A revolution is brewing in the world of collaborative software that promises to take network executives away from monolithic collaboration platforms and into a world of reusable components that can be embedded in any application.

The revolution is called contextual collaboration, which means that collaboration tools such as instant messaging, calendars, teamware, Web conferencing and discussion databases should not be separate applications but components with standard interfaces.

Those interfaces would let the components easily be embedded into line-of-business applications, such as adding a Web conference feature into a CRM application, and business processes, such as workflows.

Platform vendors including IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Novell and Oracle are busy deconstructing their collaboration products into such suites of components - and with good reason.

The concept, which experts say will develop in stages over the next four to five years, lets companies, partners and customers exchange information more efficiently and within the context of their work, such as application sharing activated from within a spreadsheet. It means end users don't have to leave familiar interfaces and open a separate application to collaborate with other users.

Contextual collaboration also cuts the latency inherent in human interaction when phone calls disappear into voice mail or e-mail goes unreturned. It also can reduce the complexity and cost of IT infrastructure by cutting support, management and security obligations. And eventually it will let machines collaborate through workflows that exploit collaboration components.

"This will be one of the biggest information management trends of this decade," says Matt Cain, an analyst with Meta Group, who coined the term "contextual collaboration" nearly three years ago. "And this will be one of the biggest areas of focus for IT."

Software revolution

Cain says the revolution is beginning now as vendors add their own collaboration features into their applications, what Cain calls "collaborative anarchy."

"From an IT perspective this is a nightmare in terms of the amount of infrastructure to support and in providing help desk support for each app. The cost is very high," he says.

"Eventually users will move away from features in point products to a palate of collaborative services supported by IT and made available through development tools and end-user applications," Cain says.