Web-Based Teamware Lets Users Work In Concert

By Nancy Cox   Teams fly in virtual formation today with members located across the enterprise, across the country or across the world all using divergent computing platforms. One common thread now unites them: the Internet. With this technology, teams using simple groupware applications can quickly consolidate their schedules, share project information, review current news and conduct group discussions all for the sake of completing that mission-critical project on time and under budget. To view the Repo rt card. Team members collaborating on projects used to require a private network and exactly the same client/server applications, such as identical e-mail or calendaring programs. As a result, team activities ate up lots of time and money--not to mention the constant hassle of upgrading software. Today, team members' needs are simple: an Internet connection, computer, Web browser, server-side application and, in some cases, a database are all that are needed. While everyone was focusing on getting an entire enterprise up and running on a massive groupware application, we witnessed the advent of a new genre of collaborative products, dubbed "teamware." What's the difference between groupware and teamware? Generally, groupware applications provide ongoing messaging and discussion tools for users in a large networked enterprise. Teamware applications focus on small, short-term working groups collaborating on a specific project. Teamware applications feature a more self-service environment in which the us ers minister to their own needs; in contrast, groupware applications typically are centrally managed. We looked for the ideal teamware application--one that, at a minimum, offers calendaring and group scheduling, file sharing and document management, discussion groups or forums and e-mail to notify members when something has changed. Additionally, we wanted access to news, contacts, online conferencing and whiteboarding, as well as survey or polling tools in order to arrive at group decisions quicker. We also were interested in finding a secure application, one that featured a logout button on every screen and adhered to the No-Store Directive in RFC 2068 (HTTP 1.1) to prevent Web pages being cached with requests or responses attached to them. In our central Florida Real-World Labę, we evaluated five teamware products. Changepoint International Corp.'s involv Internet 2.01, Digital Equipment Corp.'s AltaVista Forum 98, Fujitsu Software Corp.'s TeamWARE Office 5.1, IntraACTIVE's InTandem 3.5 and Kureo Te chnology's WebTop Information Server 1.1 were tested. Our test infrastructure included Compaq Computer Corp. ProLiant 5000 and 2500 servers, running Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3). On the client side, we used Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator 4.0 and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 4.0. Where required, we used Netscape Fast Track Server 3.0 and Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server) 3.0 as well as Oracle7 and SQL Server 6.5. All five products offer the basic teamware features and functions we were looking for. But top honors go to Digital's AltaVista Forum 98. It provides a comprehensive and integrated suite of collaborative applications as well as a highly customizable user environment. AltaVista Forum 98 also supports more Web servers and OSes than the other systems we evaluated.

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