REVIEWING THE E-COLLABORATION MARKETPLACE

A Survey of Electronic Collaboration Systems

Bettina Schauer, Michael Zeiller and Doris Riedl

Information Technology and Information Studies, University of Applied Sciences Burgenland

Campus 1, Eisenstadt, Austria

Keywords: Electronic Collaboration, Collaboration Systems, Social Software, Groupware, Cooperation, Classification.

Abstract: Electronic collaboration systems that support and enable communication, coordination and collaboration

between people in shared projects, processes and teams within organisations and for cross-organisational

use have significantly changed under the influence of Web 2.0 technologies and social software. The

electronic collaboration marketplace is made up of numerous systems that offer a large variety of features.

A classification approach is presented that classifies electronic collaboration systems and thus structures the

diverse collaboration marketplace. Collaboration systems are evaluated and compared using a set of

evaluation criteria that allow for the assessment of all major collaboration tasks. Thus completeness of

systems as well as the main focus of applicability of individual collaboration systems is determined.

1 INTRODUCTION

Web 2.0, social software and Enterprise 2.0 are

major trends that shaped information technology

throughout the last years. Collaborative software has

also been massively influenced by those concepts

and technologies. Tools previously denoted under

the terms Computer Supported Cooperative Work

(CSCW) or groupware gained new momentum. The

market of CSCW and groupware changed and

converted to a marketplace of various kinds of

electronic collaboration systems.

The appearance of social software – briefly

defined as “software that supports group interaction”

(Shirky, 2002 in Allen, 2004) – was one of the major

driving forces in the change of the collaboration

marketplace. In 2006 McAfee coined the term

Enterprise 2.0 in his trend-setting paper "Enterprise

2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration" pointing

out how companies can benefit from Web 2.0

technologies to support their knowledge workers

(McAfee, 2006a). McAfee (2006b) defines

Enterprise 2.0 as "... the use of emergent social

software platforms within companies, or between

companies and their partners or customers".

However, the most important application of social

software in the enterprise is to support group

interaction and group collaboration.

Due to this impact of social software new tools and

new vendors appeared on the market of collaborative

software. Renowned “groupware” vendors

reorganized their portfolio and introduced new

social software features in their products. A number

of open source solutions appeared as well. This led

to a marketplace of high complexity and diversity

containing a lot of different kinds of electronic

collaboration systems.

In this paper we present an approach to classify

electronic collaboration systems and thus to

structure the entire marketplace. Collaboration

systems are evaluated and compared using a set of

evaluation criteria. Criteria are chosen that cover the

entire range of collaboration tasks and interaction

processes (the 4Cs communication, cooperation,

collaboration, connection; supplemented by cross-

sectional features). We focus on complete solutions

of collaboration systems that support multiple kinds

of social interaction.

In section 2 we narrow down the group of

electronic collaboration systems we want to discuss

and present related market studies and classification

schemes. Section 3 introduces our approach of

evaluating E-Collaboration systems and specifies a

set of evaluation criteria. In section 4 the evaluation

approach is demonstrated by comparing the results

on a number of collaboration systems. Section 5

concludes this paper.

Schauer B., Zeiller M. and Riedl D. (2010).

REVIEWING THE E-COLLABORATION MARKETPLACE - A Survey of Electronic Collaboration Systems.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 69-75

DOI: 10.5220/0002991100690075

 SciTePress

2 ELECTRONIC

COLLABORATION

Electronic Collaboration - short: E-Collaboration or

eCollaboration – is operationally defined by Kock

(2005) in a general way as "collaboration using

electronic technologies among different individuals

to accomplish a common task". According to Kock

(2005) research on Electronic Collaboration should

include research on Computer-mediated

Communication as well as research on Computer

Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (Wilson,

1991). However, we will focus on computer-

supported Electronic Collaboration with the help of

E-Collaboration systems.

2.1 e-Collaboration Systems

Riemer (2007) describes E-Collaboration systems as

"software for supporting communication,

coordination and cooperation between people

processes in groups". Several synonyms are often

used interchangeably for this category of

information systems: groupware, CSCW systems,

collaborative software, cooperation systems.

Riemer’s definition is based on the basic types of

social interaction that can be found in CSCW

systems and groupware: communication –

coordination – cooperation (Teufel et al., 1995). In a

similar way Cook (2008) uses four primary

functions to classify social software: communication

– cooperation – collaboration – connection.

Communication allows people to converse with

others and exchange information with the help of

synchronous (e.g., chat, conferencing tools) and

asynchronous (e.g., email, weblog, microblogging)

communication tools (Riemer, 2009; Cook, 2008).

Communication can be differentiated by medium –

chronology – group of people.

Coordination allows a temporal or issue-related

matching and agreement on tasks and resources.

Typical operations of coordination support team

members in coordinating appointments, processes

and tasks in projects, plus surveys and ad-hoc

workflow management.

Collaboration is a working practice whereby

individuals work together on a non-routine cognitive

task to achieve a common purpose (Austin and

Burton, 2004; AIIM, n.d.). Collaboration encourages

people to work with each other on particular

problems, with shared commitment and goals (Cook,

2008). Collaboration tools encompass for example

wikis and whiteboards, application sharing and

desktop sharing. Collaboration takes advantage of

the services of communication and coordination.

Cook (2008) adds another primary function to

social software and Enterprise 2.0 tools: connection.

Networking technologies enable people to make

connections with and between both content and

other people. Social networking is the most

prevailing technology for connection, but there are

also a number of enabling technologies like people

profiling and people search.

In terms of this market analysis E-Collaboration

systems are defined as software for supporting and

enabling communication, coordination and

collaboration between people in shared projects,

processes and teams within organisations and for

cross-organisational use (following Riemer, 2009).

Tasks in Electronic Collaboration can be assigned to

one of the primary interaction processes (the 4Cs):

 Communication

 Coordination

 Collaboration

 Connection

Complete E-Collaboration systems have to support

all four types of social interaction.

2.2 Classification of e-Collaboration

Systems

There exist several scientific and commercial market

studies on E-Collaboration systems that structure

and organize available software packages into

system classes and categories and set up descriptive

criteria. Riemer (2007) provides an in-depth analysis

of E-Collaboration systems using cluster analysis.

Riemer’s catalogue of classification criteria is made

up of six categories: group processes

(communication, coordination, collaboration), usage

of system (continuous, situational), role for group

(primary, secondary), types of communication (e.g.,

text/voice/video messages, email, voice/video call,

text/voice/video conference), shared resources and

features (e.g., forum, surveys, application sharing,

group calendar, whiteboard), awareness (informal,

group structural, social, workspace). Using a cluster

analysis Riemer identifies five system classes:

everyday systems, integrated systems, coordination

systems, meeting systems and specialized tools.

Illik (2009) structures E-Collaboration systems

into five categories that are arranged in layers:

 Live communication (top)

 Extended team communication

 Basic team communication

 Team repository

ICE-B 2010 - International Conference on e-Business

 Knowledge management (bottom)

Essential features are located at the bottom. Higher

layers increase effectiveness and efficiency in teams.

The Forrester Wave™: Collaboration Platforms, Q2

2009 evaluates 11 vendors against more than 60

criteria that are arranged in three major groups:

current offering, strategy, market presence

(Koplowitz, 2009). The biggest group is current

offering that is made up of seven groups:

collaboration platform, language support,

architecture and administration, monitoring and

reporting, security, cross-platform support,

information workplace readiness.

In contrary to theses studies our evaluation

approach focuses on complete E-Collaboration

solutions only (i.e., similar to integrated systems

according to Riemer, 2007) that have to cover

collaboration, coordination, communication and

connection features to a certain extent. To allow for

an objective evaluation of E-Collaboration systems

the evaluation criteria and their weighting is based

on a standardized reference use case that represents

typical collaboration tasks. For specific scenarios

this approach can be easily adapted (especially using

individual weights, see section 3.3) to meet the

particular needs of the customer.

3 EVALUATION OF

E-COLLABORATION

SYSTEMS

The evaluation of E-Collaboration systems involved

the following three steps.

1) Selection of e-Collaboration Systems. Potential

candidates for evaluation were selected according to

predefined criteria which each tool had to fulfil in

order to be defined as a complete E-Collaboration

system. The result of this step was a list of E-

Collaboration systems for evaluation.

2) Definition of Evaluation Criteria. The features

and functionalities offered by E-Collaboration

Systems were assigned to the four categories of

social interaction processes – the 4Cs

communication, cooperation, collaboration,

connection. This step resulted in a feature list

grouped by the 4C categories.

3) Assessment. Each E-Collaboration system was

evaluated according to the functionalities belonging

to the four categories. The result of the evaluation

process was an assessment of E-Collaboration

systems comparing their strengths and weaknesses

according to the 4C categories complemented by

supporting categories.

3.1 Selection of e-Collaboration

Systems

In a first step before the actual evaluation, tool

candidates for the assessment had to be selected.

This step involved defining criteria a tool had to

fulfil to be regarded as an E-Collaboration system.

Each tool had to provide at least some

functionalities to support all four types of social

interaction summarised as the 4Cs. Thus the support

of information processing, communication as well as

coordination were defined as “must have” criteria.

Collaboration software had to offer information

processing features as well as communication

facilities (at least asynchronous communication

services like email) as well as coordination features,

e.g., a group calendar, to be regarded as a complete

E-Collaboration system. Furthermore an E-

Collaboration system should offer functionalities for

information sharing as well as synchronous live

communication.

The reason for this pre-selection was that the

assessment should contain complete systems for E-

Collaboration that cover a variety of features instead

of specialised solutions like just a wiki or a weblog.

The selection process resulted in a list of about 40

software packages that qualified for the assessment.

Among these tool candidates were the products of

common vendors like Microsoft Office SharePoint

Server 2007, IBM Lotus, Oracle Beehive and Oracle

Collaboration Suite as well as open source products

like for example Zimbra Collaboration Suite,

phpGroupWare, OpenGroupware, Novell Open

Workgroup Suite or Alfresco Share. The review also

included systems of the visionaries as defined by the

Gartner survey (2009) like Jive, Telligent or

Socialtext Collaboration Platform.

3.2 Evaluation Criteria According to

the 4Cs of Social Interaction

Based on reviews from literature, analysis of case

studies and related market studies of E-

Collaboration systems a feature list of all typical

functionalities offered by such systems was

established. In order to assess the E-Collaboration

systems according to their strengths and weaknesses

for certain applications these functionalities were

grouped into the four categories of social interaction

depending on their primary support (see section 2.1):

 Communication

REVIEWING THE E-COLLABORATION MARKETPLACE - A Survey of Electronic Collaboration Systems

 Coordination

 Collaboration

 Connection

The category communication (16 features in total)

was split into the sub-categories synchronous

communication (instant messaging, conferencing

functionalities, telephone, etc.), asynchronous

communication (email, blogs, comments, etc.) and

social presence. The category coordination covers

features (18 in total) for task management, project

management, workflows, organisation of meetings

and appointments. Features for shared content

production such as wikis or whiteboards and for

content administration like shared folders, shared

documents, versioning or tagging were assigned to

the category collaboration (25 features in total), see

Table 2 (section 4). These features were

complemented by supporting technologies for shared

content production like social tagging, social

bookmarking and social cataloguing and by

administrative services. The category connection

comprises functionalities (7 in total) such as e.g.

social networks, people search or people profiling.

In addition to these 4C categories some more

characteristics of E-Collaboration systems were

considered to be important for the evaluation. These

criteria included functions that do not belong to one

of the 4C categories but support all of them. Such

functionalities (16 in total) include e.g. newsfeeds,

personalisation, alerts, configurable areas, mashups,

search, filtering, rating, documentation, (online) help

and the support of handheld deliveries.

Administration of E-Collaboration systems was also

an important aspect of the evaluation in addition to

the 4C criteria. Some of the administrative features

assessed (10 in total) were user management,

scalability, configuration, integration into existing

systems and backup or recovery.

3.3 Assessment of e-Collaboration

Systems

For the assessment the features of the various

categories were weighted according to their

importance within the category. The weights were

assessed for a standard team collaboration scenario.

In case of a specific application the weights have to

be adjusted according to the particular needs. Each

E-Collaboration system was assessed according to

whether it supported a feature or not. In case the

feature was supported the weight of this feature was

added to the score of the E-Collaboration system in

the respective category, in case the feature was not

supported it did not increase the score.

The assessment resulted in a score for each category

with a maximum of 100% per category as the

evaluation was not undertaken for a specific use-

case and thus all 4Cs were supposed to be equally

important. Thus it is possible to compare E-

Collaboration systems according to their suitability

for supporting the 4C categories. The total of 100%

per category was split up into scores representing the

relative importance of the subcategories. The scores

of the subcategories were again split up into scores

for each functionality – see Table 2.

In addition to the quantitative assessment

qualitative data was collected for each E-

Collaboration system. The data included facts about

the system like name, vendor, version and which

operating systems, browsers or databases are

supported as well as a valuation of the general

strengths and weaknesses of the E-Collaboration

system.

4 RESULTS

In the following, due to space restrictions, the results

of five examples out of the 40 E-Collaboration

systems evaluated in November & December 2009

are presented, deliberately not including the market

leaders Microsoft and IBM.

 Alfresco Share an open source tool for

enterprise content management by Alfresco

Software Ltd

 Socialtext an enterprise social software by

Socialtext Incorporated

 Zimbra Collaboration Suite an open source

collaboration application by Zimbra

 Jive Social Business Software an enterprise

communication and collaboration platform by

Jive Software.

 PHProject an open source groupware suite by

Mayflower.

Table 1 shows the scores that each system achieved

in the categories communication, coordination,

collaboration and connection as well as cross

sectional functionalities and administration out of

100% as the total score for each category.

Socialtext offers an intuitive user interface combined

with a lot of functionality that is highly integrated

into the features offered by this suite. It provides

new technologies like microblogging or mashups.

Thus the strengths of Socialtext lie in the categories

communication and connection. The main focus is

on the social aspect by transparently connecting

people with the corresponding content.

ICE-B 2010 - International Conference on e-Business

Table 1: Evaluation of five E-Collaboration systems.

Alfresco

Socialtext Zimbra Jive

SBS

PHPro-

ject

Communicatio

18% 74% 63% 55% 51%

Coordination 29% 25% 65% 30% 83%

Collaboration 70% 69% 59% 51% 61%

Connection 50% 86% 58% 78% 58%

Cross sectional

functionalities

59% 95% 51% 76% 55%

Administration 66% 87% 67% 76% 72%

Zimbra offered most functionalities in supporting

coordination activities and provides an easy to use

interface with a familiar look and feel. Its strengths

are extensive search options, tagging for all sorts of

content and the synchronisation with handheld

deliveries. Webservices can be integrated into the

workspaces by so called Zimlets. Zimbra offers

good support for collaboration in small teams but it

lacks on overview of the whole organisation and all

corresponding projects.

Jive SBS´s strength is the category connection. It

offers many features for building employee

communities using social networking concepts.

Personal information about authors can be found

throughout the entire collaborative content

environment. Coordination features (e.g. no

workflow support and only average project

management support) are not among the strengths of

this suite. However, a lot of additional cross-

sectional and administrative functions depict Jive

SBS as a technologically mature platform rated by

Gartner (2009) as one of the market leaders.

PHProject got the best evaluation in the category

coordination. This is no surprise as PHProject was

designed as a groupware tool for project

management. It offers standard project management

features such as task and resource management as

well as the coordination of schedules and the

administration of meetings. PHProject also allows

managing multiple projects. A weak spot of the

system is little functionality in the category

connection.

Alfresco Share was the most extensive tool for

collaboration. Its specific strength is the

administration of shared content. All features offered

by Alfresco are highly integrated. Communication is

the weak spot of the tool as email is not supported.

Alfresco is an open-source E-Collaboration system

and thus offers high adaptability. It is recommended

for the collaborative work of small teams because

for larger teams one quickly loses track.

Table 2 shows the results of the evaluation of

Alfresco in the category collaboration. For each

functionality Alfresco got the according score if the

feature was supported (

z) or not ({). In the future

this score will be replaced by a more precise

evaluation providing information not only if a

feature is supported but in addition how well it is

supported. This will be symbolised on a five level

scale also using quarter, half or three-quarter circles

(not included in Table 2 yet).

Table 2: Functionalities and weights of the category

collaboration – scores for Alfresco Share.

Category Collaboration

Total

Score

100,00

Supported Alfresco

Share Score

70,25

Shared Content Production

20,00

10,00

Wiki 10,0

z 10,00

Whiteboard 3,00 { 0,00

Synchronously Shared

Documents

4,00 { 0,00

Shared Ideas / Brainstorming 3,00 { 0,00

Working together on the

same objects

15,00

12,75

Social Tagging 6,75 z 6,75

Social Bookmarking 6,00 z 6,00

Social Cataloguing 2,25 { 0,00

Administration of shared

content

50,00

47,50

Document Sharing 7,50 z 7,50

Image Sharing 2,00 z 2,00

Video/Audio Sharing 2,00 z 2,00

Restricted Access for Content 4,00 z 4,00

Restricted Access for Folder 2,50 z 2,50

Check in/Check out 5,00 z 5,00

Up & download 5,00 z 5,00

Versioning 4,00 z 4,00

Archiving 2,50 { 0,00

Folder / Shared Folder 7,50 z 7,50

REVIEWING THE E-COLLABORATION MARKETPLACE - A Survey of Electronic Collaboration Systems

Table 2: Functionalities and weights of the category

collaboration – scores for Alfresco Share (Cont.).

Category Collaboration

Total

Score

100,00

Supported Alfresco

Share Score

70,25

Shared Content Production

20,00

10,00

Content Tagging 4,00 z 4,00

Folder Tagging 1,50 z 1,50

Personal Site 2,50 z 2,50

Creating Documents out of

the Shared Workspace

15,00

0,00

Textdocument 5,25 { 0,00

Calculation 1,50 { 0,00

Presentation 1,50 { 0,00

Graphics 0,75 { 0,00

…using MS Office 6,00 { 0,00

Figure 1 provides an overview of the assessment

results for the five sample E-Collaboration systems

in the basic categories depicting the strengths and

weaknesses of these tools.

Figure 1: Overview of the assessment of five example

E-Collaboration systems.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This market review presents a software evaluation

approach adjusted to the special requirements of the

steadily changing E-Collaboration market.

Practitioners and IT-experts will find a set of

evaluation criteria and an easy to adopt evaluation

approach that provides an overview of the strengths

and weaknesses of available software products. It

can be easily adjusted to evaluate and select E-

Collaboration systems for specific application

scenarios. In this case, our set of features and

functional criteria provides an excellent basis that

can easily be supplemented by technical criteria

(e.g., concerning integration issues), financial

criteria (e.g., licensing and distribution model) and

vendor criteria (e.g., ability to execute).

This market review focuses on E-Collaboration

systems that cover all aspects of social interaction.

Therefore only software products have been tested

that support all 4Cs of electronic collaboration:

communication, coordination, collaboration and

connection. The huge market of software products

that cover only a fraction of functionality and

provide specialised features in a smaller application

segment has been excluded deliberately (for general

market studies see e.g. Hinchcliffe, 2007; CMS

Watch, 2009; Gartner, 2009). However, companies

and institutions that want to implement or enhance a

comprehensive electronic collaboration strategy will

need to look at complete E-Collaboration packages.

Assessment of E-Collaboration systems based on

the presented approach will continue on a

continuous basis leading to a periodic report on the

E-Collaboration marketplace. Ratings on the

analysed software packages will be available in an

online database in the future.

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