The work environment is not what it was 10 or even 5 years ago. With more powerful software and computing systems, pervasive wireless connectivity, and the proliferation of mobile devices, what now constitutes a workplace or a work team can cut across skill sets, international borders, time zones, and organizational boundaries. The advantages of such a flexible work environment are many and include easy access to information and more agility in response to business opportunities. But such fluidity brings challenges. Information workers have constant demands for their attention as they struggle with: | • | Prioritizing tasks and selecting from an endless flow of information |
| • | Streamlining work processes that require multiple tools and input from multiple people |
| • | Learning to use the stream of automated systems and applications available to them |
Meanwhile, IT staff must support an increasingly complex infrastructure of disconnected devices and systems. Their expanding workloads include: | • | Deploying, upgrading, maintaining, and securing diverse tools |
| • | Protecting sensitive information while making it available across departments and devices |
| • | Managing identities and access for employees, customers, and partners |
At Microsoft, we believe organizations can reap the benefits of always-connected and easy-to-use software tools without suffering from the headaches. How? Through effective enterprise collaboration. It’s a matter of simplification and continuity. Pillars of the Microsoft collaboration strategyMicrosoft has built its collaboration strategy on four pillars of successful work: Integrated communications, collaborative workspaces, access to information and people, and people-driven processes. Together, these pillars provide a framework for organizations to create a collaborative work environment unrestricted by size or location. Integrated communicationsInformation workers currently use many devices—landline phones, cellular phones, Smartphones, PDAs, desktops, laptops, and Internet kiosks—to communicate and access information. At Microsoft, we’re working to simplify communications by integrating the myriad of options available to teams and individuals. We deliver intelligent software that helps to ensure people can easily connect to each other and to the information they need, wherever they are. Collaborative workspacesProductivity suffers when workers have to constantly change applications and devices to get a job done. Effective collaborative technologies enable people to work purposefully toward a goal without unnecessary disruption. Microsoft provides a single, holistic work environment to enable purposeful and focused action. Imagine a virtual workspace that your employees can set up themselves and access from any line of business application. Imagine they can use it to communicate with one another, to author and share documents, and to manage projects. Suddenly, your global teams can work together easily without adding additional overhead to the IT budget. Access to information and peopleWith the rise in volume of available information across industries and the increasing number of virtual teams, information workers need a way to identify the right information and connect to the right people at the right time. Microsoft portal and content management solutions offer fast, centralized access to knowledge through a wide variety of content aggregation and content surfacing capabilities. Workers can access critical information sources and get the data they need when they need it. Consider the improvements in productivity of your knowledge workers if they were empowered with customizable, self-service tools, helping them find who and what they need on the spot. People-driven processesOften, organizations spend time and money automating back-end business processes without thinking about how line of business applications fit into employees’ overall workflow. Employees need a unified platform for documenting, analyzing, modeling, and automating business processes. Microsoft brings business process automation to the desktop by connecting workers to line of business information through the familiar desktop applications they use every day. Integrating back-end systems and databases with familiar productivity tools enables workers to create and submit invoices, process orders, and respond to customer problems in an efficient, streamlined manner. Where strategy meets serviceAccording to a recent Forrester Research report, a fundamental shift is taking place in the collaboration market. Stand-alone (or point) collaboration products are losing ground as organizations develop more strategic approaches to enterprise collaboration. Companies now seek complete collaboration platforms. Microsoft established its reputation as a leading collaboration platform provider by building its collaboration strategy on a foundation of four critical infrastructure services: | • | Identity The Microsoft infrastructure is anchored in the management of unique identities, including the user name and password of a person or device, to help ensure network and resource security. |
| • | Presence The presence attributes that make tactical tools such as instant messengers so valuable are embedded within the Microsoft tools and technologies that people use every day, enabling better ad-hoc collaboration. |
| • | Network access technologies Networking features extend the versatility, manageability, and dependability of network infrastructures. Network-access capabilities such as a firewall and packet/protocol inspection improve the reliability and security of wired and wireless networks. |
| • | Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) This information protection technology helps safeguard information from unauthorized use both online and offline, inside and outside the firewall. RMS helps protect the security of information through persistent usage policies that remain with the file wherever it goes, even outside an organization’s network. |
| • | With these services as its foundation, Microsoft provides a collaboration infrastructure solution that closes the gap between information and productive action. |
Learn moreTo learn more about the future of enterprise collaboration, see an excerpt of the Forrester Research report—Trends 2005: Collaboration. For more information regarding collaboration, please email collab@microsoft.com. | 
