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AnchorDesk

Patrick Houston
Let's talk about high-tech teamwork tools

Patrick Houston
Editorial Director, AnchorDesk
Monday, June 2, 2003
TalkBack!Add your opinion
How do you meet in big or small groups? Do you do it the way we've done it around here?

Here's how big meetings went at my company: Everyone dialed in via a third-party conference calling service. If a presentation was part of the fun, we pointed our browser at a third-party Net meeting service.

WE'D DO MUCH the same thing for small group gatherings. Any more than a handful of people involved, and we'd resort to the conference calling service again. If sharing a presentation or document was involved as well, we'd just e-mail everyone their own copy. Yeah, some other collaboration tools may have been available--but, so far as I knew, not many of us used them.

Any way you look at it, these meeting methods cost a pretty penny. Along with regular telecommunications costs, they'd saddle us with extra expenses--extra for the conference calling service, extra for the Web conferencing service. Plus, they required us to set up and use two different tools, which made it time-consuming and a real pain in that part of the anatomy that occupies the biggest part of an office chair.

If your company is like mine, you're not having fewer meetings. But continuing budget constraints mean having to make do without expensive face-to-face staff gatherings.

All that's why I want to tell you about a new product being announced today by Shoreline Communications, a provider of voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. (Before I go one word further, I need to be clear: My company is a customer of Shoreline's. I'm a user. I like its product. But this column is not an endorsement or testimonial. Note to Shoreline CEO Tom van Overbeek: If I say something nice, you can't quote me.)

THE PRODUCT is called ShoreConvergedConference. Van Overbeek and his Shorelineans claim it will deliver rewards above and beyond the usual benefits of VoIP (chief among them: toll-free long distance). Along with its voice-conferencing capabilities, this new tool will enable data sharing through a single integrated system and interface. Eventually, they say, the toolkit will be expanded to include electronic white boards and instant messaging, too.

This means you could, through that single interface, talk, present, type, and doodle your way through a brainstorming session even though you may be in Peoria and your colleagues are in Prague, La Paz, or Peking.

In explaining the new product to me (which should start shipping in mid-June), the Shoreline folks claimed users will take to it as readily as they took to spreadsheets, e-mail, or the Web. That contention is based on what I consider to be a simple, but radical, presumption: Voice is the basis of collaboration. Not software, not the PC, not the Web, but yapping.

They may have a point. Around here, we make a living trying, reviewing, and embracing technology. Yet our first and foremost method of collaborating is decidedly non-tech: We get together to talk, in person or by phone. Yes, we use e-mail, NetMeeting, and third-party Web conferencing services--but only as supplements to conversation.

I WANT TO take van Overbeek et al. at their word. Not because I'm a lineal descendent of Dilbert's boss and see that this system could save my cubicle crew some money and make us more productive. I'm a journalist too, and, if there's one thing I like even more than the technology I follow, it's a good fight.

Shoreline is in for one--a real donnybrook. And here's the card: Shoreline, a featherweight, is in one corner. In the other stands no less than super heavyweight Bill Gates, attended by the entire PC industry.

Earlier this month, at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, Gates talked about how Microsoft's Office Real-Time Communications Server (formerly code-named Greenwich) and forthcoming versions of Windows would serve as platforms for collaboration tools like phone and videoconferencing. Then there's the corporate-grade instant-messaging service that will be a centerpiece of Microsoft's new RTC server and the Sharepoint Web portal services that will be a centerpiece of Office 2003.

Who's going to win in this match between a PBX-based approach to collaboration vs. the PC-centric one? Here's my bet: It doesn't matter, at least not to us users. Both corners are converging technologies. Soon enough, thanks to VoIP, the PC and the phone are inevitably becoming one.

For most of us now, a PC--like any phone--is primarily a communications tool. Thanks to VoIP, phones--like the PC--are becoming more intelligent. Whatever teamwork tools we have, and wherever they reside (on a Microsoft RTC server, a Lotus Notes server, or Shoreline's IP PBX), we'll access them through the phone and  the PC.

Even now, thanks to the Shoreline system here, I seldom dial my handset. Instead I mouse and click on the Shoreline Call Manager app that resides on my PC. If my company opts for ShoreConvergedConference, I'll be using Call Manager even more. Even if it doesn't, thanks to Microsoft, I'll be collaborating more at the keyboard than at the dial pad.

Either way meetings promise to be more efficient and working as a team easier, which means that the winner and champ here will be...us.

What do you think? How do you collaborate now? Do you think a voice-based collaboration system makes sense? Or will Microsoft dominate here as it does everwhere else? TalkBack to me! 

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