Collaboration--Computing Goal

Even as the personal computer industry remains mired in a slump, a variety of new technologies are emerging that some industry executives say will make it possible for computers to solve a whole new range of business problems.

These next-generation computer applications--driven by advances in communications, software, miniaturization and image-handling--will enable people to use computers for true collaborative work, rather than as a means of automating individual tasks. This could radically improve the speed at which businesses operate, by reducing travel time and closely integrating many business functions that now are performed separately.

Although “collaborative computing” is not an entirely new concept, it is being discussed here at the annual Comdex computer expo as an important new dimension in personal computers that some believe can restore growth to the industry.

Intel Chief Executive Andrew S. Grove, in his Comdex keynote address Monday, provided an elaborate demonstration of how this new type of computing might be used to solve problems in the ever-accelerating business environment of the 1990s.

In the demonstration, Intel was having a manufacturing problem at its chip-making facility in Ireland, just when a major new customer was seeking assurances that the chips would be ready on time. With today’s technology, Intel managers would have had to wait until the next morning to call Ireland. And then, after a frantic exchange of phone calls, a key technical executive would have been dispatched from California to Ireland to diagnose the problem and fix it.

But Grove showed how new technology, when properly implemented, would make it possible for the plant manager in Ireland to send a special X-ray photograph of a problem chip to the technical executive in California, who could examine it without having to travel to Ireland and send it back electronically with voice and pen annotations describing the problem and video clips showing how to fix it.

In the meantime, an Intel executive waiting to meet with the customer could be kept apprised of developments via the little computer he was carrying, which had a wireless communications link that kept him in contact with the head office at all times. As a result, the problem is solved two days quicker and travel expenses and time are saved.

“Eliminating the barriers of space and time while working with shared information will finally change the way businesses--not just individuals--work,” Grove proclaimed. And that could put an end to the increasingly prevalent claim that computers have done little to improve business productivity.

Some elements of collaborative computing are already in place. Many businesses have networks of computers that allow easy sharing of documents among workers, and in some cases even allow people to work on the same documents simultaneously. Cellular phones and fax machines are tying co-workers together more tightly than ever before.

Yet many of the new technologies on display at the show will take this integration several steps further. The new notebook, palm-sized and pen-based computers will soon be combined with new communications networks to create true mobile computing. A document could be created and sent to someone else in the company from any place at any time.

So-called multimedia computing, in the meantime, makes it possible to integrate still pictures and video into those documents. Video conferencing, rather than being the expensive and often annoying medium it is today, will become a standard feature of intra-company interactions.

And tying all this together will be a new generation of computer software, such as the Notes programs from Lotus Development that combine electronic mail and computer databases, making it easy to access and send large amounts of information.

“If you look at the way computers are used today, they’re really not used very heavily at all,” says Glenn Henry, head of research and development at Dell Computer. “The future potential is massive. In the next stage, you’ll be able to throw your portable computer on the table and it will automatically hook up to a network.”

The challenge for both the industry and the computer-user community, clearly, will be to find ways of restructuring business activities to take advantage of these new technological capabilities. One obvious efficiency could be a reduction in business travel as electronic collaboration replaces face-to-face meetings.

Collaborative technologies should also make it possible to integrate certain kinds of functions--billing and customer service, for example--that are now handled separately in most organizations.

These kinds of changes, of course, will not happen overnight. Some of the technologies--such as wireless data communications--will not really be in place for several more years. Some analysts believe that a new generation of software is necessary to tie it all together. And large corporations are notoriously unimaginative when it comes to fundamental changes in the way their businesses are structured.

But many are still confident that 10 years from now, when the personal computer industry celebrates the end of its second decade, communications-based collaborative computing will have done for companies what word processing has done for individuals.