Legacy and Current Practice — The Reality of Contemporary Collaborative Computing

Definition:Current practices in collaborative computing within government and industry are still conservative consisting of four main elements: video teleconferencing, audio conferencing, electronic mail, and shared directories.

Despite the wealth of research topics that comprise collaborative computing, current practices within government and industry can best be described as somewhat conservative. While many potential benefits of such an approach are known, the investment in existing infrastructure combined with the comfort of familiar practices offer challenges to those who hope to push the boundary of collaborative computing forward.

Many organizations have a limited scope in terms of what they consider collaborative computing. Specifically, organizational inertia often limits a broader deployment of collaborative computing, further burdened by policy, traditional operating procedures, fear of change and concern over ancillary and support costs. The result is that many...