The Drive Towards On-Demand Collaboration:

Criteria and Analysis for Making a Well-Informed Decision on Web Collaboration 2

A White Paper by: David Coleman & Robert Sayle Collaborative Strategies

Table of Contents Executive Summary Introduction On-Demand Collaboration Defined The Market for On-Demand Collaboration On-Demand Collaboration Challenges On-Demand Collaboration Requirements Checklist Analysis of Requirements Checklist Conclusion

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Executive Summary

On-demand collaboration is a new trend that is driving higher levels of connectedness than ever before. People want to work together on tasks, activities, and projects with anyone, anywhere, anytime, and on any connected device. As the environment for collaboration is changing, IT is coming under increased pressure to view on-demand collaboration as part of the infrastructure of their organizations. Over the last decade collaborative solutions have mostly been departmentally focused, but with the drive towards globalization, enterprise-wide solutions are now on ITs agenda. To meet the needs of the enterprise, and with quality of service expectations approaching 99.999%, IT must take a close look at the infrastructure needed to support on-demand collaboration. Top level infrastructure decisions need to be made on: Software as a Service vs. premise-based environment, and Performing collaboration activities over a public vs. private network. In addition to these decision points, this white paper looks at a list of criteria that can be used by IT management in evaluating and selecting an infrastructure solution that can support the high service level requirements of on-demand collaboration in an enterprise environment. Security, reliability, accessibility, and scalability are just a few of the criteria analyzed. So whats the best on-demand collaboration solution for your organization? Use the criteria and analysis provided in this white paper to help you define your requirements and make a well-informed decision.

Introduction

We are living in a world of on-demand communication. Cell phones, PDAs, etc. have transformed us into a mobile, connected society where people never want to be out of touch with one another. Many in the younger generation tend to be network-centric and always scanning for opportunities to connect. They dont want to miss anything! We see this desire to be connected having implications in the business world and helping to drive on-demand collaboration in the workplace. With a myriad of collaboration solutions on the market today, IT management in global organizations is faced with a dilemma on how to make the best decision for the enterprise. This white paper deals with the question, What infrastructure is needed to really support on-demand collaboration? We will explore what IT management needs to know to make informed decisions about this issue.

On-Demand Collaboration Defined

We define on-demand collaboration as the ability for people to work together around tasks, activities, or projects with anyone, anywhere, anytime, on any connected device. On-demand collaboration can occur among parties in a real time, synchronous environment or in a distributed, asynchronous environment where individuals are working independently of one another. As a trend, we see the majority of the market for ondemand collaboration moving to a Software as a Service environment.
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As we know, user service level expectations in the telephony world are very high 99.999%. It is safe to say that todays generation has similar expectations for on-demand collaboration, if they are not already there. Collaboration must always be on and be available (24x7x365). Collaboration must be conducted in a safe and secure environment. Collaboration must be reliable the message always gets there. So what makes up on-demand collaboration? There are a number of features or components that can be incorporated into an on-demand collaboration environment involving both synchronous and asynchronous activities as shown in Table 1 below:
Feature Voice Conferencing Web/Data Conferencing Video Conferencing IM/Presence Detection Virtual Team Space Group Calendar Document Management Security Type of Activity Synchronous Synchronous Synchronous Synchronous Asynchronous Asynchronous Asynchronous Asynchronous/Synchronous

Table 1 On-Demand Collaboration Features

The Market for On-Demand Collaboration

Growing usage of on-demand collaboration has resulted from several market drivers that are pushing it to the forefront. The need for users in disparate geographic locations to interact with each other more efficiently and make timely business decisions is becoming more critical due to increasing competition in the marketplace. The complexity of doing business is increasing. Outsourcing has become a way of life for companies. The ability to communicate and collaborate efficiently with outsourcing partners who are integrated into mission critical business processes requires on-demand collaboration technologies. The globalization of business has introduced significant challenges in managing a global workforce and working with customers, suppliers, and partners all over the world. The emergence of the human-based computing trend places the individual as the focus of the interaction rather than the technology. This is impacting the design of technologies so people can work naturally and dont have to change their behaviors or work habits to accommodate particular hardware or software requirements. Telecommuting is a growing trend in business. Employees engaged in team activities are looking to on-demand collaboration to improve their productivity in communicating and collaborating with their teammates who are in disbursed locations.

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Collaborative Strategies has seen different rates of growth in the real time (synchronous) and asynchronous sides of the market for on-demand collaboration solutions. Real time collaboration appears to be growing at a slightly faster pace as can be seen in Figure 1.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaboration Revenue Growth

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 25 20 15 10 5 0 Synchronous Revenues Asynchronous Revenues

Billions $

(From Real Time Collaboration and Communication Market Trends and Analysis 2006 Report See www.reports.collaborate.com)

On-Demand Collaboration Challenges

Both market research and anecdotal evidence tells us that on-demand collaboration in organizations is creating significant challenges for IT managers. Users have often bypassed IT altogether and signed up for hosted collaboration services on their own, resulting in a plethora of different collaboration technologies used throughout the organization. IT managers faced with this dilemma are looking for ways to meet their user needs at the enterprise level and, at the same time, efficiently manage and control on-demand collaboration activities with minimal resources. Issues around bandwidth, availability, robustness, and total cost of ownership continually come up in these discussions. The remainder of this white paper addresses a number of the issues IT management should think about when evaluating an infrastructure environment for on-demand collaboration that will meet the needs of the enterprise today and tomorrow.

On-Demand Collaboration Requirements Checklist

For IT managers faced with implementing an on-demand collaboration solution, there are many factors to consider. High volume, enterprisescale collaboration may require a dedicated architecture optimized for both real time (synchronous) and asynchronous collaboration. As such, it should be viewed as part of the organizational infrastructure. Top level decisions about the infrastructure include:

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Figure 1

Software as a Service (SaaS) vs. Premise-Based Environment: The SaaS environment offers advantages in that it minimizes IT resources needed to manage and maintain the collaboration infrastructure. These resources can be deployed on other critical activities within the IT organization. Often the cost is low, and it provides a good environment to trial on-demand collaboration solutions before scaling them to the enterprise level. Premise-based environments are often chosen by large organizations for reasons of security or control. By having the software on a computer behind their firewall, IT organizations get more control but also more cost, and less flexibility. We are not convinced security is any better behind a corporate firewall then it is in a SaaS environment. Public Network vs. Private Network: Routing through the public Internet is inexpensive, but you also get what you pay for. You have no control over the route your messages will take or the bandwidth available to transmit them. Furthermore, all types of data packets are transmitted over the same (network) pipe, increasing the risk of congestion and data packets getting separated or dropped during transmission as shown in Figure 2. Public Network
(Voice, Data, and Video packets all go through the same pipe.)

Dropped Packet

Dropped Packet

Figure 2 With a private network, the costs may be higher, but the advantage is that you often have greater management and control over the network to ensure a high level of service and a better user experience. The (network) pipe can be partitioned to accommodate different types of data packets that reduce the risk of congestion and packets getting separated or dropped as shown in Figure 3. Private Network
(Pipe is partitioned for different types of packets)

Figure 3 In addition to these top-level options, there a number of other criteria that must be considered when making a decision on the infrastructure for enterprise-scale collaboration. To assist with this process, we have
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prepared a checklist of criteria in Table 2 that can be used in developing the requirements for your organization.
Check Box Criteria Security Reliability Description Support end-to-end data encryption to prevent unauthorized access. Support 99.999% reliability among parties engaged in collaboration activities located anywhere in the world. Support 100% availability on a 24x7x365 basis. Support users working on different operating platforms such as Windows, MAC, Unix, etc. Support user growth seamlessly without any degradation in service. Support voice, data, streaming, and video conferencing. Support user connectivity from anywhere and with any device. Support speedy user access from anywhere in the world within a language-friendly interface. Provide technical support 24x7x365 on a global basis. Support ability to launch conferencing sessions from within mission critical applications to streamline the business process. Support an intuitive user interface that requires no training of first time users. Support comprehensive OSS features for provisioning, monitoring, and troubleshooting the network to deliver a 99.999% service level. Support a pricing structure that eliminates hidden costs and makes the Total Cost of Ownership completely visible to the customer.

Availability Interoperability with different platforms Scalability Multimedia support Connectivity Global access, support, and localization Integration with critical business processes Ease of use Operational Support System Total Cost of Ownership

Table 2 Checklist for On-Demand Collaboration Infrastructure In a recent conversation with IT managers at Agilent Technologies who were evaluating on-demand collaboration infrastructures for their organization, we found that all of the above criteria were important to them. In addition to support for Linux, scaling beyond Agilent to their value network (customers and suppliers) was also critical in their decision process. Other criteria deemed most critical included the ability to integrate with critical business processes (i.e. the ability to do on-demand collaboration with one click from other applications) and cost (i.e. total cost of ownership vs. just the application software cost).

Analysis of Requirements Checklist

We will now take a deeper look at each of the criteria listed in the checklist above by identifying some of the problems to be aware of and what is needed in an on-demand collaboration environment to overcome them. It is important to keep in mind that service levels can vary widely depending on infrastructure considerations such as using a public vs. private network for conducting on-demand collaboration activities. 1. SECURITY Problem: The threat of unauthorized access to data being accessed or transmitted across the public network is one of the top concerns of IT management. The transfer of data during Web conferencing sessions is
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at risk due to store-and-forward and memory caching approaches commonly used in transmitting data from router to router across the Internet. Likewise, unauthorized access to data stored in virtual team rooms via the Internet can also be a risk. Solution: The solution provider should support the transmission of data under SSL 128-bit encryption or Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for documents from end-to-end on the network. Furthermore, the network functioning in a switching environment supporting straight-through processing with no intermediate stops will eliminate unauthorized access during transmissions. To provide a high level of security, the network should support multiple security layers: Site Security which allows only authorized individuals to access sites where Web conferencing sessions are held or team rooms are provisioned. Meeting or Team Room Security which allows the host or administrator to regulate participant access levels and rights during Web conferencing meetings or accessing files in team rooms. Network Security supports intrusion control and security over data content during transmission using SSL-128 bit encryption or AES. Physical Security all sites housing network hardware and software should be classified as Tier-I data centers with two factor building access, and support redundancy between sites for fail-safe backup. A good way to validate the viability of the security supported by a solution provider is to see if the solution has been certified by third-party audits such as Web Trust, SAS-70, VeriSign, etc. Having multiple certifications is a definite plus. 2. RELIABILITY Problem: The public network (Internet) does not consistently support a 99.999% service level on a global basis. Downed servers, capacity limitations, and bandwidth issues can lead to traffic congestion across the Internet. Public routers attempt to find better paths to route traffic but this leads to additional hops and circuitous routing of data, resulting in increased latency in Web conferencing sessions. Collaborating over the Internet begs the question, Is best efforts good enough for your organization? Solution: The network should be designed to support unlimited bandwidth capacity. This can be done by designing overcapacity and supporting load balancing in the network to eliminate traffic jams and latency. Because the Internet is not centrally managed and controlled, achieving a 99.999% service level can only be achieved in a private network environment where these design criteria can be met. 3. AVAILABILITY Problem: The Internet lacks adequate fail-over capabilities. When network outages occur due to problems with the solution providers server or the Internet, users may not be able to access or initiate Web
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conferencing sessions. Sessions in progress may be terminated midstream and require a full restart from scratch when the outage is resolved. Solution: The network should be designed to support 100% uptime with transparent cutover to a redundant backup site when a service interruption occurs. All conferencing attributes, address book, preferences, and meeting schedules should be retained that enable a quick restart of meetings in progress. 4. INTEOPERABILITY WITH DIFFERENT PLATFORMS Problem: Web conferencing participants and users accessing a virtual team room may have poor user experiences because they are working in PC operating environments that are not supported by the vendors solution. Solution: The solution provider should support all user operating environments including Windows, MAC, Sun Solaris, and UNIX/LINUX to ensure a positive user experience when attending a Web conference or accessing a virtual team room. 5. SCALABILITY Problem: On-demand collaboration solutions may have capacity restraints on the number of simultaneous users. This can result in problems when scaling collaboration activities to the enterprise level, including the collaboration with external customers and partners. Solution: The solution provider should support scaling to the enterprise level with no restrictions on number of simultaneous users, media being transmitted, etc. This requires excess capacity being built into the network to absorb additional users and traffic spikes without impacting the user experience. 6. MULTIMEDIA SUPPORT Problem: Web conferencing sessions involving multimedia such as voice, data, streaming, and video conferencing require high bandwidth and can create latency issues among participants due to limitations in bandwidth during heavy traffic periods on the Internet. The inability to deliver a high quality user experience when deploying multimedia in Web conferencing sessions is also an issue with many solutions. Solution: The solution provider should support a compression scheme for minimizing the volume of multimedia data being transmitted. This can be done by filtering out redundant data found in presentations, which reduces the potential for traffic congestion and leads to improved throughput and decreased latency experienced by participants in Web conferencing sessions. Furthermore, having multimedia support built into the solution that is capable of individually coordinating the experience on each participants PC to ensue that all participants are viewing the same thing in the same way produces a high level of user satisfaction. 7. CONNECTIVITY Problem: Corporate firewalls and PC operating policies restricting user rights for Web client downloads, etc. can restrict user connectivity to Web
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conferences and virtual team rooms. This results in users being locked out from participating in on-demand collaboration activities. Solution: The solution provider should support encrypted communications through standard ports HTTP on Port 80 or HTTPS on Port 443 to ensure users can connect through the firewall. The solution should also support locked down PC environments by detecting user rights on their PC and enabling temporary Java client downloads that meet policy restrictions, as well as provide IT with the ability to push client files to user PCs in a managed, well-controlled environment. 8. GLOBAL ACCESS, SUPPORT, AND LOCALIZATION Problem: Many large organizations have a global reach with their distributed workforce, customers, and partners. Web conferencing participants located in various parts of the world may encounter access delays and latency when communicating through a solution providers central server farm due to the number of router hops across the public network that may be required by participants to connect with the server farm. Technical problems with the collaboration solution can impact the user experience if the solution provider maintains limited support windows that dont adequately cover the working day in other parts of the world. In addition, the solution provider cannot resolve problems occurring in the public network, which is outside their control. Limited support for languages in collaborative solutions can limit user participation in a global environment. Solution: The solution provider should: Support multiple processing sites that provide users with a short hop onto a dedicated network from anywhere in the world as shown in Figure 3. Deliver 24x7x365 technical support to users located anywhere in the world, and be able to troubleshoot and fix network problems occurring from end-to-end in a collaborative transmission. Support a user interface that has been localized to meet the needs of participants in collaborative sessions on a global basis, enabling individual participants to work in a language they are comfortable with on their PC.

Figure 3
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9. INTEGRATION WITH CRITICAL BUSINESS PROCESSES Problem: Organizations are operating in a fast-paced world where time is critical. Users need to have the ability to initiate collaborative sessions instantaneously from within mission critical business processes that enable them to make decisions, resolve problems, etc. on a timely basis. Organizations are also struggling with a variety of strategic issues ranging from where to position collaboration within their business processes to enterprise adoption of collaborative solutions. Solution: The solution provider should support a fully programmable API that enables organizations to embed access to the collaborative solution from within mission critical business applications supporting ERP, CRM, product development, and supply chain management processes. This eliminates extra steps and time required by the user to initiate collaborative sessions while engaged in these processes. Furthermore, solution providers offering strong Professional Services support beyond just implementation and training can help organizations maximize their ROI by working with them to resolve strategic issues around positioning and adopting collaboration across the enterprise. 10. EASE OF USE Problem: Participants are frequently invited into on-demand collaboration sessions without any prior experience with the collaborative solution. This can lead to frustration and a poor user experience if the interface is not intuitive and easy to navigate from the users perspective. Solution: The solution provider should support a user interface that is intuitive to first time participants and does not require prior training. This results in a positive user experience and can lead to expanded adoption of the solution by others within the organization (and outside) based on the principle of viral marketing. 11. OPERATIONAL SUPPORT SYSTEM Problem: Organizations that engage in Web conferencing over the public network do not have the ability to troubleshoot Internet-related problems when they occur. They are basically at the mercy of the Internet, so when latency occurs or sessions are dropped, there is no way to determine the cause of the problem and fix it. Solution: Network performance can be greatly enhanced with an Operational Support System (OSS) that manages all aspects of a large infrastructure network including: Real time monitoring of the performance of the network on a global basis. Troubleshooting and resolving problems quickly. Provisioning the network to meet a 99.999% service level by scheduling firmware and software upgrades without impacting the performance of the network. 12. TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP Problem: The total cost of ownership for on-demand collaboration solutions can be deceiving. There are the hard costs of procuring licenses for premise-based software or paying a SaaS provider based on
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one of many different pricing models in use such as cost per minute, per user, per session, etc. There are also soft costs that include management, maintenance, and support when operating a premisebased solution. SaaS providers can encounter shutdowns where the service is unavailable to users and alternative, more expensive collaboration means must be used. Low cost solutions may hide these costs that can increase the overall total cost of ownership. Another cost issue that can surface is budget limitations on what can be spent on collaborative solutions, which can, in turn, limit productivity and ROI. Solution: The solution provider should offer a pricing model that makes the total cost of ownership completely visible to the customer, with no additional, hidden costs the customer may incur. A pricing model gaining popularity is offering pricing that supports unlimited use of the solution (all you can eat) for a fixed price on a monthly basis. This helps organizations stay within their budgets, while maximizing the benefits from on-demand collaboration.

Conclusion

One of the trends we are seeing is a consolidation of collaborative technologies in use in the enterprise being driven by IT. Since ondemand collaboration has evolved as a departmental solution in many organizations, it has resulted in a myriad of different solutions in use across the enterprise. There is often pressure from IT to consolidate these collaborative applications down to one or two to reduce usage and support costs. As usage and adoption increases at the enterprise level, IT management must think of on-demand collaboration as part of the infrastructure. Service level expectations of users of these technologies are also growing. This is placing IT management under significant pressure to deliver service levels approaching 99.999%, similar to telephony service. Most on-demand collaboration solutions communicate via the public network, which places users at the mercy of the Internet and its limitations regarding reliability, availability, security, and a host of other criteria that relate to quality of service. When evaluating solution providers of enterprise-scale on-demand collaboration, IT management can use the checklist of criteria provided in this white paper to evaluate and select the solution that best meets the needs of their organization. We believe organizations seeking to insure a high quality of service to their users may be best served by looking to vendors offering a private network solution where quality of service can be managed and maintained to meet these expectations. The next major decision is whether or not IT wants to commit its own resources to manage and maintain the network vs. using a SaaS provider that is provisioned to deliver the desired service levels. In addition to IT organizations looking to consolidate the number of collaborative solutions in use across their organizations, we also see a consolidation in the number of vendors offering on-demand collaboration solutions in the market. The collaboration market is very crowded. We estimate there are approximately 200 vendors offering real-time, synchronous collaboration solutions today. Collaborative Strategies predicts this consolidation will continue over the next few years, which
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can be good for the market, because it weeds out the weaker vendors. However, it makes the market a minefield for IT management. It becomes imperative to select a viable vendor that will survive the consolidation. Table 3 provides a list of the top vendors of real time collaborative solutions based on revenue generated from their data/web conferencing solutions:
Company Name WebEx IBM/Lotus Citrix (Online) Genesys Conferencing Microsoft Cisco (Latitude) Oracle Adobe (Macromedia Breeze) Polycom 2004 Est. Revenues $249M* $200M $75M $78M $69M $50M $15M $28M $30M 2005 Est. Revenues $308M* $240M $95M $85M $80M $75M $75M $40M $33M

Table 3 - RTC Vendors Listed by Revenue (From Real Time Collaboration and Communication Market Trends and Analysis
2006 Report See www.reports.collaborate.com ) * Actual Revenue as reported in financial reports.

Additional research shows there are only few solution providers offering an enterprise-level solution built upon a private network infrastructure supporting on-demand collaboration. WebEx offers a comprehensive SaaS solution supporting both realtime, synchronous and asynchronous activities that is built upon its MediaTone network. Juniper Networks offers a collaboration appliance that hooks onto the corporate network, and provides excellent security, but with minimal functionality. Cisco offers collaboration appliances and a service offering that integrates Web conferencing (from its acquisition of Latitude) with its IP phones and network products. As the market for on-demand collaboration continues to grow, we expect more emphasis to be placed on infrastructure level offerings like these that offer superior quality of service at the enterprise and global levels.

Collaborative Strategies is a San Francisco based analyst and consulting firm focused on the areas of electronic collaboration and knowledge management. Since 1989, we have worked with vendors and end users of collaborative tools and technologies. Collaborative Strategies produces industry reports and provides advisory services on a variety of technologies in the areas of electronic collaboration and knowledge management. For more information on Collaborative Strategies, please visit our Web site at www.collaborate.com or contact us directly at 415-282-9197.

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