Comments on: Five hot collaboration trends

By: b2bportal007

b2bportal007 — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:29:09 +0000

Hello Blaine,
Nice post..Tour points are very important and informative..
thanks for sharing this informative piece.

By: Pankaj

Pankaj — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:09:26 +0000

Great article Blaine. Another thing I would add is the increasing integration of email and collaboration software, traditionally distinct categories. The reason is that actual adoption of collaboration software lags behind promise, with people still using email for most information management. Integration with email lets people continue using email, and pulling them to the right tool right through email, when the need arises.

By: Blaine Mathieu

Blaine Mathieu — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:09:06 +0000

Good point Avi. I definitely was not purposely attempting to exclude Google Apps or Docs. I do think it is great to expose people to a wide variety of collaboration solutions so they can pick the tools that best fit their needs.

By: Blaine Mathieu

Blaine Mathieu — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:26:16 +0000

Really good point – another aspect of cloud-based collaboration tools is they are increasingly being used to blend the worlds of work and non-work. That is why many of these tools are being brought into organizations “from the ground up” vs. from IT-down (although that is starting to change).

By: Blaine Mathieu

Blaine Mathieu — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:24:28 +0000

There are definitely a lot of applications in the collaboration space, loosely defined.

By: Avi Kaye

Avi Kaye — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:42:48 +0000

I’m a bit surprised myself that Google Apps (for business, or free) weren’t mentioned. Working on a Google Doc with someone else is exactly what collaboration is all about :) At the end of the day, it’s all about communication. Today we do it through our tools, not just the ‘conventional’ channels (email, phone, etc.).

AviK
http://www.happytodos.com

By: Cloud Evangelist

Cloud Evangelist — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:50:54 +0000

Especially #3 _Public and private co-exist_ is something to consider. While the cloud based solutions like Yammer or Salesforce.com’s Chatter gain traction enterprise should ask themselves whether they really get the best out of the existing tools like e.g. SharePoint.

I would have named #3 differently though and called it On premise and in the Cloud. Private and public co-exist to me is bridging the gap between work worlds and private worlds which calls for identity management and federation. If you want to learn more in this are look here: http://clouddiscussions.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/identities-the-real-fight-club-in-the-cloud/

By: David Rob

David Rob — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:14:04 +0000

Blaine, Great article and your points about unified collaboration (we need a new term for this), integration, ease of use and mobile components are all right on. We at http://www.binfire.com working on project management and collaboration for virtual teams,

By: Sabisu

Sabisu — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:40:13 +0000

Hey Blaine,

Great article. I particularly like point 3 about mixing an on-premise and cloud components to meet enterprise cloud needs.

–

Ben
http://www.sabisu.co

By: Sahil Parikh

Sahil Parikh — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:05:06 +0000

“The war in this space is not being won by complex features; it is being won by usability”

This is one of the most important points! At DeskAway (www.deskaway.com) we have always tried to keep a balance between simplicity, power (feature-richness) and affordability.