Collaboration Software refresher

Online collaboration software is indeed one of the hottest areas in business software. But the market is getting more and more confusing with software companies, big and small, entering products in the market, sensing it to be a growth area of the future.

This is problematic for customers, who are pitched with "the perfect collaboration software for your small/medium/large company" by companies whose solutions barely have any similarity.

I will briefly list out the types of collaboration software in the market, the companies which offer them, and the context in which they are suitable:-

Free form solutions - These are largely unstructured solutions, which offer very compelling functionality, but are not designed for reoccurring use by teams. Since they are web based, they are suitable for diverse groups to quickly get together and collaborate.

Example - Google Wave, Adobe.com

Suitable for - Ad-hoc groups.  

Workspace Based Solutions - These are solutions structured around "workspaces". Workspaces are a collection of permission protected web pages and collaboration tools to help teams with ongoing team work. Workspaces are places where teams can access files, collaborate on documents, publish announcements, manage tasks, coordinate schedules etc. These are mostly web based and oriented towards end users and ease of use.

Example - Google Apps, HyperOffice Collaboration Suite

Perfect for - Small and medium sized businesses

Collaboration platforms - These are mostly powerful on premise solutions designed for companies with highly specialized needs. For example a large financial organizations. Apart from providing regular collaboration software tools, they also act as a platform for designing highly customized workflows depending on the companies specific needs. Because of this, they are also complex to use.

Example - SharePoint, Novell Groupwise

Perfect for - Enterprises