Australian companies adopting web collaboration

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 January 2009 03:04

Business IT - Networking

New research indicates that Australian enterprises large and small are becoming increasing adopters of web collaboration technologies to improve productivity and communications. While larger enterprises are already big web collaboration users, a significant proportion of  small to medium enterprises are also fast moving towards adoption.

The report titled, “Conferencing and Collaboration Technologies in the Australian Business Market 2008”, from communications market research firm Telsyte found that around 50% of MLE organisations are already using web collaboration tools, with another 20% looking to deploy collaboration platforms over the next 12 months. The SME market has also shown great interest in the technology with over 25% of SMEs looking to use collaboration tools by the end of 2009.

“The interest and uptake of web collaboration is very much aligned with Australian businesses’ priorities for 2009 and also the awareness of the Green ICT movement,” said Gary Tsang, Telsyte enterprise communications analyst.

“Mid-market and large enterprise decision makers are currently evaluating various options in increasing workforce productivity and streamlining business processes, and at the same time, reducing cost of running the business by leveraging technology. The ROI is much higher for some vertical than others.”

Telsyte has observed that the on-demand, pay-per-use nature of web collaboration is also attractive to the SME market.

“SMEs finds the pay-per-use model both capital and resource friendly,” Tsang said.

“In addition, the current platforms available in the market are easy to use, and virtually works on all types of desktop environment and configurations, hence significantly lessen the burden for internal IT to service and support.”

Telsyte has also detected a shift in businesses usage preference of collaboration tools - as an interface to external customers. Businesses are utilising the document/application sharing features to provide services, such as training and remote sales support, for customers.

“Using collaboration technologies as an externally facing tool adds another level of complexity, especially for B2C focused businesses,” said Tsang.

“Apart from taking into account the business’s own ICT environment, they nee to also consider the network and desktop constraints at the customer’s end.”