It had to happen! With the bursting of the dot.com bubble, and the uncertainty of the economy, money has been tight. No where has this been more evident than with IT Industry Analyst firms. Over the last few years the number of IT industry analysts has dropped by 50% (some say even more). Many firms have gone out of business, and consolidation is starting to happen. In 2003 Forrester acquired Giga, and just this week Gartner acquired Meta for $162M. This basically leaves a few larger more general IT Analyst firms: Jupiter, IDC, Gartner, Forrester, etc. and many smaller more focused firms like Collaborative Strategies.

Analyst firms follow the market, and in many ways reflect the changes in dynamics of the markets they follow. With the consolidation occurring in the collaboration market (while it is still growing at a reasonable pace) the same situation has occurred, with a few big players (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) and many little players that are more focused or offer specific point solutions.

With several hundred (CS estimates almost a 1000) vendors that offer collaborative functionality in this market space, not everyone can go after the big enterprise sales. And those that do, and are successfully, face adoption problems (which I have written about in earlier issues of this newsletter).

With the coming of the new year (2005) we at CS have decided to take on the project of charting the collaboration market space. We will create a taxonomy and then profile and classify collaboration vendors in a directory that should be the most comprehensive in the industry. Like the collaboration market, which is dynamic, this directory will always be changing, but hopefully will provide the most up-to-date information on collaboration vendors. It is our hope that this will become the premier site, and the first stop, for end-users that are looking for collaboration technology solutions.

This month Cathy Webber, one of the analysts here at CS looks at how to create a successful team collaboration environment in our Guru's corner article . Like Michelle Cubas who writes our Guest Editorial this month, both articles look at management to lead the way for collaboration. Both authors approach collaboration from a behavioral perspective. Cathy comes from a quality and metrics background and so looks at collaboration from that perspective. She talks about creating a framework for your team processes, and then applying the right tools and metrics. Michelle, who is a business coach, approaches collaboration from a negotiation and trust perspective. I believe both articles share some common wisdom, but due to their different perspectives they both provide a lot of value to end-users looking for better ways to initiate a collaborative interaction, weather it is through a team/project format or through some other format.

Look for the "Collaboration Blog" as we update our web site in January. Through RSS you can get more CS information, analysis and opinion more frequently, and it also provides a way for you to express your opinion, and comment on some of the Blog topics.

At CS we are looking at other ways to make our web site more interactive, and our content more useful to end users. We will be sending an end-user survey out this month to help us understand what more about what your needs are currently in connection to collaboration.In the new web site, we will constantly be updating our Technologies to Watch list, since we get briefed on 15-20 new collaboration technologies each month. This month one of the briefings we had was of great interest and is for a new tool from Imidio, called Zon. You may recall that Imidio was mentioned in last month's newsletter as being acquired by SiteScape, which is where you can now find more information on this interesting presence-based tool. What we liked about Zon, was not only a clean and easy-to-use interface (that SiteScape could take some lessons from and re-do the old interface to the SiteScape product) but actually provides presence extensions into PSTN calls, and meetings. In addition, it allows you to see presence in the three major consumer IM tools (AIM, Yahoo, and MSN) which we think is necessary these days for any corporate or EIM tool.

In addition, we are creating a section on "Technologies we use." This section will not change as much but will list the collaboration technologies we use internally here at CS. We try to rotate those technologies on a reasonable basis, i.e. we used Groove in 2003 and Intranets in 2004. There will be some other surprises as we give the web site a face lift, and we at CS look forward to interacting with you more through our web site as the new year progresses.

Because of my graduate work in NeuroBiology, I have been kidding collaboration vendors for the past decade that they should build a direct Neural Interface, like the ones on Star Trek. Well it seems someone has taken me up on my challenge! Based on over 10 years of research at Brown University Cyberkinetics (Foxborough, MA) is a leader in the rapidly emerging field of brain computer interfaces. Cyberkinetics' technology allows for the creation of direct, reliable and bi-directional interfaces among the brain, nervous system and a computer. The development of safe, robust implants for recording from, and/ or stimulating, the brain surface will open the potential to study other complex signals from the brain. Cyberkinetics' technology platform, called BrainGateT System, may allow breakthrough applications which leverage the translation of thought into direct computer control. Based on their press release they are in the early stages of their first clinical trails. If you want to read more about this fascinating technology see: http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/

Over the last few months we have expanded our news and announcements section into two sections. The first section " Quick Hits " covers much of what happens in the collaboration market in a very concise format with just the news headline and a URL for more information. News and Announcements on the other hand takes a look at some of the more pivotal announcements that occur each month in more depth and also include the CS analysis of the event.

Collaborative Strategies has revised its functional taxonomy in 2004 as you can see we are seeing some profound changes in the technology landscape. We see a convergence around the DPM/Virtual Team and Process Tools area (middle box) and we see that more and more some of the functionality of collaboration is being driven into the infrastructure layer. This is not only being done by larger vendors like Microsoft and IBM/Lotus, but also by smaller vendors to help leverage their departmental deployments into enterprise deployments.

If you are a vendor of collaboration technologies and you have not briefed us in the last 6 months please get in touch with us ASAP and bring us up to date on your collaboration tools.

While technology plays a critical role in terms of how organizations collaborate today, technology is, in general, an en abler of the interpersonal interactions that comprise collaboration. Economics, corporate culture (behavior), and internal politics (leadership) also significantly impact the efficacy of such implementations. Most news events in the e-collaboration and KM spaces focus on products and services rather than the more complex human issues associated with these tools. We believe that a true ROI for collaborative technologies requires a holistic or systemic approach and need to examine three areas: people, process and technology.

If you have suggestions on services you would like to see from us, or are interested in any of the vendor services listed above, please contact David Coleman.. If you are interested in any of the end-user services listed above contact David Coleman at: davidc@collaborate.com or Ann Marcus at annm@collaborate.com.

CS analysts are always getting briefed on new collaborative products, releases and services. In addition we are working on the TAXONOMY PROJECT to map the collaborative space (over 1000 vendors). Once in a while, we see some new or emerging technology that we think is exceptional, either in concept or implementation. We decided to start a list of these vendors and products, and the May, 2003 issue of Inside Collaboration, lists the charter members for the TTW list. Since then we continue to add one or two vendors each month, that show us technology interesting and unique enough to make the list. If you believe your company or software should be on our TTW list, please contact me directly to set up a briefing with one or more of our analysts at: (davidc@collaborate.com).

KM Cluster- Boston and New England: Enterprise Social Network Analysis , January 20, 2005, with Valdis Krebs.

KM Cluster- Boston and New England: Creating the Social Enterprise , January 21, 2005, with Tom Davenport, Tizanna Casciaro, Peter Gloor and others.

KM Cluster- New York City: On-Demand Knowledge Sharing , January 25, 2005, with Baruch Lev.

COLLABORATIVE CONFERENCING SUMMIT 2005, FEBRUARY 21-22, 2005 NYC Waldorf-Astoria

Braintrust International 2005, Feb. 28- Mar. 2, Crowne Plaza Hotel, San Francisco

Spring 2005 VON Conference & Expo will be taking place March 7-10 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

The 2005 World Congress ,April 26 - 28, 2005 , in Philadelphia, hosted and co-sponsored by the General Services Administration

IEEE International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems (CTS05), May 15-19, 2005 in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA.

Enterprise Search Summit and Streaming Media East
May 17-18, 2005 Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas, 53rd to 54th Streets
New York, NY 10019 . 212/586-7000

Leading Business Law Firm Incorporates GlowPoint ''All You Can See'' Video Calling Plans Across 12 U.S. Locations

Niku Corporation Completes Public Offering of 3.45 Million Primary and Secondary Shares
See: www.niku.com

Idetix Software Systems Announced Revise Version 4.3,Real-time Information Sharing Solution

See: www.att.com

PresenterNet offers Team Selling Capability for Web Conferencing

VIACK Forms Partnership With Comm-Group to Provide VIA3 to Clients
See: www.viack.com

Interwise Customers Break the 10 Million Minutes-Per-Month Mark in VoIP Conferencing

Integic and Corticon Announce Strategic Alliance Providing Business Process Solutions

Vodafone Group Starts In-Flight Broadband Internet roaming trials this month with Connexion by Boeing

PST Releases "Manage Pro Web 3.0" For Browser-Based Collaboration and Coordination Management

Vtiger CRM 3.2. The new offering is an open source CRM solution. Features include team-based roles and the ability to assign modules to users according to organizational structure. Users can customize application fields, and localized support in German and Dutch is provided. Users can also synchronize contacts and tasks between Microsoft Outlook and vtiger CRM, and add customer-related incoming and outbound e-mail from Outlook into the system.

OBM is an Intranet CRM and groupware application written to help manage a company. It can also be used as a contact and customer database or as a shared calendar. It is written with PHP and uses MySQL or PostgreSQL (support for other databases is possible). It supports internationalization and themes, and includes sales force, help desk, time and project tracking, document management, user, and administration modules.

Both of these CRM tools are open source and free. They also seem to be group or team oriented which from our point of view is the right direction to go with CRM tools. Since we have not tested or played with them, nor do we know the developers there is not much more we can say about them, except that Vtiger (where do they get the names for these tools?) works with Outlook and OBM works with MySQL.

ServiceWare Technologies, Inc., a provider of knowledge management (KM) solutions for service and support, and Kanisa Inc., a pioneer of Service Resolution Management (SRM) software applications, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to merge in an all stock transaction.

The strategic merger will create the leading vendor in the rapidly growing market for SRM applications in customer service and support. Under the terms of the agreement, Kent Heyman, CEO of ServiceWare, will become chairman of the board. Bruce Armstrong, CEO of Kanisa, will become CEO of the combined company, which will be headquartered in Cupertino, California. The new name of the combined company has not yet been determined.

The demand for Service Resolution Management software is accelerating as enterprises seek to automate the costly, labor-intensive customer service process of resolving customer cases, incidents and questions across multiple channels. Research by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) shows that 80% of service & support costs are directly attributed to service resolution, not call routing or case management. With more than 170 joint customers, the combined company unleashes a growing market leader with a comprehensive suite of SRM applications for agents, self-service and peer support, delivered on a powerful, integrated knowledge management and search platform.

ServiceWare is a recognized leader in knowledge management systems that improve customer service and help desk operations. ServiceWare business and product highlights include:

Kanisa is a recognized technology leader in Service Resolution Management. Kanisa business and product highlights include:

"This merger is a victory for our customers, shareholders, employees, and partners," said Kent Heyman, CEO of ServiceWare. We estimate the combined company will have annualized revenues of approximately $25-30 million after the integration is complete. As such, our new organization will focus on both top and bottom line growth. The combined company'™s stronger financial position augmented by a highly talented management team puts us in an ideal position to achieve our goals. We are firmly committed to blending the strengths of our application suites and core technologies, to supporting our installed base of customers, and to achieving 100 percent customer satisfaction.

"The merger of Kanisa and ServiceWare accelerates our joint vision to become the dominant provider of Service Resolution Management applications," said Bruce Armstrong, CEO of Kanisa. Kanisa™'s product leadership in personalized self-service, NLP search, collaboration technologies and resolution workflow are an excellent complement to ServiceWare'™s strengths in self-learning and self-organizing knowledge sharing. We believe that the combination will create an unparalleled knowledge management platform and the most complete and powerful suite of service resolution applications.

"The merger of ServiceWare and Kanisa combines a respected industry veteran in KM for customer support with the technology pioneer of Service Resolution Management," commented Liz Roche, vice president, META Group. "The combination of industry-leading technologies, comprehensive applications and impressive customer base positions the combined company to take advantage of this growing market.

Under the terms of the merger, ServiceWare has agreed to issue stockholders in Kanisa an aggregate amount of shares of common stock such that Kanisa stockholders will own approximately 40% of the total shares outstanding of the combined company after the merger. It is currently estimated that the number of shares to be issued will be approximately 35,000,000. In addition, ServiceWare has agreed to issue warrants to purchase 4,239,231 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $0.72 per share to the Kanisa stockholders. The Kanisa stockholders will receive shares and warrants based on an exchange ratio determined in accordance with Kansas ™s charter documents. Certain stockholders of ServiceWare and Kanisa have signed agreements to vote in favor of the transaction. The transaction is subject to approval by ServiceWare and Kanisa stockholders and other customary closing conditions. The merger is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005.

Why not call the new joint company "ServiceKan" that has a nice positive ring to it! Seriously, ServiceWare was one of the first companies I was introduced to in the KM space when we first started covering KM in the mid-90's. When KM did not deliver on much of the hype and promises, many of the vendors in this area either switched their focus away from KM or disappeared. It is good to see that these two players not only were able to define a specific segment, but to thrive. CS believes that the combination of these two vendors will make a stronger and hopefully dominant offering in this niche!

More than a just a BBS system, CraigsList is an online community. Classified advertising, in the traditional print sense, is taking a beating, to put it mildly. As more people use eBay auctions to sell merchandise, online job boards to find employment, targeted search ads on Google to advertise local businesses and Craigslist to buy and sell just about anything, newspapers are feeling the pinch. According to a report this week from research firm Classified Intelligence , Craigslist alone has cost Bay Area newspapers up to $65 million just in lost employment ads. Unfortunately for most of the big print publishers, it's already too late to get into the online game. Despite his benevolent, golly-gee persona, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is poised to become a very rich man indeed.

2004: Big Year For Blogs

Last year proved big for blogs and bloggers, according to data released from The Pew Internet & American Life Project. Blog readership jumped 58 percent between February and November, and comprised 32 million U.S. citizens in 2004. More than 8 million U.S. citizens have created a Web-based diary, and one in 10, or around 14 million U.S.Internet users, has contributed thoughts or comments to a blog.

Two items here. First, since I use Craigslist myself, I can attest to it's usefullness, and also the fact that the SF Chronicle was making offers to do an ad not for a limited time, but until the item is sold. They have not gone as far as offering ads for free (as Craigslist) does. But what is interesting about Craigslist is that it is also an online community. For example, when I was looking for luggage for my motorcycle (until I trashed the bike in July) I would look through the motorcycle adds on Craigslist, there were the regular ads for bikes and parts and clothes, etc. but there were also posts to the community about someone who was running a scam on a motorcycle with a rediculously low cost, or there were posts to get together for rides, etc. Making it more of an online community than just a BBS for postings.

My friend and associate Stowe Boyd is a blogging fiend, and runs a blogging aggregation site called Corante. He has convinced me (along with 8 million other Americans) to start blogging on a regular basis. Now I did not see blogs initially as interactive, but after reading thorugh and subscribing to a number of blogs I can see it really is like a single-threaded online community or discussion, so there is interaction. Stowe looks at social and collaboration tools, and blogs seem to fit into that category.

Apache Lenya 1.2.1 released

The Apache Lenya development community announces the1.2.1 release of Apache Lenya an Open-Source Content Management System written in Java and based on open standards such as XML and XSLT. Lenya is built on top of Apache Cocoon and other components from the Apache Software Stack. Its XML-centric architecture allows for content delivery targeted to the capabilities of various devices, and avoids data lock-in. Apache Lenya is built around Off the Shelf components from the Apache Software Foundation.

Apache Lenya comes with the features you can expect of a modern Content Management System, such as Revision Control, Scheduling, a built-in Search Engine, separate Staging Areas, and Workflow.

Apache Lenya 1.2.1 is based on Cocoon 2.1.5.1, but Lenya 1.2.1 is also known to work with Cocoon 2.1.6. You can use Cocoon features such as robust Caching, multi-channel output, it's many connectivity options to quickly build customized solutions to meet your specific needs that are not already covered by Apache Lenya today.

- Editing

* Browser-based WYSIWYG Editors that validate input against a Relax NG Schema. This prevents invalid markup as produced by other WYSIWYG editors, and allows to enforce web site style guidelines.Lenya ships with the BXE (http://bxe.oscom.org)
and Kupu (http://kupu.oscom.org) editors out of the box. Lenya asset management and link management are integrated into BXE.
* A forms editor is available for situations where a full-blown WYSIWYG editor is overkill or where legacy browsers need to be supported.
* Pages that are being edited are automatically locked for other users, preventing conflicting changes to the same page.
* Each edit of a page creates a new revision. It is possible to revert to any previous revision of a page.

- Workflow

* Lenya contains a customizable workflow engine that uses an easy XML format to define workflows. Standard one- and two-stage workflows ship with Lenya. Users can be notified by email about pending approvals.
* Workflow events such as publishing or deactivating a page
can be scheduled.
* Lenya supports separate authoring, staging and live areas. For convenience, the staging area is disabled by default.
* All workflow steps are logged, providing an audit trail.

- Internationalization

* Pages can be created in multiple languages with no impact on your site structure. Lenya automatically displays your page in the default language if it is not available in a specific language.
* The Lenya user interface is currently localized in Spanish, Italian, french, German and English.

- Layout

* The publications concept allows reuse of the information architecture of a site and brings modularity to the content level. Different publications can share content and business logic, and new publications can be created with a cloning process.
* Lenya supports XHTML+CSS templating, eliminating the need to learn yet another templating language. Wherever possible, Lenya uses CSS for styling, therefore enforcing the separation of content and layout.
* The navigation framework automatically creates navigation items such as menus, breadcrumb paths and tabs. A sitemap can be easily created.
* Lenya has clean URLs and is thus optimally accessible for search engines.
* There are no restrictions on the nesting of templates. You can use any template you have defined at any level of your site structure thanks to the URI parametrizer.

- Site Management

* Lenya allows you to move, copy, rename, archive or delete individual pages or whole parts of your site within an easy to use site view that shows you the pages of your site in an explorer-like view.
* Each page has tabs for easy access to meta data, assets, workflow status, revisions, access control and scheduling.
* The archive function allows you to deactivate pages and store them in an archive.
* Deleted pages can be retrieved from the trash.
* Each page can have Dublin Core metadata assigned. Other metadata standards can easily be added if required.
* Asset management allows you to keep track of images and documents
that belong to a page.
* Link management ensures that internal links are not shown if the target page doesn't exist or the user has no access to it. Link management also warns users about broken links when they publish a page.
* Lenya checks if parent pages of a page to be published are already live to avoid inconsistent sites.
* Deployment is flexible: Sites can be served dynamically by the authoring server (for small deployments) or another servlet container. It is also possible to export content statically or to use Apache as a proxy.
* If used with a reverse proxy, Lenya can be configured to rewrite URLs based on the site structure of the live site.

- Security

* Each page or parts of your site can be protected by SSL. Protect just the parts of your site that need protection for best performance.
* The Lenya access control allows you to restrict access to parts of your site to members of a group or individuals. You can also restrict specific Lenya functionalities, such as editing, approval or administrative features.
* Lenya users can be authenticated against an LDAP server.
* Access can also be controlled by IP ranges.

- Misc

* A Windows Installer makes installation on windows a 3-click process.
* Apache Lucene is integrated into Lenya to offer full-text and field search.

- Under the Hood

* The integration with Cocoon has been improved. For the next release, it is planned to move Lenya to a block-based system which should make it much easier to mix and match Cocoon and Lenya components.
* Unit Tests help to discover regressions in the code.
* A publication API that defines a interface for common CMS operations.
* A fallback concept allows you to selectively override core functionality in your site where needed. Default implementations are provided for convenience and ease of development.
* Lenya uses Ant for portable scripting. This allows you to integrate Lenya into your environment and accomplish custom tasks easily.

In the last year we have started to see more and more open source options for collaboration. Apache is one of the most successful open source organizations. Lenya their new Content Management tool is Java based, but seems to have good mix of features and functions for a content management system, and is probably a whole lot cheaper than a full fledged system like Documentum. However, there are trade-offs, and you probably will not get the same level of service and support as you would from Documentum, nor the financial stability that comes with a more commercial vendor. On the other hand, because it is open source, your not painted into a corner, and there are lots of developers that might be working on the added functionality that you need.

In a move that reflects the business community's increasing interest in innovation management, Centric Software, Inc., a provider of PLM Innovation Management solutions for the extended enterprise, today announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Framework Technologies of Burlington, MA, a privately held developer of project collaboration, product innovation and portfolio management solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Centric also announced today that it has closed its latest round of funding, raising a total of more than $23 million. Centric recently announced a $19 million private equity placement led by Oak Investment Partners, with co-investors Masthead Venture Partners, and existing investor Boston Capital Ventures. Centric has announced an additional $4.5 million private equity placement from Oak Investment Partners and Bank of America.

“This is a vote of confidence from our investors for both our technology and our market strategy,” said Chris Groves, chief executive officer at Centric Software. “With this funding in place, and the acquisition of Framework Technologies, Centric is ready to capitalize on the tremendous growth opportunity we see for our Innovation Management solutions.”

Global competition is forcing manufacturers to bring innovative and differentiated products to market in order to drive revenue growth. The relationship between manufacturers and suppliers has moved from a purchasing relationship focused on cost containment to a co-development relationship. With outsourcing development on the rise, the challenge is to track and leverage how your partners are innovating and contributing to the product development process. “Centric and Framework have highly complementary solutions,” said Groves. “Centric's solution is focused on giving manufacturers the tools they need to make informed product decisions while Framework is focused on giving them the ability to execute against those decisions. Centric is the first company to truly recognize the new paradigm between manufacturers and suppliers. Effective innovation management today requires on-demand access and interaction with all product and process information.”

“We are very excited about joining the Centric team,” said Donald Tomkinson, chief executive officer at Framework Technologies. “Together we can offer a comprehensive solution for global manufacturers looking at product, project and process innovation as key competitive differentiators.”

The gateway to Centric's Innovation Management solution is their unique 3D Innovation Rooms. Team members can share ideas and review them in a visual, collaborative environment, project managers can track activities and deliverables, and executives have the ability for strategic analysis and scenario evaluations critical to making product and project selection decisions.

Centric 3D Innovation Rooms are powered by the Innovation Hub which provides a federated systems approach to support customer needs for “Open PLM.” This is attractive to global manufacturers because Centric can integrate office documents, MCAD, ECAD, CAE, PDM and more, into their solution, leveraging enterprise wide content and existing IT infrastructure investments.

“The inability to communicate easily among a dispersed design team is often the primary bottleneck preventing on-time delivery of new products. The Centric Software and Framework Technologies combination should create an environment that supports a program team's communication and visualization requirements from ideation to commercialization of a new product,” states Mike Burkett, research director at AMR Research in the Alert, "Centric and Framework Combine to Support Program Teams Across All Phases of Innovation Management,” December 20, 2004.

The combination of Centric Software and Framework Technologies provides the company with greater geographic and vertical industry opportunities than they had as stand alone organizations. Centric is particularly strong in the automotive and aerospace sectors in Europe while Framework has shown strength among pharmaceutical, consumer goods and engineering and construction companies in the United States.

A key impetus of Centric's growth will be their partnerships with best-in-class software, service, and system integrators to quickly provide their customers with the most far reaching and complete intra-and inter-enterprise innovation environment available. Specifically, Centric's partnerships with IBM and Dassault will give them access to world-class technologies and domain expertise and some of the world's largest, most sophisticated manufacturing organizations.

It is no surprise to see consolidation in the DPM (distributed project management) area. With 60 vendors in this area a few years ago we identified several trends in our last DPM report. One was that vendors are moving into specific vertical and process-oriented niches which were more defensible, and the other was consolidation. We are actually seeing both trends in this acquisition by Centric. We believe that both trends are part of market dynamics and maturation, and expect to see other smaller DPM vendors to be acquired in 2005.

Genesys Releases New Meeting Center 3.0

Businesses looking for a conferencing solution might like the pricing model of Genesys Meeting Center 3.0. The service boasts a revamped interface and some welcome new features, but its biggest allure is cost: Unlike most similar services, there's no subscription fee; you pay only for the minutes you use (32 cents per minute, with volume discounts available). The interface is still not as polished as that of WebEx or Raindance Meeting Edition, but it's very usable and feature-rich.

The most useful new feature in version 3.0 is an optional download that puts a Meeting Launcher icon in your Windows System Tray. The Meeting Launcher logs you into Meeting Center when you boot up your PC. Then, you simply click on the Launcher, then Meeting Center, and Ad Hoc meeting, and you're ready to meet. Along the way, a small dialog box lets you send a conference link to others via e-mail or MSN Messenger. You can also view your Conferencing Center Web site from the Launcher, access your conferencing settings, and join a scheduled meeting. A new XPress Meeting feature lets you connect with others and share desktop applications.

The new interface has a smoother, more Windows-like look. You can get to polls, surveys, images, quizzes, and a whiteboard from a single drop-down menu. It's functional, but not as comfortable as the interfaces provided by Raindance, WebEx, and Microsoft's LiveMeeting.

As in the past, Genesys stands out with its excellent PSTN/Web conferencing integration. Once a user enters an access code, the moderator can see who is connected by Web and phone. If the user forgets to input a code that links voice to the Web, the moderator can link him or her in manually. The other standout feature is easy integration of transitions, animations, audio, and video in PowerPoint presentations. Genesys converts everything to dynamic HTML, so there's no need to use a PowerPoint plug-in to run streaming audio or video, as there is in WebEx.

Meeting controls are very good: You can create a meeting password and security code, and new entrants are put into a waiting room until you give them permission to join. You can also lock the meeting, mute participants with the Web interface, and eject members easily. There's still no option for creating a meeting access control list, however. You can also put up to two live video screens on your display; hold chats, Q&A sessions, and breakout meetings; run Web tours; share applications; and create notes, minutes, and action items.

Microsoft Outlook integration is decent; Genesys can send a VCAL attachment to enter meetings into the recipient's Outlook calendar. You'll need to download and install an integration module to launch meetings directly from Outlook. Still, all told, we like this product, and the per-minute charges let you use it on an as-needed basis without a standing financial commitment.

Genesys Meeting Center offers Web, voice and desktop video conferencing in one integrated service that is available on demand. Simple point-and-click commands allow moderators to deliver PowerPoint presentations, share and edit any document or application in real time and record meetings for playback later.

This version came out earlier this fall, and this is the first time we had a chance to look at it. Genesys is a big player in the conferencing arena, and they are a French company, focused mostly on audio conferencing for revenues. In some ways they are playing catch up, and don't offer the same ergonomics and the bells and whistles of Raindance's meeting edition but you can do audio and video conferencing (point-to-point not multipoint) at a reasonable cost. We hope to see more improvements and feature from Genesys in 2005.

As prices dropped over the past year, broadband use at home has surpassed that of dial-up in the United States, reaching 53 percent of residential Web users in October, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. For now, what people do online hasn't changed as much as its frequency and duration, although some people are beginning to make telephone calls on the Internet or use cheap webcams for video chatting.

When Mark Suhre built his five-bedroom, three-story home in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay, Suhre made sure each room had its own high-speed network jack. Wireless access points extended the Internet's reach to the swimming pool.

Most evenings, the whole family is online at once: Suhre wrapping up work as a computer network engineer; his wife, Terri, preparing school lessons or ordering from an e-tailer; his teenage sons Gary, Josh and Brandon playing online video games, instant messaging with friends, maybe even researching homework. The Suhres' lives, online and off, have been transformed by their broadband connection.

Taking advantage of their always-on connection, they practice "infosnacking."

"People are more able and willing to just walk up to the Internet to get a quick snippet of what they need, send a quick e-mail, read a quick news article, check a sports score," said Jim Bankoff, executive vice president for programming at America Online Inc.

Not having to wait several minutes to log on to a dial-up account, broadband user Jeannie Tatum will quickly check prices before heading out to a store. The Spring, Texas, Web designer will visit Blockbuster's site to see if a new release is out yet, noting that with dial-up, "it would take less time to pick up the phone and call."

Telephone books? Gathering dust on the shelf. Atlases? What are they? Communal behavior also is tempered by the broadband effect.

Family members arguing a point over dinner are more apt, if they have broadband, to "look it up online rather than continue to yell at each other," said Lee Rainie, Pew's director. Or, in the absence of verbal interaction, families can have heated discussions in Internet chat rooms individual members each sitting in separate rooms in front of computer screens. That happens when broadband users take their Internet habit a step further by setting up home networks. Suhre wired his home so his network can one day accommodate Internet-enabled refrigerators and TVs.

TiVo Inc. had such networks in mind in designing features for its popular digital video recorder. Already, users can schedule recordings online from the office, say. But unless they have broadband, the updates can take up to a day to make. TiVo is soon expected to launch a service that lets users move recorded programs to laptops. In the future, TiVo spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly said, users will be able to send programs to other recorders they own, in a vacation home, for instance.

Microsoft Corp. recommends broadband for its PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition, which lets users view photos and movies on regular TVs or listen on a stereo system to music stored on a hard drive.
The version out in 2003 makes it easy to buy programming for download. The latest version, released in October, has an optional "extender" for sending programs to other rooms through the home network.
Suhre said his kids have grown to take broadband for granted and were miserable when they had only dial-up for two weeks while moving. Suhre got first dibs, then his wife and finally the children.
"You could see they would be hovering around, almost like dinner time when they are hungry, trying to figure out when she would get off," Suhre said.

The online convenience changes offline behavior as well.

Rainie goes to the office late and leaves early, avoiding rush-hour traffic, because he knows he can make up the hours at home.

Content creators, meanwhile, find the broadband audience now big enough to make it worthwhile to produce resource-hungry features. Amazon.com commissioned five short films to view for free at its site this holiday season.

Americans are hardly pioneers, however, in embracing broadband. The United States trailed 12 of the 15 top economies, including Canada, in broadband penetration, according to a September report from U.N. International Telecommunication Union analyzing 2003 data.

South Korea topped the list at more than double the U.S. rate. Broadband helped spur a social and political renaissance in South Korea, where thousands of citizens contribute to an alternative news site called OhmyNews, shaking the traditional media and political establishments.

In sixth-ranked Denmark, Internet-based telephones have become popular as they allow customers to avoid per-minute local phone charges, said John Strand, a telecommunications consultant in Copenhagen.

By comparison, Americans are only starting to figure out what they can do with broadband, said Maribel Lopez, a Forrester Research analyst. And until they get it, households simply can't be sold on such advanced services as Internet calling and telemedicine.

Broadband does have its share of headaches, of course.

Computers now stay connected 24 hours a day, extending the window of exploitability by hackers.
And with only one or two companies in many markets controlling the main pipelines into the home, consumer advocates fear they might give preferential treatment to content from business partners, or make competitors' content difficult to find or slow to load. In the meantime, Internet usability expert Jakob Nielsen has a word of caution for the broadband crowd: Respect the dial-up population. It remains large. Think twice before sending friends large photo files as attachments. Those photos could sour their Internet experience. On the other hand, come to think of it, those photos could encourage them to finally spring for broadband.

The recent merger announcement of Sprint and Nextel was all about wireless, with little mention of Sprint's multi-billion dollar annual sales in wireline long distance and data services. The only discussion of wireline was Sprint's plan to spin-off its local phone service. There is a good reason for this. Sprint wants to accentuate the positive, not the negative.

Wireless has become the hot telecommunications growth service, while wireline expenditures continue to shrink. If there was any question about shift in telecom from wireline to wireless, Sprint put it to rest with its announced merger with Nextel. The drivers for the merger were all about how it benefits their wireless services. All the talk about future service innovation was about wireless. Wireline, other than the need to offset its shrinking position, had little to do with the merger. Sprint and other similar carriers are finding that the best way to remain healthy is through their wireless services. Research here at In-Stat/MDR also backs up that strategy.

Recent research here at In-Stat/MDR shows that total US wireline retail service expenditures are in a period of decline. In-Stat/MDR forecasts these service expenditures will decline from $188.1 billion in 2003 to $160.2 billion by the end of 2008. The hardest hit segment in wireline services is consumer voice.

Consumer expenditures on wireline voice services, both local and long distance, are declining due to both changes in competition and from technology. The big wireline competitive force comes from cable operators.They continue to make strong process in rolling out their residential phone service, usually priced below incumbent provider rates. This puts pricing pressure on incumbent carriers to lower their prices as well. Technology however is the real downward driver in consumer wireline service expenditures.

The two technologies that are really impacting wireline consumer services are VoIP and wireless. Consumers are increasing their adoption of these services, taking away from expenditures on wireline service. Subscribers to these services are among other things, disconnecting their wireline local phone services and reducing their usage of long distances minutes. Wireless, Sprint's favorite service, is the biggest contributor of all to this decline

Both the above articles point to the fact that infrastructure is probably the biggest limiting factor to what we call "ubiquitous collaboration." You know the Dick Tracy watch, or the Star Trek Communicator, where you have audio/video/data conferencing access to anyone, anywhere at anytime. This is not yet a reality today, yet with the rise of wireless broadband, this could soon be the norm for collaboration if the Govt. does not get in the way, and various commercial entities see it is in their best interest to invest in this type of infrastructure. Needless to say, Ma Bell will be dealing less with wired calls and more with wireless data streams!

Collaboration typically involves teams of people who are chartered to accomplish a common goal. These teams can be internal or external to an organization. In either case, I have found it amazing to discover that while a lot of thought and energy goes into forming these teams, there is often not a solid infrastructure or environment to support the success of these teams and their projects.

Have you ever been involved with a team project that seemed to have little or no support from management? Have you experienced a situation in which the energy level of a team went from being full of hope and potential to being a burden and drudgery, with no hint of enjoyment left at all?

Many times I have wondered why so many projects are such an effort to complete and why so many of them actually fail. I often feel badly about those team members who feel unappreciated, confused, and left out.

I believe that the cause of these collaborative woes lies in the environment that is created, intentionally or not, by an organization's senior management, who created these projects in the first place. From the top on down, leaders do a poor job of creating an open, inclusive, inspiring, supportive, and motivating environment where collaborative project teams can flourish.

Amazingly enough, you can offer the following suggestions for creating a sustainable and effective environment without requiring them, the leaders of your organization, to do a whole lot more than they are already doing. You just need them to think and plan a lot more about the environment they are creating. They have already committed resources to team management, whether they recognize it or not. For in essence, we are all a part of one or more teams everyday in our work life, and even in our personal life.

• Define A Team-Project Framework: A framework can be applied throughout an organization to guide teams along their pathway to success. This can be as simple as process mapping, flow charts, or lists of procedures. In all your processes, include steps for setting measurable goals, analyzing results, and for making improvements. Continuous improvement is important for a sustainable framework.

• Use Collaborative Technologies: To help your teams organize, exchange ideas and knowledge, share documents, track progress, and build mutually beneficial relationships, technologies of various sorts are crucial to implement, support and promote. These “tools” can include the use of computer technologies such as web conferencing and document management systems, as well as organizational tools such as group facilitation techniques for consensus building, problem solving, action planning, and information analysis.

• Create Team Champions: Team Champions educate and inspire your teams to use the framework and the tools that your organization provides and supports. Include Team Champions on your senior management team. Allow these people to have access to their stakeholder groups. Hold them accountable for management of the framework process and its continuous improvement. They can also administer the team awards program, which is described below. Note that this position should not to be confused with project management, which is also a required function on any project.

• Include All Stakeholders: Ensure that every stakeholder group is represented and has a voice in the decision making process. Conduct inclusive meetings. Use methods for brainstorming of ideas, analyzing information, and building consensus to gain their input and to encourage their ongoing participation with your, and their, projects.

• Reward Teams: Celebrate and acknowledge teams for their effectiveness. Create criteria against which teams will be evaluated. At certain checkpoints along their process, support them with tools for self-evaluation and scoring. At the end of each project, or on an annual basis, create an event to reward your high performing teams. Individual awards for those who exhibit the values of the organization, with respect to their leadership, teaming, and collaboration efforts, can also be given.

Let's look at each one of these areas to see what can be done to impact your teams. While a lot of this seems like common sense, well, it is! The only catch is that management needs to think about this stuff and map out the organization's strategy much like you would do when taking a long distance road trip. It is all about getting from Point A to Point B, sometimes along a slow, bumpy road and other times on an open freeway. The better you plan ahead and obtain the consensus from your group on the “ who-what-when - where-why-and-how” of it all, the more pleasurable and successful your journey will be, for all involved.

Just like planning a road trip, your team needs a framework or map in which to operate. There needs to be a beginning place and an end goal, and a methodology for making choices along the way. While there are many ways to approach the design of your framework, I have always been a fan of not re-inventing the wheel. So, I offer you a framework that I use as a base model, and is used by many high performing teams throughout the world.

This “framework” is based upon the criteria designed in the United States by the American Society for Quality. The ASQ administers the International Team Excellence Awards program, which is based upon the criteria for team efficiencies and effectiveness. Each year teams from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica and China meet to present their projects and compete for these prestigious awards. Program information can be found at: http://wc q i.asq.org/team _ c o mp/overview.html .

On a more local level, many States administer their own awards program, which are also based upon the same criteria. For example, the California Council for Excellence administers the Team Excellence Awards for the western states. This past November I had the opportunity to serve as a Judge in the Sacramento (CA) competition. It was amazing to see how successful teams can work together in unison when they are supported in a healthy environment for teaming and collaboration.

The framework is based on four (4) major categories for team efficiencies and effectiveness. For each of these categories, the goal for an organization is to have a repeatable approach that is continuously improved upon. Teams then follow these same, well thought-out approaches. Eventually they become organizational best-practices. These categories are:

Your approaches to these categories serve as your framework for managing collaborative success.

Based upon my research and experience, I have pin pointed some characteristics of highly successful team projects. These include:

• Team members and stakeholders are identified and informed about each project, it's purpose and the potential impacts on the organization and on each stakeholder group.

• Evaluation criteria, metrics, and performance measures are established and tracked, providing factual input to decision making.

• Tangible and intangible benefits of the project have been determined. For example, tangible benefits may include actual dollars saved, costs avoided, and processing efficiencies, while intangible benefits may include customer satisfaction levels, increased customer retention, and employee morale.

• Each stakeholder group is involved during the entire life of the project. Their buy-in and involvement in selecting the final solution is critical. Stakeholder feedback mechanisms must be in place, along with a bi-directional communications strategy for conveying progress and results.

Which tools does your organization need to support that will provide the right environment for successful collaboration and decision making? While there are many, many tools out there to use, from computer software for online virtual meetings to facilitation and decision-support , the right tools for your organization should reflect the your specific needs. So, how do you know what you need?

First, assess your current environment . Make a list of the tools that your organization currently has access to and uses. Include all of the tools that are used for team organization and communications, idea sharing, knowledge sharing, document management, project management, meeting facilitation, internal and external communications, quality analysis, process management, and fact-based decision making. Look at the various teams that are currently underway within your organization and determine if they use the same, or different tools, and why. Develop a grid to see where all the pieces fit together.

CS currently has a Collaboration assessment tool that looks at the four dynamic factors that are critical for sustainable collaboration within in your organization. These factors are: technology, culture, economics and politics. Again, it is about knowing and placing the pieces of the puzzle together to create success. For more information about this tool and how it can work for your organization, please contact me at cathyw@collaborate.com .

Then, determine what your real needs are . Typically the list from the preceding exercise is varied, with many different tools being used by different departments within the same organization. This is because teams and projects have typically evolved from a departmental approach of “we'll do it the way we want to” and not from an organizational viewpoint. Knowing what your organizational needs are involves asking your existing teams about the tools they use that help them and their projects. Survey your stakeholders. Ask them for their ideas.

Make recommendations to your teams . After gathering data and analyzing it, determine which tools are most successful for your organization and publish a list of your recommendations. Be sure to include the IT department as a stakeholder, since many components of your environment will probably operate on their computers and networks. Please note that teams should be allowed to use “non-standard” tools as well. They must be encouraged to coordinate the use of these other tools through their Team Champion, so that a true picture of your organizational environment can be maintained.

Table 1 below gives a number of examples for different types of collaborative tools (both technology-based and non-technology tools) that are used in team environments, along with their application:

Tool Type

Application

Problem Definition

Flowcharts (process maps)

Cause and Effect Diagrams

Pareto Charts

Check Sheets for Data Collection

Understanding current processes, identifying performance problems, root cause analysis, collecting and displaying data showing frequency of events to identify most prevalent causes.

Creativity

Brainstorming

Mind maps

Use of analogies

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

Looking at processes in new ways and for identifying unique solutions.

Measurement

Benchmarking

Audits and surveys

Organizational scorecards

Strategic and operational metrics

Collecting and analyzing different types of data that can be used to guide and evaluate the effectiveness of your projects

Resource Management

Virtual meeting and conferencing

Document management

Knowledge management

Project management

Facilitation techniques for action

planning and consensus building

Communicating bi-directionally with team and stakeholder participants, sometimes in more than one facility. Leveraging knowledge and creating an inclusive environment.

Now that you have determined which tools your organization will support as standard, you will need to promote their use and adoption. The best way to do this is by example. The list below includes a few tips on internal promotion and how to be successful at it:

To ensure that the project delivers what is required and continues to support the needs of all participants, it is important to include and communicate with all stakeholder groups that are impacted both directly and indirectly by the project. Stakeholders must be identified at the beginning of the project and be a part of the greater team. How and when they participate must also be addressed. One thing to remember is that the more you include them in your decision making, the better chances you have of them accepting and using your solution. Create a participatory environment by using inclusive facilitation techniques. One organization that provides excellent training in these types of techniques is the Institute of Cultural Affairs and their Technology of Participation ( www.ica-usa.org) . Using these types of facilitation methods, consensus can easily be built, better decisions can be made, and action plans developed using the input from all participants. A greater commitment evolves when people feel listened to and included.

While many organizations reward individual employees with higher pay, bonuses, and employee-of-the-month-type of programs, there is a new model that rewards effective team efforts. By creating an internal awards program, you can provide successful teams with lots of attention. Feature them in internal newsletters. Give out a rotating award each quarter for the team that utilized the tools the best (as determined by the Team Champion). Host an annual Team Competition and have each qualifying team present their project and how they utilized the organization's framework to create and implement their solution. Showcase them! Promote them! Get them excited about using proven methods to ensure success and you will be truly amazed at the results you will get.

In conclusion, you might be thinking that this all seems like a lot of work. Well, you might be right. But what if your efforts actually resulted in sustainable systems that are no longer painful to administer and grow? And what about the results from teams who have gotten it to work? Would a 36% reduction in unit cost interest your management? How about a 40% improvement in productivity? Or a reduction of cycle time from

Collaborative CRM (Customer Relationship Management)