Unified Communications

Hello world! Welcome to the Collaboration Coop!

Hello everyone! Welcome to my new blog, CollaborationCoop.com. My name is Christine Herbert. I am the Executive Editor of SearchExchange.com, SearchDomino.com and SearchSQLServer.com. I have been in IT publishing for over seven years.

As I explain on my About page, the goal of this blog 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.

There’s a lot of buzz in the collaboration space right now around unified communications, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), and IBM’s collaboration products like Lotus Notes Domino, Sametime and Quickr. With all the new products versions on the scene, this year promises to be filled with many developments in the collaboration arena.

In fact, we seem to be witnessing a huge surge of innovation and interest in the collaboration space. The market is young, but I expect it to mature rapidly, similarly to how the email-archiving market has developed over the past three years.  

MOSS and WSS adoption is taking off like a rocket. The first Microsoft SharePoint Conference, taking place in Seattle, Wash. the first week of March, is sold out and anticipation is high in the SharePoint blogosphere. I will be blogging from the show, so I’ll be sure to share any juicy tidbits I uncover.  

On the IBM Lotus front, the annual Lotusphere 2008 conference just wrapped up a few weeks ago and the Lotus Notes Domino community is still buzzing from the excitement at the show. Everyone in the Domino blogosphere seems pumped about version 8 of Lotus Notes Domino. IBM’s new Quickr product, which will compete with Microsoft SharePoint as document management and team collaboration application, is generating a lot of enthusiasm as well.

I look forward to experiencing the growth of the collaboration market that’s here and ahead, and hope you will join me for the journey. Thanks for visiting my blog.