, the vendors are spinning off more focused products from their core groupware to bolster collaborative effectiveness.

Novell is working with partners such as 2nd C, a company that developed collaboration software for law firms that works in conjunction with GroupWise.

Lotus has introduced such collaborative products as QuickPlace, a standalone product that can work on top of the Domino Notes server in an extranet. QuickPlace has been on the market for a year and lets teams set up "rooms" for storing documents, chatting, and using project-management tools.

While still requiring major investment in money and IT resources, Guy Creese an Aberdeen Group analyst, says Lotus, in particular, has made solid strides in opening its enterprise-collaboration tools to people working outside a corporate network, with such features as its new Web option and a greater ability to process Microsoft Office and Outlook-based information.

"People are slightly unaware of where Lotus is with its Web-accessible information," Creese says. The new, smaller knowledge-collaboration vendors are pressing the groupware vendors to make better use of online technologies.

Return to main story, "Antidote For Information Overload."

Illustration by Tom Nick Cocotos

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