A study conducted by Cisco (News - Alert) on end users’ collaboration usage and preferences in the workplace finds that e-mail remains the primary method of collaboration in the workplace, but it’s time for e-mail to evolve.
According to the Cisco study conducted through Harris Research, 59 percent of the respondents using social networking for work say that their usage of social networking has increased over the past year. The study found that e-mail is the preferred collaboration tool at work.
About 91 percent of the participants supported e-mail as the most frequently used application for collaborating with others. People like e-mail because it provides an easily accessible record of communication and enables them to connect with many at the same time, the study said.
However, the study finds that what people want from their email is changing. While e-mail remains as the prominent method of collaboration, users complained that they lack the ability to collaborate in real time. End users are not happy with the limited storage capacity of e-mail. They also have a concern that a large number of e-mails with no organizational structure are coming to their inbox.
Harris poll also found respondents use other applications like shared space, video conferencing, voice calls and teleconferencing, Web conferencing and social networking for collaborating with others.
Users of social network need control over those who see their content, according to the study. They also want to be able to share with groups of users using different tools. Many users indicated they wish to collaborate in real-time without opening any additional application.
Considering these demands from end users Cisco is presenting an integrated collaboration platform that combines various data sources and allows communications to turn into shared content with a few clicks of the mouse, the company said.
The solution integrates Cisco’s recently announced hosted email solution and a variety of the company’s other collaboration offerings including enterprise social software, unified communications, IP telephony, instant messaging, and presence, the company said.
“The findings of the recent Harris Poll study were not a surprise to Cisco,” Duncan Greatwood, senior director of engineering, Cisco, said. “People want to use email as a platform to collaborate on documents, initiate an instant message or video conference, and have ample storage.”
“People want to link their e-mail into social networking tools to increase productivity,” Greatwood continued. “Cisco is addressing both email and social networking and the integration of the two into our collaboration portfolio.”
By Rajani Baburajan, TMCnet Contributor
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