Integrated Collaboration Environment

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Integrated Collaboration Environment (ICE) is defined as the environment in which a virtual team do their work. These environments allow companies to realize a number of competitive advantages by using their existing computers and network infrastructure for group and personal collaboration. These fully-featured environments combine the best features of web-based conferencing and collaboration, desktop videoconferencing, and instant message into a single easy-to-use, intuitive environment. Recent developments have allowed companies include streaming in real-time and archived modes into their ICE.

Common applications found within ICE are as followed:

Collaborative software is software specifically designed to improve the performance of teams by supporting the sharing and flow of information. It allows for real-time collaboration and conferencing.
Workflow systems facilitate the automation and management of business processes.
Documentation Management Systems manages a document through all the stages of its processing.
Peer-to-peer Collaboration Software permits users to communicate in real time and share files without going through a central server.
Knowledge Management Systems are Information Technology (IT) systems that support the capture, organization, and distribution of knowledge (know-how).
Social Network Systems are IT systems that link you to people you know and, from there, to people your contacts know. It is essentially a way to leverage your personal and professional contacts.

ICE allows organizations to take advantage of technological advances in computer processing power and video technology while maintaining backward compatibility with existing standards-based hardware conference equipment. ICE, if implemented properly, can be successful for a company from a cost-cutting perspective. These benefits are achieved through cross discipline fertilization, which allows knowledge workers to share information across departments of a company, which can be important for ensuring that corporate goals are shared and fully integrated.

Although companies can realize positive gains from implementing ICE, there are also challenges with the implementation process. The challenges have been related to employee’s lack of acceptance of a given ICE application. That being said, gaining acceptance of ICE has not been a problem for most of the previously mentioned applications, with the exception of Knowledge Management Systems. Studies have shown that that lack of commitment and motivation by knowledge workers, professionals, and managers is the reason for problems, not the knowledge management technologies. Possible reasons for the lack of acceptance include:

People don’t realize how important the knowledge they possess actually is and therefore don’t submit it to the knowledge repository.
People believe that “knowledge is power” and are reluctant to share what they know with others.
People don’t have time to submit information. This can be real problem and one where technology can help. By being closely tied to existing working practices, knowledge management applications transparently capture and store information back in the repository.