The Design and Development of Internet-
and Intranet-Based Collaboratories
Anitesh Barua, Ramnath Chellappa, and Andrew B. Whinston
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1996-97, pp. 32-58.
Abstract: In today's interdependent world, applications
supporting collaborative interactions are critical for individuals, groups,
and organizations. Most groupware applications are based on proprietary
standards, necessitating vendor-specific tools and making ad-hoc
collaboration difficult. This calls for a shift of technology platforms for
collaborative systems ("collaboratories") from proprietary to open
environments based on the Internet and intranets. We enumerate and analyze
collaboratory requirements for three geographically dispersed electronic
communities: individuals with overlapping interests but without formal
ties, special-interest groups, and organizations with interdependent
workgroups. The requirements analysis is based on maximizing the net value
derived by collaboratory users and identifies sets of infrastructure and
user-community-specific characteristics. We show that, to support these
requirements, Internet applications such as the World Wide Web and Usenet
and non-Internet technologies such as database systems and scripting
languages need to be integrated. We also discuss some design philosophies
for preserving the open but secure (where appropriate) nature of
collaborative systems. We follow up our requirements analysis with the
implementation of three collaboratories: one based on the Internet with a
flat-file structure, one involving Web and database integration in an
intranet setting, and one based on both the Internet and an intranet. We
also report the results of a survey of users of the first collaboratory,
which support our theoretical premise of a technological platform shift and
the need for integration of multiple technologies for effective collaboration.
Key Words and Phrases: collaboration, electronic communities, the
Internet, intranets, news groups, and the World Wide Web.