New groupware products that run on the World Wide Web enable businesses to maximize their Internet investment
Peter Jerram
Nearly every aspect of the computer industry has been influenced by the unchecked
growth of the Internet
. The latest beneficiary may be groupware, a market that the Gartner Group predicts will top 50 million users in the next four years.
Many corporations have quietly invested in TCP/IP
intranets
, which are corporate networks based on open Internet protocols for E-mail, discussion forums, and file transfer. The World Wide Web's strengths in document publishing have especially spurred the growth of intranets. "We get more than 70 percent of our revenue from internal corporate networks," says Mike Homer, vice president of marketin
g for Netscape Communications (Mountain View, CA), publisher of the popular Netscape Navigator Web browser.
Analysts see these basic protocols and the intranets themselves as an ideal -- and largely untapped -- platform for groupware applications. "Many Fortune 500 companies are asking themselves, `Why should I invest in a new infrastructure like Lotus Notes when I can leverage what I already have?,'" says Hal Bennett, an Internet commerce consultant in Menlo Park, California.
Acting on that premise, software makers are developing integrated Internet-based packages with groupware features. The most prominent indication of this trend is Netscape's recent acquisition of Collabra Software and its Collabra Share workgroup-conferencing software. Executives from both companies say Collabra Share will be fully integrated with Netscape Navigator sometime in 1996.
Collabra Share's discussion-group features are based on a proprietary protocol (called the Collaborative Object Store) rather than the
Internet's Network News Transport Protocol. "As part of the merged Netscape Navigator product, we'll move to an open-systems store," says Bob Lisbonne, vice president of marketing for Collabra.
Other companies are bringing groupware to the Web. For example, Digital Equipment's ((800) 344-4825; fax (800) 723-4431; Internet
http://www.digital.com
) $1995 Workgroup Web Forum adds basic conferencing capabilities to Web browsers. Infinite Technologies' ((800) 678-1097; fax (410) 363-3779; E-mail info@infinite.ihub.com) new WebMail software lets remote users connect to their Microsoft Mail, cc:Mail, and other mail systems over the Web.
In addition, Lotus Development's ((800) 343-5414; fax (415) 335-2280; Internet
http://www.lotus.com
) $195 cc:Mail for the Web is similar to Infinite's WebMail but supports only cc:Mail. Insitu ((617) 720-0821;
fax (617) 279-4436; E-mail sales@insitu.com) sells Windows application-sharing products for the Web.
Also, White Pine ((603) 886-9050; fax (603) 886-9051; E-mail info@wpine.com) plans on releasing an enhanced version of the CUSeeMe videoconferencing and whiteboard software for the Internet by the end of the year. Officials at White Pine say about 500,000 copies of the public domain version of CUSeeMe have already been downloaded.
For certain types of groupware, however, products like Lotus Notes, which offer sophisticated work-flow features, have advantages over current Internet-based E-mail, discussion groups, and document publishing. "On an information-exchange level, the Web is very good," comments David Marshak of the Patricia Seybold Group in Boston. "However, it's in the support of business processes that products like Notes really show their strengths."
Business processes are key corporate functions, such as product development, sales, order processing, and technical support. Work
-flow software can meet the demands of these complex processes by, for example, routing information through discrete phases and to multiple individuals. "The Web is great for broadcasting information, but work flow requires interaction," says David Coleman, the author of
Groupware: Technologies and Applications
.
Many groupware products can also synchronize shared information, and security tends to be stronger than it is in Internet-based products. This was amply demonstrated this fall by several high-profile Netscape security breaches.
Netscape is addressing the security problems, but many businesses apparently think the Internet is an inherently insecure medium. A recent poll by The Yankee Group, a Boston-based data communications and computing consultancy, indicates that security is the main concern of corporations with regard to using the Internet. When asked to rate issues delaying implementation, security scored a 4.8 (on a scale of 1 to 5), while support capabilities (3.37) and co
st (3.34) ranked lower.
Lotus Development and other companies have strengthened Web/Notes interoperability with the release of Internet publishing tools, such as InterNotes (see "Notes Meets the Internet," July BYTE). But Lotus officials say groupware encompasses much more than software: It also requires a secure, reliable network that you get in platforms like Notes. "We look at groupware as infrastructure rather than as simply a collection of applications," says Andrew Mahon, manager of Lotus's communications product marketing.
Netscape and other Internet players are mounting a serious challenge to proprietary systems, but long-term success is less certain. Says Karl Wong, a groupware analyst at Dataquest (San Jose, CA), "We have a way to go before we see the features of a product like Notes showing up in Web browsers."
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More businesses will use the Internet in the future, according to the Yankee Group's recent survey of 200 companies. However, the results of the survey also indicate that security is a big concern.
Groupware Taps the Internet
