IDC #CAN07S

I D C V E N D O R S P O T L I G H T

The Evolut ion of Col laborat ive Appl icat ions: The Mobi le Workforce and Beyond October 2010 Nigel Wallis

Introduction

A whirlwind of cultural and technological changes is altering how Canadian enterprises and individuals engage with each other. Collaboration technologies are being challenged by and reinvented through the following major phenomena:

• Building social applications into collaboration suites. Canadian organizations have a growing awareness of the need for and value of internal and external collaboration. This is being driven by changing employee demographics and their adoption of applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or MySpace, as well as the passionate consumer response (both positive and negative) to interactive campaigns, such as Old Spice. In addition to mature forms of collaboration such as email, instant messaging (IM), and portals, IDC research shows that 26% of Canadian companies have already adopted some form of social networking solution. Many of these firms are embracing the social business movement, whereby employees, customers, partners, and suppliers use social technologies to improve productivity and strengthen organizational relationships internally and externally.

• Emergence of cloud computing. As futurists, analysts, and marketing hype have emphasized, cloud computing has the promise of enabling scalability in volume and seasonality; the potential for simultaneous upgrades driven by rapid innovation release cycles; the capability of access-anywhere, browser-based modern GUIs; and the possibility of a "pay for what you use" approach. In the very near future, CIOs will be able to establish feature parity regardless of the software's underlying location, effectively creating an agnostic user experience. This will enable them to create the architecture and IT infrastructure of their choice. IDC's most recent Canadian research indicates that 20% of medium and large Canadian organizations have already invested in cloud-based collaborative technologies.

• Unified collaboration experience. The migration toward a more integrated collaboration experience will continue by bringing together email, IM, conferencing, team workspaces, and presence as well as social content and community features into a single point of access to help minimize the number of applications a worker needs to use in order to find the right information and people to accomplish his or her job. Ideally, workers should be able to use all of their information-based assets in a single setting. This will require open, extensible solutions that can use core enterprise applications such as SAP, Oracle, or Salesforce.com.

• Rise of the mobile enterprise. Individual and corporate users want the flexibility to determine how, when, and where they work. The proliferation of mobile devices, especially smartphones, coupled with the demand for anytime and anywhere access will fuel the use of and demand for collaboration technologies. IDC's recent research indicates that nearly 44% of the Canadian workforce has a significant mobile component to their employment, making mobile collaboration more significant than ever before.

IDC #CAN07S

I D C V E N D O R S P O T L I G H T

The Evolut ion of Col laborat ive Appl icat ions: The Mobi le Workforce and Beyond October 2010 Nigel Wallis

Introduction

A whirlwind of cultural and technological changes is altering how Canadian enterprises and individuals engage with each other. Collaboration technologies are being challenged by and reinvented through the following major phenomena:

• Building social applications into collaboration suites. Canadian organizations have a growing awareness of the need for and value of internal and external collaboration. This is being driven by changing employee demographics and their adoption of applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or MySpace, as well as the passionate consumer response (both positive and negative) to interactive campaigns, such as Old Spice. In addition to mature forms of collaboration such as email, instant messaging (IM), and portals, IDC research shows that 26% of Canadian companies have already adopted some form of social networking solution. Many of these firms are embracing the social business movement, whereby employees, customers, partners, and suppliers use social technologies to improve productivity and strengthen organizational relationships internally and externally.

• Emergence of cloud computing. As futurists, analysts, and marketing hype have emphasized, cloud computing has the promise of enabling scalability in volume and seasonality; the potential for simultaneous upgrades driven by rapid innovation release cycles; the capability of access-anywhere, browser-based modern GUIs; and the possibility of a "pay for what you use" approach. In the very near future, CIOs will be able to establish feature parity regardless of the software's underlying location, effectively creating an agnostic user experience. This will enable them to create the architecture and IT infrastructure of their choice. IDC's most recent Canadian research indicates that 20% of medium and large Canadian organizations have already invested in cloud-based collaborative technologies.

• Unified collaboration experience. The migration toward a more integrated collaboration experience will continue by bringing together email, IM, conferencing, team workspaces, and presence as well as social content and community features into a single point of access to help minimize the number of applications a worker needs to use in order to find the right information and people to accomplish his or her job. Ideally, workers should be able to use all of their information-based assets in a single setting. This will require open, extensible solutions that can use core enterprise applications such as SAP, Oracle, or Salesforce.com.

• Rise of the mobile enterprise. Individual and corporate users want the flexibility to determine how, when, and where they work. The proliferation of mobile devices, especially smartphones, coupled with the demand for anytime and anywhere access will fuel the use of and demand for collaboration technologies. IDC's recent research indicates that nearly 44% of the Canadian workforce has a significant mobile component to their employment, making mobile collaboration more significant than ever before.

©2010 IDC 2

The growing adoption of collaborative and social networking applications is reflected in IDC's Canadian forecast. This software market segment is expected to grow to $395.4 million by 2014 from $265.3 million in 2010.

Collaborative Applications IDC describes collaborative applications, including social networking software, as applications and/or processes that allow the sharing, authoring, editing, and publishing of content by both internal/external partners and contacts. Content and document management applications, mashups, wikis, portals (both intranet and extranet portals), search solutions, telepresence, video messaging, and Web conferencing are adjacent solutions that are increasingly being delivered as features within broader collaborative solutions. Figure 1 shows the percentage of Canadian enterprises that have adopted these technologies as of 2010.

F I G U R E 1

S t a t e o f C o l l a b o r a t i o n T e c h n o l o g y A d o p t i o n i n C a n a d a

n = 302

Source: IDC Canada IT Advisory Panel N3, 2010. Adopted from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm.

Benefits of Social Networking IDC's 2010 research concluded that the three biggest benefits of adding social networking applications to enterprises are: (1) Improving customer interactions; (2) Improved branding and public relations; and (3) gaining competitive advantage. This is in contrast to 2009, where the top benefits were seen to be improving co-operation & collaboration between employees and improving productivity (see Figure 2). In essence, it looks like there is an increasing focus on "external" benefits — which makes sense given the challenging economy. Over time, we believe talent management —

Late Majority

34%

Early Majority

34%

Laggards

16%

Innovators

2.5%

Early Adopters

13.5%

Mainstream

Markets

Late

MarketEarly Markets

The Chasm

Instant Messaging 45%Collaborative 44%

Email 95%

Portals 73%

Conferencing 50%Web Content Management 48%

Blogs 20%Social Networking 22%

Wikis 26%

Mashups 9%

©2010 IDC 3

the recruiting and retaining of talented younger employees who are habituated to these technologies — will be an increasingly important driver for organizational investment.

IDC believes there are additional benefits to using collaborative software. These include:

• Extended reach of the enterprise. New technologies connect staff, partners, suppliers, and customers quickly and easily. The resulting improvement in communication has the potential to improve the relationship through better efficiency and revenue opportunities.

• Decreased time to market. These solutions facilitate the feedback process by capturing and creating new knowledge capital as well as intellectual property.

• Improved compliance with regulatory standards. Content management applications make organizational content easier to find and manage, allowing companies to improve compliance with ever-evolving internal standards and external regulations.

F I G U R E 2

T h r e e P r i m a r y B e n e f i t s o f I n v e s t i n g i n S o c i a l N e t w o r k i n g / W e b 2 . 0 S o f t w a r e

n = 302

Source: IDC Canada IT Advisory Panel N3, 2010

All these factors reinforce just how fast the world of collaboration is changing. Enterprises need their technologies to reflect where their business is going, not where it is. In this regard, IDC believes companies need to carefully consider their mobility strategy. Collaboration goes beyond 5:00pm, and it certainly goes beyond the four walls of your company. Projects, partnering, sales, support, and delivery all continue well past the confines of the desktop. The enterprise collaboration structure needs to lead the way in utilizing location-aware technologies to enable individuals to share, network, document, and process information using secure and manageable real-time methodologies. Figure 3 shows how large and medium Canadian enterprises are mobilizing key enterprise applications in order to improve the efficiency of their workforce.

0 20 40 60 80 100

No benefits

Other

Automating business process/workflow

Reduce cost of business operations

Allow employees to make more timely decisions

Improve productivity

Improve departmental co-operation/collaboration

Improve employee morale/satisfaction

Gain competitive advantage

Improved brand image/PR

Improve customer interactions

%

©2010 IDC 4

F I G U R E 3

S t a t e o f E n t e r p r i s e A p p l i c a t i o n M o b i l i z a t i o n i n C a n a d a

n = 481

Source: IDC Canada IT Advisory Panel N4, 2010. Adopted from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm.

Challenges and Opportunities

In order to fully realize the benefits of collaborative applications, IDC believes organizations will have to develop new policies and procedures for how information is owned, managed, and disseminated. Furthermore, expectations for collaboration, commerce, and innovation among younger workers will promote mobility, collaboration, and social networking in the workplace. The demographic now entering the workforce has already grown up with collaborative technologies and social media in their personal lives and expect to find similar capabilities in the workplace. They want greater personalization of their work and typically have a richer, more dynamic and interactive experience with technology outside of work. Moreover, Generation Y has grown up in an environment where technology has always personally accompanied them — they have always lived in a mobile world. These factors make it essential that technology departments respond to the latent need or desire for improved communication channels.

In today's economy, there is a higher return on investment/total cost of ownership hurdle that organizations must exceed to gain approval for new expenditures. This could create an issue for the adoption of collaborative applications, particularly social networking applications in which the benefits tend to be "softer" and more difficult to measure. Organizations should leverage case studies and technology vendors to assist in the quantification of benefits relative to these products.

IDC expects the vendor landscape to change, potentially dramatically, in the collaborative application market. New entrants and mergers and acquisitions, as well as the evolution of adjacent technologies such as unified communications and mobility, may make it more challenging for organizations to identify the right solution for their business. CIOs and other key decision makers need to consider the stability of their chosen vendors as an additional criterion in their decision making.

Late Majority

34%

Early Majority

34%

Laggards

16%

Innovators

2.5%

Early Adopters

13.5%

Field Force

Mainstream

Markets

Late

MarketEarly Markets

The Chasm

Email 83%

Office Productivity 39%

Remote Monitoring 31%

GIS & Presence 13%

Instant Messaging 50%

Compliance 10%

Paper Form Replacement 15%Asset Tracking & Dispatch 15%

Post-Sales Support 25%

Sales Automation 21%Social Networking & Web 2.0 23%

Navigation 26%

10%Automation

©2010 IDC 5

The primary selection criterion for Canadian IT organizations is integration with productivity and email applications, and a close runner-up is integration with existing applications. Other criteria that Canadian decision makers used for collaboration include workflow and business process automation as well as established relationships with vendors.

Lotus: IBM's Collaboration Application Portfolio

Lotus has a rich tradition, so much so that the popular perception of that history often obscures understanding of the collaboration technology's actual evolution. In many ways, Notes established the groupware technology, which broadened into today's wider collaboration market. IBM has steadily responded by investing in solutions to the increasingly complex requirements of enterprise customers and now has over 50,000 Lotus customers worldwide (or more than 145 million users). Organizations are faced with increasingly complicated compliance requirements and steadily increasing network bandwidth requirements. In response, Lotus introduced "policy-based system administration" and network compression followed by "Activity Trends" to alleviate these pain points. Likewise, Lotus Protector, a turnkey antivirus appliance, was released in 2010. Lotus' belief in integration reaches beyond the collaboration portfolio. Lotus Notes is released on an Eclipse framework, the multilanguage development platform, making Lotus Notes an open-source, Java-based platform.

IBM's commitment to R&D is impressive, at $5.8 billion in 2009. Alistair Rennie, General Manager, IBM Collaboration Software, reinforced IBM's commitment to Notes in a recent interview during the announcement of IBM's Customer Experience Suite, stating: "Collaboration and social software have the power to transform an organization's Web presence reinventing how they relate to their customers on the Web. We are aligning the breadth of IBM capabilities to help our customers embrace the Web as their primary channel for customer engagement." Moreover, product refinements and recent partnerships, such as RIM for its mobile strategy, Skype for voice and video within Sametime, and Salesforce.com and LinkedIn for their social networking aspects, demonstrate IBM's commitment to the Lotus Collaboration suite.

IBM's focus in 2010 is bifurcated between dealing with now — through finding ways to lower the cost of delivery, support, and ongoing maintenance — while generating an on-road to the future of collaboration by deeply incorporating social businesses and mobility.

©2010 IDC 6

F I G U R E 4

L o t u s : I B M ' s C o l l a b o r a t i o n A p p l i c a t i o n P o r t f o l i o

Source: IBM, 2010

Messaging, Collaboration, and Unified Communications IBM's messaging, collaboration, and unified communications offerings continue to evolve to meet market demand and take advantage of advances in technology.

• Lotus Notes. While often thought of as the email client, Lotus Notes is the user interface uniting the collaboration and communications tools, including messaging, calendaring, instant messaging (IM), VoIP, and both Domino and non-Domino applications. Based on the Eclipse framework, the desktop is extensible and adaptable to individual needs. A key differentiator for enterprise is the additional security allowed for auditing and compliance standards so documents and email can only be removed from current folders and not the system. Additional features include personalized views, text recognition widgets that integrate external data sources (ERP systems, Web sites, etc.) in the context of the email message, and the use of tabbed style formats for documents and email similar to those found in Web browsers and portals, and cross-document functionality.

• Domino. Server-based application provides a platform for email, messaging, collaboration, workflow, and custom applications. While core services include email server, applications server, Web server, database server, and directory server, add-ins include data integration, instant messaging and Web conferencing, document management, collaboration space, mobile application server, and mobile "push" synchronization to handheld devices. Domino has a built-in document-oriented database system but can also use IBM DB2. The Lotus Designer is an application development tool that supports many languages and integration with Tivoli, AIX, and Linux so that organizations can build applications quickly.

• XPages. Aimed at developers, this allows them to create Web pages within Domino. XPages provides design notes for forms and views, and data notes for documents. Items are uniquely

©2010 IDC 7

defined to a note and do not need to match a pre-written schema or table structure. This functionality also extends to mobile platforms such as BlackBerry devices. XPages can quickly create a Web 2.0 interface to an existing Domino application.

• Sametime. The instant messaging and conferencing component of the suite. Like Lotus Notes, the Sametime client is built on the Eclipse framework, providing a customizable user experience while allowing organizations to embed business processes and other collaboration tools into the interface. The user interface is user-friendly, having added drag-and-drop functionality for names and calendar events to the Sametime client. The 8.5 release is designed as a Web-based interface, allowing it to be dropped in as a widget within other online applications, such as a contact centre solution (for real-time collaboration during customer calls), human capital management (for training or reviews), etc.

• Sametime Advanced. The latest version improved end-user experiences for Web conferences as no downloads are needed and no reservations are required. Conferences can be recorded and played back in the *.mov file format and integrate business partner videoconferencing solutions (Polycom, Cisco, etc.). Sametime also integrates into other Lotus components as well as Microsoft Exchange and Office applications "out of the box."

• Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT). SUT is meant to plug into an organization's mixed private branch exchange (PBX) environment and provide one common and easy-to-use user experience. This enables an individual to make calls no matter where they are with a simple double click and to add participants via drag-and-drop. All the complex components and integration are hidden on the back-end. This is a common issue for medium and larger enterprises.

• Lotus Quickr. IBM Lotus Quickr is a team collaboration offering enabling easier sharing of

everyday business content such as documents and rich media among virtual teams. Lotus Quickr features (1) content repositories in which users store personal and team content; (2) content and team services — organize, access, and share content and team projects, and (3) connectors — Lotus Quickr connectors are plug-ins that snap into desktop applications such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Explorer. The connectors let end users work in their familiar desktop applications and move content from Notes and Outlook, Sametime, and Office applications directly into Lotus Quickr. Quickr is also integrated with ECM offerings, allowing users to collaborate on business content via Quickr while leveraging IBM's enterprise content management infrastructure. Quickr offers administrative controls for policies and backup as well as tight integration into WebSphere and ECM repositories.

• Symphony. This is a free application suite for the creation and editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Symphony supports open document formats (ODFs), Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats on Linux, and Windows or Apple OS X operating systems in over 23 languages. Project Concord, Symphony's online collaborative editor for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, should be in public beta shortly with general availability scheduled for 2011.

Each of these applications may be run independently or as part of the Collaboration suite. Lotus is a full-featured, integrated, and open solution to be considered as organizations evolve their collaborative and unified communications strategies. Notes and Domino provide a pragmatic approach for enterprises with mixed environments.

©2010 IDC 8

Social Networking IBM Lotus Connections is the social networking application that captures the power of social networking and brings it to the workplace. Lotus Connections has six integrated core modules that allow social networking activities to be integrated into a business' existing infrastructure and business processes.

• Homepage. This tool allows a user to create a single customized view of their content, including email, documents, workflows, etc., and access social networking tools.

• Profiles. This tool allows employees to search and locate key resources through search terms beyond name or title. Lotus Connections effectively "tags" human capital, allowing contextual searches, which then encourages person-to-person communication through core Notes features such as email and IM. This reduces the time squandered locating internal subject matter, increasing organizational efficiency. It also encourages a quantitative understanding of how social capital in a firm truly works — in contrast to top-down, organizational structure schematics.

• Communities. This tool brings together people within an organization who share common responsibilities, expertise, or interest matter. It creates a secure internal space for creating and sharing communities of knowledge.

• Blogs. The blogs tool in Lotus Connections creates a secure internal location for presenting new learning and opinions, while opening lines of communication for feedback.

• Dogear. This allows users to save key URLs in order to recall information — similar to the standard browser bookmarking or favourites feature. It also encourages the internal sharing of URLs, akin to Del.icio.us or other consumer-oriented services.

• Activities. This pulls together the varied components of day-to-day business tasks, placing all related structured and unstructured data in an easily accessible location, from spreadsheets to PowerPoints, chat transcripts to bookmarks, sales data to marketing collateral, etc. All of these may reside in different places, but Activities congregates these data points, from ad hoc communication channels through to siloed data repositories such as ERP systems into a single, shareable location. This enables information workers to see what data is present and up to date in a logical, chronological fashion, rather than having to chase through each silo.

Lotus Connections aims to bring the advantages of social networking technologies to a secure, enterprise grade solution that meets the needs of today's information workers. Lotus expanded its social networking functionalities with the release in 3Q09 of Lotus Connections 2.5, which includes wikis and file sharing. A key advantage of the Lotus Connections platform is that any or all of the Lotus Connections services can be integrated into an organization's existing systems, allowing them to weave social computing easily into their existing business processes. Lotus Connections can also be accessed through browser interfaces or through applications such as IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, IBM WebSphere Portal, and Microsoft Office, Lotus Quickr, and MS Outlook.

©2010 IDC 9

F I G U R E 5

L o t u s : I B M ' s C o l l a b o r a t i o n A p p l i c a t i o n P o r t f o l i o

Source: IBM, 2010

Through their long-standing alliance, IBM and Research in Motion have partnered to create a secure mobile collaboration platform. Among the key benefits of this joint development program are speed — as this can all be accomplished without the browser; multitasking — useful for the multi-application nature of social networking, from camera, email, documents, blogs, and back; and security — through its integration with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the BlackBerry-enabled Lotus components have very strong encryption and version controls. IBM and RIM have launched BlackBerry-specific clients for core components of the Lotus suite:

• The BlackBerry Enterprise Server is well-known for the reliable and real-time push service of Lotus Notes email, calendaring, and PIM, but it is also the centrepiece of RIM's IT governance controls. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server can allow over-the-air push capabilities, robust IT policies, and deployment cost minimization.

• The BlackBerry client for Sametime enables mobile users to chat with other Sametime users on their BlackBerry smartphone through a familiar interface. While mobile, clients can access Group Chat and have the ability to view status, buddy lists, alert notifications, etc. The BlackBerry client for Connections mobilizes key Connections components to BlackBerry devices, such as Profiles, Communities, Bookmarks, Activities, and Blogs. This allows for internal and external social networking, such as identifying the right subject matter expert in a timely fashion on the run.

• The BlackBerry client for Quickr eases content sharing. BlackBerry users can navigate within Lotus Quickr libraries and folders and then download, preview, edit, and upload files (including Microsoft Office files) within the constraints of Quickr's content management controls.

©2010 IDC 10

"As You Like It" — The Convergence of Delivery Models

IBM has responded to the changing needs and architectures of CIOs by offering their collaboration solutions in a variety of delivery models, including as an appliance, on-premises client/server, hosted (whereby the client owns the application and IBM hosts it), or through software as a service (SaaS). These options give customers the choice of installation, depending on preferences around size, cost, security, etc. As a result, Lotus can be used by organizations of all sizes.

IBM introduced the Lotus Foundations product, which is an integrated hardware and software solution — basically Lotus in a box. Designed to install in roughly half an hour, Lotus Foundations is aimed at the SMB community and can be remotely managed by IBM Business Partners. Lotus Foundations provides the key collaborative technologies a company needs, including a messaging server, instant messaging, network printer management, automated desktop client configuration, and firewall and security components.

Additionally, IBM released LotusLive in 2009 as a cloud-based portfolio of collaboration products including email, hosted online video meetings, data visualization, and file sharing. LotusLive can be deployed by enterprises of all sizes, with lower upfront technology and staffing requirements, given its open Web standards-based, cloud-based model.

Among the advantages of SaaS delivery models is reduced time to value through lower upfront costs — the result of lower hardware requirements and monthly subscriptions, per-seat basis subscriptions, enabling rapid scaling up or down. Additionally, the quality of service SLAs attached to enterprise-class SaaS models often exceed those delivered on by internal IT departments. SaaS also offers reduced time between iterations as patches and updates can be propagated to all users across the system with reduced requirements for testing (as the vendor controls all the variables) instead of testing across multiple hardware and software environments.

The LotusLive portfolio includes collaboration and messaging applications:

• Collaboration: • LotusLive Engage. A secure, integrated suite of Web collaboration and business

solutions, including online meeting service, store and share capabilities, and instant messaging.

• LotusLive Connections. A collaboration environment that includes profiles, activities, forms, store and share capabilities, instant messaging, and presence awareness.

• IBM LotusLive Meetings Service. Integrating Web, audio, and videoconferencing. • IBM LotusLive Events service. Offers Internet-based tools that manage and create

Webinars. Organizations can use SSL encryption, invitation templates, email follow-up, and other tools to create, host, and manage online presentations.

• Messaging: • IBM LotusLive Notes service, providing Lotus Notes software as a hosted service.

Choice of rich client or Web access, 5–25GB mailbox, offline support for desktop and Web client, mobile device enabled, integrated presence and awareness.

• IBM LotusLive iNotes service, providing security-rich, Web-based messaging, calendaring, and contact management.

The combination of services available in LotusLive can enable organizations to leverage existing infrastructure investments while adding new cloud-based collaboration functionality. LotusLive is currently partnering with a number of emerging vendors such as Skype, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn,

©2010 IDC 11

and Silanis. This enables integration such as hosting Web conferences within Salesforce.com's CRM tools, or using Silanis' electronic document signatures.

Future Outlook IDC believes a shift has started to occur in the collaborative applications market, and in the larger software industry, where software solutions have begun to focus on people and not just technology. Of course, technology is an important part of making any software application successful, but applications are being designed and developed with information workers more in mind today than ever before. At the heart of this shift is the social business movement, where increasingly key business stakeholders are directly contributing to a product's evolution from basic idea to production to implementation, which can result in a better product and user experience as well as increased investment in its success. Figure 6 outlines how and where Canadian organizations are investing and planning to invest in their social media.

F I G U R E 6

C a n a d i a n E n t e r p r i s e s a n d S o c i a l M e d i a — I n i t i a t i v e s a n d P l a n s

n = 302

Source: IDC Canada IT Advisory Panel N3, 2010

Team collaboration is a fundamental part of business that encompasses group activities such as brainstorming, problem solving, and decision making. Given the diverse environments in which people work (ad hoc and structured), collaborative applications need to be flexible enough to allow people to work efficiently and yet have the workflow and business process in order to be effective. As businesses strive to work better, smarter, and faster, vendors need to design robust applications that support not only document- and content-centric practices but also people-centric collaboration. Increasingly, social features such as wikis, blogs, activity streams, and the ability to rate and

0 20 40 60 80 100

Don't know

None of the above

Other

Finding info when making ICT decisions

Tracking company reputation online

Soliciting feedback on products and/or services

Attracting and/or recruiting new employees

Advertising company products or services

Interacting with customers

©2010 IDC 12

comment on documents will become part of solutions to help bridge the gap between collaborating on content and collaborating with people.

IDC believes that the software industry is combining key technologies such as email, IM, team workspaces, social features, community and presence, among other functionalities, into a single environment for users. The trick will be to design a system that is flexible enough to support various different work styles while minimizing the need for customer behaviour to drastically change. This unified collaborative environment will provide users with a single point of access to help minimize the number of places a worker needs to go in order to find the right information and people to accomplish his or her job.

Additionally, there is the increasing requirement for collaborative applications to be optimized for mobile devices as users want the flexibility to determine how, when, and where they work. The proliferation of mobile devices coupled with the demand for anytime and anywhere access will help fuel the use of and demand for collaboration technologies.

As this technology continues to evolve, the next frontier will be the adoption of analytics and business process management optimization within the collaborative suite. As workers begin to spend more time and make more decisions within and through the collaboration user interface, then they (and their employers) need to be able to analyze the real-time trends for optimal performance. While workers will ideally use the analytical engines previously harmonized for BPM, customer care, HR, and other roles, through monitoring the sharing of information and data, organizations will be able to maximize organizational structures, collaboration, business routines, and more. The email inbox as we used to know it will evolve into an optimized business process management tool.

A B O U T T H I S P U B L I C A T I O N

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