The word “collaboration” has been bandied about for many years now. But it was never truly understood by businesses as anything more than a marketing buzzword. It now seems though that we’ve reached a critical point in the evolution of collaboration software in which the products and tools entering the market and the needs of business users and groups are finally meeting, merging and complementing each other.  

IBM Lotus offered the best (and only) collaboration platform for many years with Lotus Notes Domino and Sametime, and promises to continue to keep things interesting with its new Quickr and Connections products.  But Microsoft has finally entered the collaboration scene in a meaningful way, too, with its increasingly popular SharePoint product and the tighter integration now available in its 2007 line of applications, including SharePoint 2007, Exchange 2007, the Office 2007 suite and Unified Messaging.  

The rise of Wikis, blogs and social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn also add a whole new dynamic to the world of collaboration, and their influence and ultimate impact is still yet to be determined.  

The goal of this blog, The Collaboration Coop, is to observe the evolving dynamics of collaboration technology from an IT perspective and from the end-user perspective; to explore the successful use of collaboration products; and to offer opinions, best practices and advice that will further the cause of and increase the clarity of collaboration’s role in the workplace.