Non-collaborative Collaboration
Companies choose a platform for video/web conferencing, instant messaging, telephony, voicemail, file sharing etc., and it works well for all corporate users. Unfortunately, the internal collaboration system doesn’t inter-work well with outside participants’ internal or cloud systems. Everyone needs to download apps for Zoom, Teams, etc. so that they can join someone else’s meeting. Things look to be changing with developments in gateways.
How We Collaborate

Collaboration is ‘the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal’. It encompasses a variety of media.
Historically, most collaboration was in- person (meetings, conferences, etc.) and by telephone. Material was transmitted by physical delivery or electronically (fax, telex, etc.).
These days, material is usually sent electronically by e-mail, although fax and file transfer sites like Sync are also used because of their security advantages. Telephone calling has evolved to include voicemail, IVR, speech recognition, video/web, chat and mobile integration. Stand-alone video conferencing systems were developed to fill a business niche before the development of video/web conferencing .
Voice Is Still Prime
In the over 40 age group, phone and e- mail are the preferred media, while under 40s like phone and web/mobile messaging and chat. Clearly the phone is still the main, if slowly declining, medium—60% of >65s falling to 42% of
<25s rate it as their preferred medium.
Voice has been the foundation of remote collaboration and many organizations continue to operate a private in-house voice system as it has lots of life left in it. Over the years these voice systems have been upgraded to include ever more integrated collaboration functionality.
Internal vs. External
While internal voice-based systems had developed a full suite of collaboration capabilities, they continued to have a major shortcoming. If you want to run a video/web conference call you would have difficulty integrating participants outside your organization.
The pandemic drove the need for anyone-to-anyone collaboration and many employees suddenly became ‘outsiders’ as they stayed home and tried to do their jobs. The in-house voice-based collaboration system could not quickly and economically be expanded to fill the need.
External providers like Zoom offered an easy solution and suddenly ‘everyone’ was using Zoom. Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx remain major players in the corporate and government space. For example, Microsoft Teams is used by 9 out of 10 Fortune 100 companies.
Gateways
There is no collaboration product, on- premises or cloud-based, that solves all organizational collaboration issues:
- Retention of existing systems
- Cost
- Security
- Functionality
- Support for remote users
- Inter-working with 3rd party collaboration systems
- Inter-working with 3rd party CRM and other applications
Gateways or gateway services seem to be the emerging solution. Phone systems suppliers like Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, etc. have developed integration with Microsoft Teams and Google G Suite, Salesforce.com, etc. Expect ongoing developments in gateway functionalities.
If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at peter.
This article was published in the
August 2021
edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:8 Issue:4
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