Enterprise Collaboration Platform Configurations: an Empirical Study Petra Schubert and Susan P. Williams University of Koblenz schubert@uni-koblenz.de, williams@uni-koblenz.de Schubert, Petra and Williams, Susan P. (2022): Enterprise Collaboration Platform Con- figurations: an Empirical Study. In: Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: The International Venue on Practice-centred Computing on the Design of Cooperation Technologies – Notes, Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (ISSN 2510-2591), DOI: 10.48340/ ecscw2022_n01 Copyright 2022 held by Authors, DOI: 10.18420/ecscw2022_n01 Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, contact the Authors. Abstract. Collaboration and communication technologies are essential for the support of cooperative work in organisations. Unlike the situation with ERP Systems, there is no single integrated Enterprise Collaboration System that provides systematic and compre- hensive support for all the different forms of collaborative activities. As a consequence, organisations must combine multiple tools, applications and systems to build their Enter- prise Collaboration Platform. In this paper, we present the findings of a focused empirical study that examines the complex collaborative technology landscape in user organisa- tions in order to characterise and understand the evolving portfolios of collaboration soft- ware that have been implemented. Based on a literature review combined with an analy- sis of existing commercial software products, we developed a classification scheme for Areas of Collaborative Work (ArCoW), which is then used to structure an online ques- tionnaire. The analysis of data from 23 responding user companies revealed three typical “configurations” of Enterprise Collaboration Platforms: concentration, where the platform is highly focused on a core ECS/suite with only a few additional collaboration software tools, diversity that also builds around a core ECS/suite but extends this with a wide range of additional tools and dual core characterised by two ECS/Suites with few addi- tions. mailto:schubert@uni-koblenz.de mailto:williams@uni-koblenz.de 2 Motivation The use of collaboration technologies to support and coordinate distributed col- laborative work is increasing in both scale and scope. This has been especially noticeable in the past two years as organisations have responded to the short-term challenges presented by the work from home mandates triggered by the COVID- 19 pandemic (McKinsey Global Institute, 2021; World Economic Forum, 2020) as well as the longer-term trend for organisations to offer employees more flexi- ble work options to support hybrid work (Gratton, 2021). This is resulting in a wider range of working arrangements and an increased requirement to provide collaboration technologies to support distributed work teams. As a response to this increase in the scale of distributed collaborative working there has been a concomitant increase in the scope and functionality of technolo- gies to support collaborative work (Gartner, 2021). As the degree of hybrid work- ing increases, the complexity of supporting collaborative work has also increased, requiring IT departments to place greater attention on the selection and provision of “collaboration software” to provide a stable technology environment to support a wider range of collaborative work situations. However, collaboration software designed to support ad hoc collaborative work activities is inherently different from software such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that, by design, support repetitive and highly structured business processes. Whilst the majority of today’s ERP Systems have evolved into highly integrated systems with functional modules that store data in a central database, the commercial solutions for collaboration software are highly special- ised, focusing on supporting selected areas of joint work. Only a small number of collaboration software products (e.g. HCL Connections, Atlassian Confluence, Jive) contain multiple functional modules and would qualify as integrated Enter- prise Collaboration Systems. The fact that collaboration software is highly specialised means that organisa- tions often need to combine many different software products to support the di- verse requirements for joint work. This has led to a (somewhat uncontrolled) growth of available products in use in organisations (Schubert & Williams, 2022) and as a consequence, many companies have implemented a heterogeneous range of tools (from different vendors) with overlapping (redundant) functionality. These portfolios of collaboration software include lightweight tools for specific tasks such as file sharing or simple message exchange to more complex Enter- prise Collaboration Systems (ECS). Taken together the tools provide an “Enter- prise Collaboration Platform” (ECP) that comprises the full range of collabora- tion software tools and applications available to the registered users of an organi- sation. Frequently, the selection of these products arises bottom-up in a piecemeal fashion as different tools are requested by single departments and is not conduct- 3 ed top-down, centrally coordinated by the IT department (Riemer et al., 2012). Examining the portfolio of software products across the entire organisation re- veals a diverse range of tools in use, provided by multiple vendors and supporting differing and often redundant functionality. The aim of our research is to examine whether typical “configurations” for Enterprise Collaboration Platforms are emerging to support distributed collaborative work. That is, our goal is to identify whether there are frequently occurring combinations of collaboration software products that, in their combination, provide identifiable collaboration platform types. In this research note, we report on the findings of an empirical study of exist- ing Enterprise Collaboration Platforms in 23 medium- to large-sized organisa- tions. In order to investigate the design of Enterprise Collaboration Platforms, we develop a generic template for the Areas of Collaborative Work (ArCoW) and use this to examine similarities in existing collaboration tool portfolios reported by the participating user organisations and to identify typical configurations. The study builds on and extends our previous work on the use of social software in organisations (Schubert & Williams, 2022; Williams & Schubert, 2018) and is part of IndustryConnect, a long-term university-industry research programme exploring collaboration technologies and the design of the digital workplace in 35 leading organisations in the DACH area (Williams & Schubert, 2017). The re- search programme has been following the emergence and shaping of the digital workplace in these organisations since 2013 through the development of longitu- dinal case studies, research workshops, interviews and trace ethnographies of work and work practices. The paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we introduce the re- search design and explain the development of the survey instrument and the col- lection of research data. We then present our analysis, and emerging platform configurations are identified. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of our find- ings and present imperatives for future research. Research Design and Survey Instrument This section describes the research design and the development of the survey in- strument. As described above, our aim is to examine the emergence of enterprise collaboration platform types by identifying and analysing the portfolios of collab- oration tools in use in organisations. A mixed method research approach using an exploratory-sequential design was applied (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018), which combines literature and software analysis with empirical methods for the collection and analysis of survey data. The survey instrument was developed based on a literature review followed by a thorough examination of the functionality of existing standard software solutions 4 (Schubert & Williams, 2022). The survey data was collected from user organisa- tions through an online questionnaire. Figure 1 shows the research steps and the outcomes of each step. In the first step, the findings from an analysis of dimensions of collaborative work in the CSCW research literature and the examination of functionality of existing collab- oration software were merged to develop a classification of Areas of Collabora- tive Work (ArCoW). In the second step, the ArCoW structure was used to design the online questionnaire and in the third step, the questionnaire was implemented using LimeSurvey (an open source online statistical survey Web application) and used for data collection. 1. Literature and software analysis 3. Data collection 4. Data analysis Classification of col laborative work (ArCoW) 2. Survey instrument 5. Comparative analysis Task Management File Share Information Collection (e.g. Wik i) Information Exchange (e.g. Forum) Short messages (Microblogging) Ideation, Polls, Voting Meetings (synchronous communication) Joint work on documents/files Technical: Central User Directory Informational: Employee Directory (White Pages) Asynchronous Work People (Identity Management) Persistent information of longitudinal interest Ephemeral information of short-term interest Synchronous (simultaneous) Work Information Portal Personal Information Management (PIM) ArCoW Framework Development of onl ine questionnaire Survey: questionnaire Survey: data records Survey of ava ilable software in user organisations Analysis of data with ArCoW Framework Task Management 32 File Share 44 HCL Connections: Activities 9 Network Directories 16 Atlassian Jira 8 HCL Connections: Files 13 Kudos Boards 4 MS Sharepoint 8 MS Planner 5 OpenText Documentum 1 MS Todo 2 nScale 1 Taskworld 2 Xpublisher 1 Trello 2 MS OneDrive 4 Information Collection (e.g. Wiki) 24 Information Exchange (e.g. Forum) 26 HCL Connections: Wiki 14 HCL Connections: Forum 13 Atlassian Confluence 7 HCL Notes 6 MS Teams Wiki 3 Atlassian Confluence 3 Open Source Wiki-Software 1 MS Teams 3 MS Yammer Groups 1 Short messages (Microblogging) 33 Ideation, Polls, Voting 24 HCL Connections: Statusupdates 11 HCL Connections: Ideation Blog 11 WhatsApp 5 HCL Connections: Survey 7 HCL Sametime Chat 6 Atlassian Confluence 3 MS Teams 7 MS Forms 1 Zoom Chat 3 LimeSurvey 2 Kaizala 1 Meetings (synchronous communication) 49 Joint work on documents/files 28 HCL Sametime 10 HCL Connections: Files 10 MS Skype 5 MS OneDrive 8 Zoom 6 MS SharePoint 5 Webex 5 MS Office 365 online 4 Slack 3 OpenText Documentum 1 MS Teams 3 WhatsApp 10 Cisco Jabber 4 Lifesize 1 GoToMeeting 2 Asynchronous Work Persistent information of longitudinal interest Ephemeral information of short-term interest Synchronous (simultaneous) Work Survey: descriptive statistics Identification of dominant configurations Concentration Diversity E-Mail MS Outlook MS ExchangeMS OneNote Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 14 Suite 1: Microsoft MS Teams File Share: MS OneDrive File Share: Office 365 online File Share: MS SharePoint Wiki: MS Teams Wiki MS Yammer Groups Skype Suite 2: Atlassian Task Mgmt: Atlassian Jira Wiki: Atlassian Confluence DXP: Adobe Experience Manager Dual Core Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 13 Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 3 E-Mail MS Outlook MS ExchangeMS OneNote SAP NetWeaver Portal ECS: HCL Connections Suite: Microsoft MS Teams File Share: MS OneDrive File Share: MS SharePoint Task Mgmt: MS Todo Boards: MS Planner Network directories Task Mgmt: Atlassian Jira Wiki: Atlassian Confluence Suite 2: Atlassian Files Microblog: Status Updates Surveys Wiki Forum Ideation Blog Task Mgmt: Activities Skype MS Teams Wiki E-Mail HCL Notes HCL Domino HCL Verse ECS: HCL Connections HCL Connections Homepage Chat: Sametime Files Microblog: Status Updates Task Mgmt: Activities Wiki Forum Skype Messenger: WhatsApp Network directories Notes Forums MS OneNote Trello Video Conference: Zoom WCMS: Xpublisher Chat: Slack 3 ECP Configuration Figure 1. Research steps and results The collected data records containing the portfolio of software in use in the re- sponding user organisations were transferred into an Excel file for analysis. In the fourth step, the ArCoW Framework was used to derive descriptive statistics about the type and number of tools in use in the responding organisations. The fifth and final step was a comparative analysis of the data records which reveals similari- ties in the data that could be described as typical configurations of an Enterprise Collaboration Platform. The following sections describe the research carried out in each of the steps in more detail. Literature and Software Analysis: Areas of Collaborative Work Investigating the infrastructure for all areas of collaborative work is a complex task and requires a classification scheme that is consistent with analytical frame- works developed in the academic literature as well as with “the language of prac- tice”. Moreover, the classification must be applicable to examining the function- ality bundles of contemporary commercial collaboration software. For this, we purposefully combined findings from a literature review with a functional exami- nation of existing software products. 5 Literature review For the development of our classification scheme, we examined existing ap- proaches in the literature. We were particularly interested in meta classification schemes that provide a comprehensive classification of the entire field of collabo- rative work. Examples are the study of categories of tools by Bafoutsou and Mentzas (2002), Riemer’s catalogue of classification criteria (Riemer, 2007), the 8C Framework by Williams (Williams, 2010) and Schubert’s classification of software components (Schubert, 2018). All of the identified classification ap- proaches contain similar dimensions, the most prominent being synchronicity (synchronous/asynchronous) and place (Ellis et al., 1991), permanency of the information (ephemeral/long-term) (Schubert, 2018), type of group process (communication, cooperation, coordination) (Williams, 2010), content type (text, image, video, audio) and number of communication partners (1/many) (Ellis et al., 1991). The type of activity is often grouped into three (or four) “Cs”: Com- munication, Cooperation, Coordination (and Content). In addition, studies have shown that collaboration software can be classified into categories, which are dependent on the type of work which they support. Riemer (2007) suggested the five categories Integrated Systems, Everyday Systems, Meeting Systems, Coordi- nation Systems and Specialised Tools as a result of a cluster analysis on a sample of 94 collaboration software products using some of the attributes listed above. Bafoutsou and Mentzas (2002) found similar categories in their functional review of collaborative systems. Their main groups are real-time conferencing, non-real time conferencing, file and document sharing, electronic workspace and electron- ic meetings systems. Software analysis We used the Collaborative Technologies Evaluation Tool by Schubert and Wil- liams (2011) for our analysis of leading commercial software products. The eval- uation tool is based on the 8C Model (Williams, 2010) and contains a list of 42 functional criteria which are grouped by the four inner Cs (see Annex). The preceding analysis of the literature showed that there is no accepted “standard” classification scheme for all areas of collaborative activity. The fol- lowing analysis of the software identified that there is no single integrated Enter- prise Collaboration System that covers all aspects of collaboration. Instead, the market for collaboration software is heterogeneous, comprising a multitude of commercial collaboration tools with both overlapping and disjoint functionality. Based on this analysis, we developed and used a classification scheme that is relatively straightforward in its reflection of daily work practices and allows or- ganisations to clearly define requirements according to user activity. To map the software functionality to this scheme, we decomposed software products on a modular level, assigning (some of) them to multiple areas. This turned out to be a feasible approach and it also helped to clearly identify overlapping and redundant 6 functionality. The resulting classification contains 8 functional categories (Figure 2) which represent the areas of collaborative work (ArCoW). On the highest level, we distinguish between synchronous and asynchronous activity. Synchronous activity is further sub-divided into communication-oriented meetings and cooperation-oriented work on documents/files. Asynchronous activi- ty has two additional sub-areas according to the permanency of the information: ephemeral (of short-term interest) and persistent (of long-term interest). The ephemeral section contains communication-oriented short messages (microblog- ging) as well as the coordinative features ideation, polls and voting, content which is normally only relevant for a short amount of time. The persistent section has four sub-areas: the coordination-oriented task management and the three con- tent-oriented file sharing, information collection (documentation) and information exchange (question-response). Task Management File Sharing Information Collection Information Exchange Short messages (Microblogging) Ideation, Polls, Voting Meetings Joint work on documents/files Asynchronous Work Persistent information of longitudinal interest Ephemeral information of short-term interest Synchronous (simultaneous) Work Figure 2. ArCoW Framework (Areas of Collaborative Work) All dimensions that were identified in the literature review are contained in this classification but they are not all equally important/visible. Our main dimensions are synchronicity and permanency of the information. The sub-areas reflect dif- ferent types of group processes (communication, cooperation, coordination, con- tent creation). Content type (text, image, video, audio) and number of communi- cation partners are implicitly embedded in the functionality provided by the software. We excluded the dimension of place (Ellis et al., 1991) in our prelimi- nary analysis of distributed remote and hybrid work, where nothing is (solely) co- located. This is not to say that place is not important, however, for the purposes of this preliminary study where the objective is to analyse the constellations of soft- ware tools in use and emerging technology platforms being formed, the analysis of the place where someone is working from is less important than the mode of working, i.e. synchronous/asynchronous and the requirements (or not) for persis- tence of information. Place (and physical distribution of actors), as well as other dimensions such as those identified by Lee and Paine (2015) such as scale, scope and nature of work play an important part in our subsequent analysis of the col- laborative work and work practices. 7 Introducing the platform view The aim of our study was to investigate how organisations build their Enterprise Collaboration Platform – the collective portfolio of collaboration software to pro- vide the technology environment to support enterprise-wide collaborative work. As demonstrated in our software analysis, commercial collaboration software can be assigned to specific areas of collaborative work (discussed above). When ex- amining the infrastructure of a whole organisation (the platform level), we need to also consider the basic technology stack that is used to form the foundation of the platform. The foundation includes the user management, personal information management as well as the organisational “homepage” (usually a portal or in- tranet) that provides a structured and uniform access to the information resources of the organisation. The technical aspect of the Central User Directory is covered by solutions for identity and access management (IAM) that comprise services for authentication, authorisation, user management as well as a central user repository. IAM provides the possibility for single sign-on for multiple software applications from desktops as well as mobile devices (Gartner, 2022b). The informational employee directory addresses the need to know the background of a person (area of expertise) in or- der to identify experts or appraise their contributions (name of person, room, con- tact info, expertise, role, …). In recent years, this functionality has been added in the form of “Enterprise Social Networks” (ESN) (Wehner et al., 2016) or “Social Intranets” (Williams & Schubert, 2018). These terms were coined when “Enter- prise Social Software” was introduced into organisations as a direct result of the success of the public Social Media (Leonardi et al., 2013). These two software types have similar functionality but differ in their primary objective. Both provide “social features” (social profile, link, follow, like, tag, post, comment, …) where the ESN has a focus on people with the aim of establishing links between them to build an organisational network structure and the Social Intranet has a focus on content to share and increase awareness about information. Personal Information Management (PIM) is the term used for the realm of in- formation creation and organisation of each employee. PIM software enables in- dividuals to create digital content (texts, slides, worksheets, graphics, databases, charts, videos, music, …). The majority of documents are first created within in- dividual desktop environments and only later “become social” when they are up- loaded or copied into collaboration software. Content that is natively created in a collaboration software is “born social” (Hausmann & Williams, 2016). Information Portals are typically implemented by means of Digital eXperience Platforms (DXP) (Gartner, 2022a) or Content Service Platforms (CSP) (Gartner, 2022c). These basic platform components are the necessary foundation for the building of an Enterprise Collaboration Platform. Collaboration software for the different areas of collaborative work (ArCoW) is then added to the ECP according to the 8 requirements of the user organisation. Figure 3 shows an example of an ECP with its portfolio of software products. As mentioned earlier, software products con- taining multiple functional components can appear in multiple areas. For exam- ple, NextCloud is a tool for (asynchronous) file sharing but also allows users to synchronously work on files. HCL Connections is an integrated Enterprise Col- laboration System with multiple functional modules (wiki, blog, forum, etc.) that supports almost all areas of asynchronous work. For our analysis, we decomposed such systems and suites into their separate modules. This explains why the same symbol can occur multiple times with different labels. Task Management File Sharing Information Collection Information Exchange Short messages (Microblogging) Ideation, Polls, Voting Meetings (synchronous communication) Joint work on documents/files Intranet Portal E-Mail Productivity Tools Technical: Central User Directory Informational: Employee Directory (White Pages) Asynchronous Work People (Identity Management) Persistent information of longitudinal interest Ephemeral information of short-term interest Synchronous (simultaneous) Work Information Portal Personal Information Management (PIM) HCL Kudos BoardsHCL Connections: Activities Network Directories HCL Connections: Files NextCloud HCL Connections: Wiki HCL Connections: Forum HCL Connections: Status updates HCL Sametime MS Skype HCL Connections: Survey HCL Connections: Ideation Blog LimeSurvey Zoom Office 365 onlineHCL Connections: Files NextCloud HCL Connections: Homepage MS Office HCL Domino (E-Mail server-side) HCL Notes (E-Mail client-side) Sogo (E-Mail server-side) HCL Domino LDAP LDAP HCL Connections: Social Profiles Figure 3. Case example for a platform configuration (ArCoW and basic platform components) 9 Data Collection and Analysis In the survey, we investigated the current portfolios of collaboration software that user companies have implemented to build their ECP. Data was gathered from a sample based on responses from 23 user companies that, taken together, have a total of more than 730,000 employees. The user organisations are all members of the research initiative IndustryConnect (Williams & Schubert, 2017) and are in- terested in supporting collaboration research and the design of the Digital Work- place. They are mostly large organisations located in the DACH area, and they represent different industry sectors (e.g. manufacturing, engineering, services). Task Management 44 File Sharing 52 HCL Connections: Activities 12 Network directories 19 Jira 12 HCL Connections: Files 15 MS Planner 7 MS Sharepoint 10 Kudos Boards 5 MS OneDrive 5 MS Todo 4 OwnCloud/Nextcloud 1 Trello 2 OpenText Documentum 1 Taskworld 2 nScale 1 Information Collection 31 Information Exchange 29 HCL Connections: Wiki 16 HCL Connections: Forum 15 Atlassian Confluence 10 HCL Notes 6 MS Teams Wiki 4 MS Teams 4 Open Source Wiki-Software 1 Atlassian Confluence 3 MS Yammer Groups 1 Short messages (Microblogging) 38 Ideation, Polls, Voting 28 HCL Connections: Statusupdates 13 HCL Connections: Ideation Blog 12 MS Teams 10 HCL Connections: Survey 11 HCL Sametime Chat 6 MS Forms 3 WhatsApp 5 LimeSurvey 2 Zoom Chat 2 Kaizala 2 Meetings (synchronous communication) 64 Joint work on documents/files 33 MS Teams 14 HCL Connections: Files 12 HCL Sametime 10 MS OneDrive 10 Skype 7 SharePoint 6 Zoom 7 Office 365 online 4 Webex 7 OpenText Documentum 1 WhatsApp 5 GoToMeeting 5 Slack 4 Lifesize 3 Cisco Jabber 2 Asynchronous Work Persistent information of longitudinal interest Ephemeral information of short-term interest Synchronous (simultaneous) Work Figure 4. Software products in use by the surveyed user organisations (n=23) The questionnaire respondents are the people in these organisations who are re- sponsible for identifying and supporting the user requirements regarding collabo- ration software. In the questionnaire the respondents were asked to identify the products that are contained in their organisation’s portfolio from a list of software products for the different areas of Enterprise Collaboration. It was also possible 10 for respondents to add further software tools in a free text field if these were not included on the original list. The data from all the respondents was consolidated and an inventory of all the tools reported by organisations was created and then analysed. Figure 4 contains an overview of the functional modules that were selected (or added) by the re- spondents. The numbers in Figure 4 show that the organisations involved in the study have implemented a substantial number of different commercial software products to build their Enterprise Collaboration Platform (ECP). 319 different software modules (for ArCoW) were identified in the sample of 23 organisations, which represents an average of 14 functional modules per organisation. The numbers reveal the high degree of redundancy in the available functionality. For example, the 23 organisations have implemented an average of 2,78 applications per organisation for synchronous meeting support (64 in total). Technology Landscape of an Enterprise Collaboration Platform (ECP) For the visualisation of the Enterprise Collaboration Platforms of the study partic- ipants, we developed a template for visualising a “platform image” that shows the areas of the classification. We then used this template for the visualisation of the 23 company data sets. Figure 5 shows an example platform visualisation for one of the cases. As explained earlier, the software used to provide the platform foun- dation is displayed on the bottom of the graphic. Most of the respondents use Mi- crosoft Active Directory or some form of LDAP for their technical user directory and the majority have implemented an informational user directory, either in the form of an ESN or Social Intranet. People (Identity Management) Technical: Tivoli Directory Server and HCL Domino LDAP Informational: HCL Connections Social Profiles HCL Connections Homepage Chat/Video Conference: Sametime Files Microblog: Status Updates Surveys Ideation Blog Task Mgmt: Activities Wiki Forum Kudos Boards E-Mail HCL Notes HCL Domino HCL Verse Network directories MS OneNote Notes Forums LimeSurvey Files: NextCloud Example: CEIR Blog Video Conf.: Zoom Video Conf.: BBB Chat: MS Skype Chat: Mattermost Core ECS: HCL Connections Enterprise Collaboration Platform Third party component Explanation of symbols: Tool Application ECS component Stand-alone tool Stand-alone application Personal Information Mgmt (PIM): e-mail, documents (files), notepad, whiteboard 2 Content/DX Platforms: WCMS, file storage 3 Communication: video conference and text chat 4 Communication: informing and discussing 5 Cooperation: work on documents 6 Coordination: activities and tasks 7 Content Combination: enriching documents 8 Enterprise Social Network (ESN): social profiles, follow, tag, @mention, activity stream 1 Figure 5. Case example of an Enterprise Collaboration Platform: modules grouped by ArCoW The software modules are clustered in groups according to their category. The symbols indicate if the software is a tool, an application or a component of a sys- 11 tem or suite (see legend). The dark colour indicates that the software is “stand- alone” and uses its own technical user directory (no single sign-on). The tools for Personal Information Management are shown on the bottom left. We only includ- ed selected tools such as E-Mail and personal notebooks that have collaborative functionality. Tools for portals and intranets are placed on the top left. As already mentioned, the study showed that the area of (near) synchronous communication contains a wide variety of specialised solutions for video conferencing and text chat which is why we allocated it to a specific section. The rest of the platform contains the modules that support the core ArCoW modules and this was our candidate section for the identification of typical con- figurations. The software products used to build the ArCoW core differ in the range of functionality and the degree of integration between the modules. The following four types could be identified: Enterprise Collaboration System/ECS (1) are a purposefully developed selection of applications/tools that are fully integrated and provided to the user in a workspace under a uniform interface (e.g. HCL Connections). A Collaboration Suite (2) is a bundle of applications/tools (often under a joint license) that can be used independently. They provide a certain de- gree of technical integration because they have been designed to work together (e.g. the collaboration suites by Google, Atlassian and Microsoft). An application (3) is a standalone software product with multiple collaboration features (e.g. TeamViewer with screen sharing, video conferencing and file transfer). A tool (4) is a lightweight desktop or mobile software/plug-in/functionality with a central focus on one/few features (e.g. chat in WhatsApp). The analysis of the survey data revealed three dominant ECP configurations, defined as Concentration, Diversity and Dual Core. A small number of compa- nies were still in the early stages of defining their collaboration portfolio and were classified into a group named “Forming”. Dominant Platform Configurations The ECP framework was used to synthesise the survey data about the types and the range of collaboration technology in use in the responding organisations (the “cases”) and the collaboration technology landscape for each case was visualised. The results were then examined to gain insights into different collaboration plat- form configurations. The three dominant configurations are: (1) Concentration (core ECS/suite with a few additions) (2) Diversity (core ECS/suite with a broad range of additions) (3) Dual Core (two ECS/Suites with a few additions) Figure 6 shows a visual comparison of the assemblages of tools comprising the emerging enterprise collaboration platforms for three selected case companies. 12 The visualisations show the different enterprise collaboration platform design strategies that the organisations are following. Case Company 3 is following the Concentration approach. The company is using all functional modules of the integrated ECS. Only where functionality is missing or insufficiently provided, are they making use of complementary tools (e.g. in this case the company is doing this to support synchronous communica- tion through video conferencing and specialised task management through Trello). Concentration Diversity E-Mail MS Outlook MS ExchangeMS OneNote Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 14 Suite 1: Microsoft MS Teams File Share: MS OneDrive File Share: Office 365 online File Share: MS SharePoint Wiki: MS Teams Wiki MS Yammer Groups Skype Suite 2: Atlassian Task Mgmt: Atlassian Jira Wiki: Atlassian Confluence DXP: Adobe Experience Manager Dual Core Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 13 Enterprise Collaboration Platform – Case 3 E-Mail MS Outlook MS ExchangeMS OneNote SAP NetWeaver Portal ECS: HCL Connections Suite: Microsoft MS Teams File Share: MS OneDrive File Share: MS SharePoint Task Mgmt: MS Todo Boards: MS Planner Network directories Task Mgmt: Atlassian Jira Wiki: Atlassian Confluence Suite 2: Atlassian Files Microblog: Status Updates Surveys Wiki Forum Ideation Blog Task Mgmt: Activities Skype MS Teams Wiki E-Mail HCL Notes HCL Domino HCL Verse ECS: HCL Connections HCL Connections Homepage Chat: Sametime Files Microblog: Status Updates Task Mgmt: Activities Wiki Forum Skype Messenger: WhatsApp Network directories Notes Forums MS OneNote Trello Video Conference: Zoom WCMS: Xpublisher Chat: Slack Figure 6. Three dominant ECP configurations: Concentration, Diversity and Dual Core Case Company 13 is following the Diversity approach. The company is only using selected modules in the core ECS and is complementing the functionality of the platform with applications from two other collaboration suites. Whilst this configuration provides the users with a broad range of options for collaboration support it also creates the problem of redundancy (e.g. in this case there are three different software products supporting wikis). Case Company 14 is following the Dual Core approach. The company is us- ing two suites (Microsoft and Atlassian) to provide the necessary ArCoW func- tionality. There are many commonalities in our sample in the first three areas (1-3) of Figure 5, which means that these tools had no influence on the identification of the platform configurations. All companies provide (1) PIM software in the form of E-Mail, network directories and shared notebooks. The software category of (2) Intranets (DXP/CSP) mostly contains complementary stand-alone tools. All companies have multiple (independent and redundant) (3) communication tools 13 such as chat and video conferencing. Looking back at Figure 2 (Areas of Collabo- rative Work), it is noticeable that the commonalities on the left side of the figure are for 1:n activities such as "top-down informing" and "content provision and preservation". The differences in the configurations, however, can be identified mostly in the core areas (5-8) of multilateral joint work, the (5) communication among employ- ees, the (6) cooperative work on documents, the (7) coordination of work and the joint (8) combination and enriching of documents. Table 1 contains an analysis of the locations of the functional modules in the three case companies. Numbers larger than 1 indicate redundant functionality. Characteristically for the Concentration Approach, the case company has built its ECP almost entirely on the core ECS. They provide their employees with only a few additional software components specialised on communication and task man- agement. In the example of the Diversity Approach, identical functionality is pro- vided by all 3 systems/suites (files, tasks and wikis). The case company in the example for the Dual Core Approach provides two suites with some overlapping functionality and some functional areas that are not supported (surveys and fo- rums). Table 1. Location of functional modules in the ECPs of the three case companies Module Concentration Diversity Dual Core Files (2) ECS (files), network directo- ries (4) all 3 ECS/suites, network directories (3) Suite 1 (OneDrive, Share- Point, Office 365) Microblogs/ Chat (5) ECS (status update), Slack, Skype, Whatsapp, Sametime (3) ECS (status update), Suite 1 (Teams, Skype) (3) Suite 1 (Yammer, Skype, Teams) Video Conf. (2) Zoom, Skype (2) Suite 1 (Teams, Skype) (2) Suite 1 (Teams, Skype) Surveys (0) - (1) ECS (Surveys) (0) - Tasks (2) ECS (activities), Trello (4) ECS (activities), Suite 1 (Planner, Todo) Suite 2 (Jira) (1) Suite 2 (Jira) Wiki (1) ECS (wiki) (3) all 3 collections (2) Suite 1 (Teams wiki), Suite 2 (Confluence) Forum (2) ECS (forum), Notes Forums (1) ECS (forum) (0) - ESN (1) ECS (1) ECS (1) MS Suite (Yammer) The findings reveal that there are multiple emerging platform strategies and designs. The three case examples presented above show distinct approaches, one of more strict control over the number of tools in use by focusing on the function- ality of the core ECS (Concentration), a second more open, offering multiple tools to support the same functionality and thus giving the employees more flexi- bility but also the burden of choice (Diversity). The third approach (Dual Core) combines two collections for the necessary range of tools to create the Enterprise Collaboration platform which also creates some redundancy. 14 In summary, our research identified that Enterprise Collaboration Platforms are built around one or multiple core products that are complemented by multiple additional tools and applications to provide the desired comprehensive support for collaborative work. Conclusions and Outlook In this research note attention is focused on the large-scale provision of collabora- tion software in organisation to provide a stable technology environment to sup- port a wide range of collaborative work situations. To date, limited work has ex- amined the enterprise level provision of software tools. Existing studies are fre- quently focused at the micro-level largely limited to studies of a single type of social software (e.g. blogs, wikis) (Holtzblatt et al., 2010; Richter & Riemer, 2013) or to a specific type of collaborative activity (e.g. knowledge sharing, ex- pert search) (Hacker et al., 2017; Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016) and lack the scale and scope to address the wider, meso/organisational and platform level transfor- mations to the organisation-wide support of collaborative work. In this study we intentionally focus on the enterprise-wide provision of collab- oration tools in order to examine the types of collaboration platform currently being assembled. Our findings confirm that currently, no single collaboration system provides all the functionality needed to support distributed collaborative work, thus requiring organisations to assemble their collaboration platform by selecting and combining additional tools and systems. The study examines these portfolios of tools and provides a classification of areas of collaboration support (ArCoW) and a catalogue of software with functionality in these areas. Using these insights, a survey to examine the portfolios of tools in 23 organisations was conducted. The data for each organisation was then analysed and visualised and used to identify the three dominant collaboration platform configurations de- scribed above. The visual representation of collaboration platform structures re- veals the diversity and complexity of the collaboration technologies supported and will enable us to further examine enterprise-level collaboration support and to consider the design requirements for a more integrated platform for collaborative working. The current study provides insights into which technologies are in use; the questions of how these platforms are planned and designed remain open. Based on this, the next phases of our work are focused on investigating the platform design processes to understand how these enterprise collaboration platforms are being designed (for example through intentional centralised planning, the situated requirements of individual work groups or both) and how they are evolving over time. For example, is functional redundancy removed (or does it increase), do the portfolios of tools continually change or do they stabilise? 15 References Bafoutsou, G. and Mentzas, G. (2002): ‘Review and functional classification of collaborative systems’, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 22, pp. 281–305. Creswell, J. W. and Plano Clark, V. L. (2018): Designing and conducting mixed methods research, (3rd ed.) SAGE Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA. Ellis, C. A., Gibbs, S. J. and Rein, G. (1991): ‘Groupware: some issues and experiences’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 39–58. Gartner (2021): ‘Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Social Software and Collaboration Market to Grow 17% in 2021’, retrieved from: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press- releases/2021-03-23-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-social-software-and-collaboration-market- to-grow-17-percent-in-2021. Gartner (2022a): ‘What are Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) Reviews and Ratings’, retrieved from: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/digital-experience-platforms. Gartner (2022b): ‘Gartner Glossary: Identity and Access Management (IAM)’, retrieved from: https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/identity-and-access- management-iam. Gartner (2022c): ‘Content Services Platforms (CSP) Reviews and Ratings’, retrieved from: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/content-services-platforms. Gratton, L. (2021): ‘How to do hybrid right’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 99, no. May-June. Hacker, J., Bodendorf, F. and Lorenz, P. (2017): ‘Helper, Sharer or Seeker? – A Concept to Determine Knowledge Worker Roles in Enterprise Social Networks’, 13th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik, pp. 668–682. Hausmann, V. and Williams, S. P. (2016): ‘Issues for the long-term management of Social Business Documents’, International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 45–61. Holtzblatt, L. J., Damianos, L. E. and Weiss, D. (2010): ‘Factors impeding wiki use in the enterprise: A case study’, Proceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 4661–4676. Lee, C. P. and Paine, D. (2015): ‘From The Matrix to a Model of Coordinated Action (MoCA)’, 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2015), pp. 179–194. Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M. and Steinfield, C. (2013): ‘Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1–19. Mäntymäki, M. and Riemer, K. (2016): ‘Enterprise social networking: A knowledge management perspective’, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 1042– 1052. McKinsey Global Institute (2021): The postpandemic economy: The future of work after COVID‐19, MGI Report February 2021. Richter, A. and Riemer, K. (2013): ‘Malleable end-user software’, Business and Information Systems Engineering, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 195–197. Riemer, K. (2007): ‘The Market for E-Collaboration Systems - Identification of System Classes Using Cluster Analysis’, European Conference on Information Systems 2007, pp. 346–357. Riemer, K., Overfeld, P., Scifleet, P. and Richter, A. (2012): ‘Eliciting the anatomy of technology appropriation processes: A case study in enterprise social media’, European Conference on Information Systems. 16 Schubert, P. (2018): ‘Joint Work and Information Sharing in the Modern Digital Workplace: How the Introduction of “Social” Features Shaped Enterprise Collaboration Systems’, in K. Riemer, S. Schellhammer and M. Meinert (eds.): Collaboration in the Digital Age: How Technology Enables Individuals, Teams and Businesses, pp. 45–59, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Schubert, P. and Williams, S. P. (2022): ‘Enterprise Collaboration Platforms: An Empirical Study of Technology Support for Collaborative Work’, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 196, pp. 305–313. Wehner, B., Ritter, C. and Leist, S. (2016): ‘Enterprise social networks: A literature review and research agenda’, Computer Networks, vol. 114, pp. 125–142. Williams, S. P. (2010): Enterprise 2.0 and Collaborative Technologies, (Issue May 2010) Working Report of the Research Group Business Software, May 2010, University of Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany. Williams, S. P. and Schubert, P. (2011, June): ‘An Empirical Study of Enterprise 2.0 in Context’, 24th International Bled Conference. Williams, S. P. and Schubert, P. (2017): ‘Connecting Industry: Building and Sustaining a Practice-based Research Community’, 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 5400–5409. Williams, S. P. and Schubert, P. (2018): ‘Designs for the Digital Workplace’, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 138, pp. 478–485. World Economic Forum (2020): Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World, (Issue October) Cologny/Geneva, Switzerland. 17 Annex Collaborative Technologies - Evaluation Tool based on the 8C Model for Enterprise Information Management Scale: 0 - function not supported 1 - function supported Re q. To ol 1 To ol 2 To ol … EVALUATION CRITERIA 0 0 0 0 Example functionality/typical functionality of: COMMUNICATION (TOTAL) 0 0 0 0 1 Chat (text message) 0 0 0 0 e.g. SMS, WhatsApp 2 Microblogging 0 0 0 0 e.g. Twitter tweet, Yammer 3 Blogs 0 0 0 0 e.g. diaries, 1 to many 4 Voice message synchronous 0 0 0 0 e.g. Skype, VOIP 5 Voice message asynchronous 0 0 0 0 e.g. voice box ("answering machine") 6 Asynchronous sent (rich) text message 0 0 0 0 e.g. e-mail 7 Discussion forums 0 0 0 0 e.g. forum, newsgroups (hierarchical message structure: post and response) 8 Notice boards 0 0 0 0 e.g. boards/pinboards (broadcast, posts, no responses) 9 Comments, annotations 0 0 0 0 e.g. comments on files 10 Video conferencing 0 0 0 0 e.g. Skype, Zoom 11 Unified Communication 0 0 0 0 e.g. information integration on different devices, e.g. same 12 Broadcast 0 0 0 0 e.g. webcast, podcast 13 ### (other - please add any other criteria not already listed) 0 0 0 0 COOPERATION (TOTAL) 0 0 0 0 1 Shared authoring 0 0 0 0 e.g. text editors, Wikis, whiteboard 2 Markup of changes (in a text) 0 0 0 0 e.g. revision marks 3 Screen sharing/shared desktop 0 0 0 0 e.g. with Teamviewer 4 Shared workspaces 0 0 0 0 e.g. a group space, team room, community 5 Workspace awareness 0 0 0 0 e.g. information on what is happening in the past, presence and 6 User profiles / social profiles 0 0 0 0 e.g. to show demographics, personal attributes, discovery of 7 Ratings, rankings 0 0 0 0 e.g. "useful", "not useful", "most frequently viewed" (shows first on a list), emoticons 8 ### (other - please add any other criteria not already listed) 0 0 0 0 CONTENT COMBINATION (TOTAL) 0 0 0 0 1 Document management (document storage, archiving) 0 0 0 0 e.g. EDRMS type functionality (e.g. contracts, manuals) 2 Content management 0 0 0 0 e.g. CMS type functionality (e.g. web pages, images, descriptions) 3 Data aggregation (display what a user needs on start page) 0 0 0 0 e.g. portals, corporate entry pages 4 Data integration 0 0 0 0 e.g. mashups, dashboards, widgets 5 Content collection 0 0 0 0 e.g. Wikis, glossary 6 Linking (e.g. hyperlinks) 0 0 0 0 e.g. hyperlink in posting 7 Pointers or references to content 0 0 0 0 e.g. bookmarks 8 Tagging, Folksonomies 0 0 0 0 e.g. classifying label (tag) on content items (e.g. posts) 9 Visualisation of tag usage 0 0 0 0 e.g. tag cloud or tag list 10 Collecting feedback 0 0 0 0 e.g. with surveys, ratings 11 Search 0 0 0 0 e.g. search in posts and documents 12 Content subscription 0 0 0 0 e.g. RSS feeds 13 ### (other - please add any other criteria not already listed) 0 0 0 0 COORDINATION (TOTAL) 0 0 0 0 1 User directories 0 0 0 0 e.g. LDAP, groups, distribution list, shared address book 2 Roles 0 0 0 0 e.g. organisational roles (e.g. manager, assistant) and access rights (e.g. administrator, editor, author) 3 Group calendar, deadline planning 0 0 0 0 e.g. joint view of appointments of multiple people 4 Resource planning 0 0 0 0 e.g. reservation of resources (rooms, projector, people) 5 Shared tasks 0 0 0 0 e.g. todo lists involving multiple people 6 Reminders, triggers, alerts 0 0 0 0 e.g. notification when response has been written or threshold reached 7 Workflow support 0 0 0 0 e.g. predefined flow of documents including authorisation (signed by superior) 8 Graphical flow 0 0 0 0 e.g. visualisation of a document flow and attached rules 9 Polls and voting 0 0 0 0 e.g. to find a decision in a team 10 Document and version control 0 0 0 0 e.g. automated versioning 11 Presence awareness 0 0 0 0 e.g. status icon in Skype 12 ### (other - please add any other criteria not already listed) 0 0 0 0 TOOLS