Topic Overview: Collaboration Platforms

People use collaboration tools to improve business processes and gain personal and team productivity. In the past, information and knowledge management professionals installed point products to meet specific business requirements. But discrete collaboration tools are morphing into broad collaboration platforms that deliver a combination of messaging, team collaboration, real-time collaboration and communication, and, increasingly, Social Computing features. Now, IT professionals in multiple roles are working together to develop comprehensive enterprise collaboration strategies and move their organizations toward standardization on a single set of integrated collaboration services. Forrester expects client interest in collaboration strategies and platforms to remain high in 2007 as organizations move toward Phase 4 in Forrester's collaboration maturity model: standardization.