While I've looked at collaboration tools and their adoption for some time now, I've only recently started looking into enterprise architectures. Some points to digest about the relationship between the two:

• The Advisory Council, an IT research and advisory firm based in Norwalk, CT that publishes a weekly column in CMP's InformationWeek, suggests targeting collaboration first when developing an enterprise architecture that crosses business units. The article includes this recommendation related to collaboration:

"Decompose top-down. We suggest a top-level decomposition of enterprise computing into a collaboration architecture, a reporting architecture, and an operational systems architecture.

"Start with collaboration. Since that architecture includes E-mail, an office application suite, browser technology, and desktop and laptop standards, you've probably got most of the architecture already agreed on. The only new elements are portal technology and collaboration software. "

• National Institute of Health recognizes collaboration as a key feature of its Enterprise Architecture, including a wide array of tools "that enable NIH users to access vital information resources, share information, and work and communicate effectively and efficiently with peers, customers, and the public." Examples include Plumtree, WebEx, SharePoint, Groove, eRoom, and many others.
  
• The Federal Enterprise Architecture, in contrast, includes three items under the general heading of "collaboration communications" in its Technical Architecture: email, fax, and kiosk. Whhaaaa? That's it?!!

10:48:13 PM    
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Three points:
(1) I'm back, after a much too long break from blogging, (2) the blog is different, and my views have expanded quite a bit - from telework to distributed work and beyond, and (3) I hope to hear from you - email me at dolan@software.org.

P.S. If you've subscribed to the "Telework Times" news feed in the past and want to stick to just telework-related posts, you might prefer to switch to my news feed from the "telework" category.

5:18:29 AM    
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