Through "presence" technologies featured in IM and other applications, workers can see when the rest of the team is online and available. File and document sharing tools also enable real-time collaborative work to be carried out on projects without needing face to face meetings or the cumbersome "ping-pong" of email and track changes in word documents.

With tools like instant IM, web conferencing, online document sharing and VOIP-in addition to old school tools like email and telephone-reaching people and gathering the information needed to complete a given task is simpler than in years past.

Increasingly companies are looking for better and more immediate ways for people to work together to achieve their common goals. The vision is to arm workers with simple interfaces and tools enabling them to detect the availability of people they need to contact, then choose the most convenient communications method without leaving the application they are working on.

Main issue: knowledge sharing

Collaboration is a means to an end: enabling businesses to perform more speedily and effectively. While collaboration can be a complex task, according to Joe Locandro, CIO at CLP, people should not get too hung up on the word itself. Interest in collaboration has risen out of the business need to become more responsive, productive and efficient while delivering goods and services.