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Groupware gets wise to the Web Web technology has freed groupware from the proprietary bonds that once severely limited its use. HTML programming serves as a digital lingua franca, allowing a Lotus Notes-equipped engineer to exchange blueprints with a client who prefers Microsoft Outlook, or a customer who has heard of neither to sample product information stored in half a dozen different databases. The Web's TCP/IP protocol also eliminates the barriers that once separated PC, Mac and UNIX machines. "It's all about communication," said Robert Monio, chief technology officer for Metrix Communications LLC, a web applications consulting firm in St. Paul. "It's all about me being able to get this information freely from any point, anywhere." Today's leading groupware programs are IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise, Netscape SuiteSpot and Microsoft Exchange. The latest incarnations of these applications offer a broad array of communication, document management and workflow features integrated with a Web server. All incorporate proprietary databases, and some can be modified to extract information "on the fly" from non- proprietary back-end databases such as Microsoft Access, Oracle or Sybase. Competition among the big four is fierce for a global groupware market that is expected to grow 60 percent to 80 million users by 2000. Venerable Notes, introduced in 1989 and acquired by Big Blue in 1995, is by far the most popular program, commanding a third of the worldwide market of about 50 million seats worldwide. Groupwise is number two, with about 30 percent of the global market. SuiteSpot and Exchange, relative newcomers to the groupware arena, weigh in at 19 percent and 8 percent respectively. Other groupware products, such as Open Mind, FirstClass, Common Knowledge, TeamTalk and Collabra Share, have either been bought out or beaten out by the major players. Collabra Share, acquired by Netscape in 1996, survives in name only as a component of SuiteSpot.
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