Fashion Mode

Definition of Collaborative software: An online encyclopedia defines the term as groupware or computer software that is designed to accomplish common defined objectives. Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz connoted the term as "intentional group processes plus software to support them." Today, the workforce expects social and mobile collaboration tools that will facilitate a "one-stop experience and access." The objective of the software is to alter the means the documents and rich media are shared in an organization, which will effectively enable team collaboration.

To attain collaboration, the individuals need to collate their work in coordinated fashion. To achieve this goal, it is important that the teams be brought together. The software enables functioning over disparate locations by providing the platform that leverage communication, and extends problem-solving capabilities. It programs project management functionalities like assignment of tasks, time management and shared calendars. Adding social networking capabilities, the objective remains to foster innovation by integrating knowledge management capabilities within the business processes and which will assist in solving the business problems immaculately.

The vendors are all taking different approaches to build the collaborative platforms. While some are incorporating the social layer, there are others, which are inputting collaborative tools. However, the platforms share common attributes like easy accessibility and usability and mostly come with common set of functionalities. There are even programmed to resemble the major social networking websites, to enable the user being accustomed to its processes.

Benefits of the platform

The following are some of the benefits when the platform is implemented in the organization.

• The messaging capabilities are extended with the in-built tools that are embedded in the program.


• With the choice of multiple platforms, the users can choose it according to the hardware, operating, client and directory needs.


• They are all integrated with the industry-specific standards of security to assist in the safeguarding of information critical to the business.


• Implementing Collaborative Applications help in the maintenance of low-costs of ownerships as the messaging and collaboration architecture is optimized with support resources like CPU, disk storage, floor space, network bandwidth, etc.


• They are equipped with server capabilities that enable clustering, server fault recovery, automated diagnostic tools and transaction logging.


• The platforms are designed so that it can be administrated easily and thereby require the minimum number of staff for management, and updating


• The platform can easily integrate with the existing applications within the organization because they are formulated to support the standard web services and open sources.

All these platforms come in different packages. While some of them are designed as the on-premise installations, others are deployed over Cloud.