How do intranets relate to groupware?
Groupware, a term coined by marketeers around 1995 to mean “software that facilitiates group work,” never emerged as a well-defined software category. Today the term is used less and tends to be narrowly identified with three products: Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise. Groupware functionality is roughly synonomous with collaborative computing and embraces the following: • document sharing • collaborative authoring • versioning • messaging • secure access • search/retrieval • discussion forums • database integration. Intranet technology is well-suited to many of these tasks, having matured in areas where it was initially weak, such as security and integrated search. The major groupware products have shifted from their early proprietary roots to internet-based architectures. For instance, Microsoft Exchange 5.5 supports POP3 and IMAP4 Internet mail, NNTP-based newsgroups, and LDAP directory services. Perspectives. For an early, lucid explanation of groupware, see Lotu
