Causing collaboration

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RAJAN: The definition of enterprise collaboration goes through a wide spectrum of technologies.

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KILANI: The private sector will probably be leading the charge as they feel the pinch faster and then have to react accordingly.

Teaming up looks tantilising on paper but when it comes to executing the strategy the reality can be somewhat murkier and that's where collaborative systems come in.

Much to the chagrin of team leaders and business managers, individuals are all different and making the multitudes of personalities work together can be as tiresome as herding cats. Unlike the poor specimens tasked with moving felines along, the modern day enterprise has an arsenal of collaboration tools at its disposal to help get things cracking, not to mention the biggest asset in fostering teamwork - people like to talk.

The term itself can cause confusion, as collaboration is the act of people working together on something as a team. Leading on from this is the next logical step that collaboration systems can be anything that an enterprise uses that empowers people to work together, which is what they are. Though for each and every organisation this will be something a little different.

"It goes through a wide spectrum of technologies - right from the instant messenger you might use to the video conferencing and interactive collaboration systems that exist in some of the larger companies. The entire spectrum of technologies that are involved and some of the web 2.0 technologies that are available," says Ranjit Rajan, senior research manager for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at IDC.

Collaboration systems are a familiar sight for Ghassan Sadallah, head of academic computing services at the University of Sharjah, as both students and staff rely on the technology. Sadallah believes that it was the need to have information in one place that can be accessed, shared and linked, that gave rise to the need for collaborative systems.

"In recent years the need for such systems is becoming really important because most employees of foundations and institutes are based on electronic systems now. Before they used multiple systems for achieving different goals, for instance human resources, finance - or course management in our case for example. Calendars, emails, any of these things, so it used to be like a different system unrelated to each other and recently these things started to become a headache," he says.

"In the beginning it was really nice to make a different system, to make processes go faster, to make work easier, but the problem was when these systems started to increase and become fundamental in each institute or foundation, the need came here to have a centralised place that can join the information or the workflow available on these different systems in one place," adds Sadallah.

Education has been a hotbed for collaboration for some time, particularly with the potential benefits for both the institution's attendees and tenured staff. Sadallah explains that there are two sides at the university level, with the need for interaction between students and staff as well as with each other.

"If we concentrate on just faculty members with students, these tools really make the interaction between these two sides and in the end it will simplify the information or knowledge transfer to the students and teachers," continues Sadallah.

The efficiency of the process is improved by students interacting with each other, where Sadallah explains that elements like blogs, wikis and discussion boards come into play.

With these tools in place, students are able to ask questions that are clearly visible to other university members, which will often mean the students will help answer each other's questions before the lecturers even see the discussion thread.

This effectively allows the student base to form a pool of knowledge that acts as a resource to help each other and collaborate together and thereby improve the efficiency of the education system while doing so - though it is probably in the best interest of the institution not to point this out to their students.

"This is a new way that wasn't there before and wasn't easy in the classroom. Especially when you don't have the time to give a question and answer session," claims Sadallah.

"Calendar for example made it very easy for the students to track what is going on - when is my exams? When is the end of Semester? It even alerts them either by sms or email, so it really organises the students. Again, this wasn't there before," he says.

The main driving force behind the adoption of collaboration in the education sphere wasn't just efficiency improvements, Sadallah explains that the quality assurance for the industry is very important these days, so the systems make it easier for committees and the organisations that study how the university is going.

That isn't to say that the realm of blackboards, chalk and procrastinating students is the only vertical involved in collaboration. Indeed the technology has become industry-agnostic as enterprises hop on board the efficiency train and almost every enterprise in the Middle East is using at least using one collaboration system of some description.

"Most organisations in the Middle East use IT for collaboration in one way or the other. I can't imagine an organisation in the Middle East today that doesn't have email," says Bashar Kilani, manager of IBM's software business in the Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan.

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