A Government Computer News article by Susan M. Menke (Jan. 14, 2004), Defense adds another tool to collaboration kit, lists some of the COTS applications that are included in DoD's Defense Collaboration Tool Suite (DCTS), highlighting the newest addition, Forum eMeeting software from SiteScape Inc. Forum eMeeting is real-time collaboration client software that facilitates web meetings and virtual presentations, providing white board with mark up, application sharing, voice-over IP, and video Web conferencing. Users need only a PC, web browser, and low bandwidth connection (requires SiteScape Enterprise Forum).

Background on the DCTS project can be found at http://www.jitcwashops.disa.mil/projects/jtcb_dcts.htm - here's a taste of what you'll find (my emphasis added):

"In 1999, Congress instructed the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Intelligence Community (IC) to address the lack of interoperability between fielded collaborative tools. To respond to this Congressional direction, the Office of the Secretary for Defense (OSD) and the Joint Staff (JS) established a Collaboration Tiger Team (CTT) composed of members from the Commanders in Chief (CINC) (unified commands), Services, and Agencies (C/S/A), with a two-fold mission: (1) Develop a strategy for implementing the use of collaborative tools throughout DOD, and (2) Define and validate a prioritized list of functional requirements for DOD collaborative tools."

"DCTS is not a single product, rather, it is an evolving set of open standards within which standards-based products can interoperate"

We've covered a number of these tools in the Software Productivity Consortium's Tools Guide. The guide was updated to version 3 just a few days ago. Here's a list of the tools we've cataloged, with links to their info in the Tools Guide:

• eRoom from the Documentum.
• Groove Workspace from Groove Networks
• InfoWorkSpace from Ezenia
• Sametime (Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing System 3.0) from IBM/Lotus
• Livelink from OpenText
• SunForum from Sun

8:52:15 AM    
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