Collaborative
Solutions Research Summary
In
this project, our team worked together to research the top layers in the
Collaborative Software Solutions field.
We have organized our research into a brief Tour that defines
Collaborative Software, describes its history and evolution, and shows how it
is used today. Along the way, we formed
conclusions about the enabling technologies, discussed the major players, and
recommended two companies with solutions that might best fit your particular
needs.
On
the last subject, we have concluded that to find the "best"
Collaborative solution needs to start with a few questions:
1)
How large is the organization or workgroup you will be supporting?
2)
Are your users widely distributed, or concentrated in a few key locations?
3)
What systems are already in place to communicate data between locations?
4)
If some of the users are outside the corporate firewall, how will you share
information with them?
5)
How critical is real-time communication with users outside the firewall?
6)
Must the collaborative system allow users to access documents from anywhere? 7)
If so, what security measures does you company have in place that may help or
hinder this requirement?
8)
And the big one: What is your budget?
We
checked out the major players, and have concluded that for mid- to large-
companies, Groove Networks is the best choice for a scalable Enterprise
collaborative solution. We came to this
conclusion by comparing features, price, and reputation. Groove's Enterprise Integration server costs
around $10,000, with client seats moderately priced at $49. Figuring in consulting services, a simple
200-seat configuration should cost less than $30,000 to deploy at one
location. Adding in relay servers for
remote offices will cost you $5000 each, plus consulting.
For
research-oriented firms or for research departments at any size company,
Missiontrek's Cartagio server is a very affordable alternative. Companies can deploy their own servers for
as little as $1495 each, or log on to a subscription-based Knowledge Server
hosted by Missiontrek. Subscription
fees start at $10 per month per user for the server only, or $19 per month for
both the client and the server software.
Cartagio's Professional client is $175 per seat. Upgrade to the Enterprise client to take
full advantage of Cartagio's collaborative features.
A
research group of 10 professionals can deploy a complete collaborative research
solution for as little as $4000, or alternatively pay a subscription fee of
$190 per month with no other attached costs.
Click
Here to go right to our Research Summary Tour. Alternatively, you can sift through the
detail information by clicking bookmarks, snippets
and resources.
For
your convenience, we have included the final Research Summary statistics for
our project just below. You can also
view this information in the Research Summary Statistics section of Project
Organizer. Note that the Summary is
dynamic: addtional research performed by you and your colleagues is
automatically added to the total.
Statistics 31Jan2002 22:10:36
Project: Collaborative Solutions
Research time: 0:14:27 Active
time: 0:43:14 Open time: 3:02:10
Pages
visited: 54 - bookmarked: 26 (48%) - unbookmarked: 28 (52%)
Bookmarks
added: 21 Page AutoRank
(ave.): 18% Page relevance (ave.):
0%
Time/Page
(ave.): 0:00:16 Time/Bookmark
(ave.): 0:00:23 Billing charge: $200
User: Pat A. Researcher (pat@researchagent.com)
Research time: 0:05:13 Active
time: 0:08:04 Open time: 0:08:23
Pages
visited: 10 - bookmarked:
6 (60%) - unbookmarked: 4
(40%)
Bookmarks
added: 2 of 21 Page AutoRank
(ave.): 26% Page relevance (ave.):
0%
Time/Page
(ave.): 0:00:31 Time/Bookmark
(ave.): 0:00:36 Billing charge: $50
User: Zachary Factfinder
(zach@researchagent.com) [currently accessing project]
Research time: 0:05:45 Active
time: 0:09:24 Open time: 0:54:37
Pages
visited: 31 - bookmarked:
12 (39%) - unbookmarked: 19
(61%)
Bookmarks
added: 7 of 21 Page AutoRank
(ave.): 21% Page relevance (ave.):
0%
Time/Page
(ave.): 0:00:11 Time/Bookmark
(ave.): 0:00:21 Billing charge: $50
User: Sveta Factchecker (sveta@researchagent.com)
Research time: 0:03:29 Active
time: 0:15:31 Open time: 1:29:44
Pages
visited: 11 - bookmarked:
8 (73%) - unbookmarked: 3
(27%)
Bookmarks
added: 5 of 21 Page AutoRank
(ave.): 4% Page relevance (ave.):
0%
Time/Page
(ave.): 0:00:19 Time/Bookmark
(ave.): 0:00:17 Billing charge: $100
User last access history:
31Jan2002
22:10:16 Zachary Factfinder [6 session(s), 40% of project time]
31Jan2002
18:40:54 Pat A. Researcher
[1 session(s), 36% of project time]
31Jan2002
18:31:17 Sveta Factchecker
[1 session(s), 24% of project time]
Last
modified: 31Jan2002 22:08:46 by Kirk Fackre
Billing
ref: 12345.678
Folio
ref: IM.02-03-2002
Thanks
again for allowing us to assist you with your research needs, and rest assured
that we will be here to support you with this or any other projects, as the
need arises.
Sincerely,
The
Research Team at www.researchagent.com
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