"It's been line-of-business adoption, with a manager signing the contracts," notes Robert Mahowald, an analyst at market research company IDC.

Lower-level employees, on the other hand, tend to stick with e-mail, resisting newer communication tools. "E-mail is often used for collaboration when it shouldn't be," notes Coleman. "Often, they just don't understand that there are better things out there."

Who Needs It?

The CDC's role as both a research agency and crisis management leader in the event of a regional or national health emergency makes it an obvious candidate for collaborative technologies. The agency chose SiteScape Inc.'s Enterprise Forum, which allows it to collaborate with outside health agencies and research groups, as well as quickly create a virtual "war room" to deal with a health crisis. With Site'Scape, the CDC can create a team work space and accounts for new team members, share documents and schedule Web meetings and notify attendees via e-mail, automated phone calls and SMS messages. Related groups may be created to coordinate emergency responders and disseminate information to hospitals. Later, the workspace can be archived for historical and auditing purposes.

But it's not always so clear that a business can use collaborative technologies. There are general organizational characteristics of companies that need collaboration software.