Esa Study Contract Report
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ESA STUDY CONTRACT REPORT ESA Contract No: Subject: Contractor: ESA ITT Number Current and Future Tech- Distributed Systems Group, AO/3-12280/07/NL/CB nologies for Collaborative Vienna University of Tech- Working Environments nology ESA CR() No: No of volumes: 1 Contractor’s Reference: This Volume No: 1 TEUN Abstract: This document reports the final, detailed result of the study on current and future technologies for collaborative working environments (CWEs). The goal of this study is to analyze current CWEs and whether they and their future trends are suitable for large- scale multinational organizations. To this end, we have analyzed the structure of large-scale organizations in general, and of ESA in particular, with respect to organization, geographical distribution, and IT environments. Requirements for CWEs used in collaborative work are presented. Based on an initial list of criteria given by ESA, we have revised and extended the list to introduce a comprehensive set of criteria for evaluating CWEs. The state-of-the- art CWEs are discussed and classified. We have selected 15 representative CWE products and evaluated and compared them in detail. From the evaluation and comparison of CWE products, we have presented our findings of current issues and future trends of CWEs. In particular, existing products provide many features required by large-scale and multinational organizations but those features are not well-integrated into a single system. Due to the complexity of collaborative work within those organizations, often many CWEs are used in parallel and it is not easy to integrate those CWEs together. The work described in this report was done under ESA Contract. Responsibility for the contents resides in the author or organisation that prepared it. Name of authors: Florian Skopik, Hong-Linh Truong, Schahram Dustdar Name of ESA study manager: ESA Budget Heading: Tamas Vinko, Ian Carnelli General Studies Programme This page is intentionally left blank. Current and Future Technologies for Collaborative Working Environments1 Florian Skopik, Hong-Linh Truong and Schahram Dustdar Distributed Systems Group Vienna University of Technology, Austria {skopik,truong,dustdar}@infosys.tuwien.ac.at May 21, 2008 1This study is funded by ESA under the contract ESA ITT Number AO/3-12280/07/NL/CB. We thank ESA Advanced Concepts Team, in particular Tamas Vinko, Ian Carnelli and Andres Galvez, for their help on providing information related to ESA’s organizational structure and CWE requirements and for providing useful comments and suggestions for this study. This page is intentionally left blank. Abstract This document reports the final, detailed result of the study on current and future technologies for collaborative working environments (CWEs). The goal of this study is to analyze current CWEs and whether they and their future trends are suitable for large-scale multinational organi- zations. To this end, we have analyzed the structure of large-scale organizations in general, and of ESA in particular, with respect to organization, geographical distribution, and IT environments. Requirements for CWEs used in collaborative work are presented. Based on an initial list of criteria given by ESA, we have revised and extended the list to introduce a comprehensive set of criteria for evaluating CWEs. The state-of-the-art CWEs are discussed and classified. We have selected 15 representative CWE products and evaluated and compared them in detail. From the evaluation and comparison of CWEs products, we have presented our findings of current issues and future trends of CWEs. In particular, existing products provide many features required by large-scale and multinational organizations but those features are not well-integrated into a single system. Due to the complexity of collaborative work within those organizations, often many CWEs are used in parallel and it is not easy to integrate those CWEs together. This page is intentionally left blank. Contents 1 Introduction 4 1.1Purpose......................................... 4 1.2ObjectivesandApproach............................... 4 1.3StructureofthisReport................................ 5 2 Structure of Large-scale Organizations and CWE Requirements 7 2.1OverviewofLarge-ScaleEnterprises/Organizations................. 7 2.1.1 ITInfrastructure................................ 7 2.1.2 Accessibility . 9 2.1.3 InformationSecurityConcerns........................ 10 2.2StructureofESA.................................... 10 2.2.1 Overview.................................... 10 2.2.2 ESA’sRequirementsforCWEs........................ 11 2.3RequirementsforCWESoftware........................... 13 2.3.1 Security..................................... 14 2.3.2 Availability, Reliability and Serviceability (RAS) . 15 2.3.3 Scalability . 15 2.3.4 Usability/Acceptance . 15 2.3.5 Extensibility . 15 2.3.6 System Integration and Supported Platforms . 15 2.3.7 ComplianceandLegalIssues......................... 16 2.3.8 Mobility..................................... 16 2.3.9 Technical Support and Updates . 16 3 Evaluation Criteria 17 3.1CriteriaDescription.................................. 17 3.2CatalogofCriteria................................... 17 3.2.1 GeneralInformation.............................. 18 3.2.2 Software Development and Organizational Criteria . 18 3.2.3 SystemPrerequisitesandInstallation.................... 19 3.2.4 OverallSystemProperties........................... 19 3.2.5 Application and Task Support Criteria . 20 3.2.6 UsageCriteria................................. 20 4 Classification and Selection of CWEs 21 4.1Classification...................................... 21 4.2BriefSurveys...................................... 22 4.2.1 FileManagementSystems........................... 22 4.2.2 GroupwareSystems.............................. 23 4.2.3 Real-timeOfficeApplications......................... 25 4.2.4 Real-time Audio, Video and Data Collaboration Systems . 26 4.2.5 Wiki-basedSystems.............................. 27 4.3SelectionLimitations.................................. 27 4.4SelectionSummary................................... 28 1 5 Evaluation 29 5.1EvaluationProceduresandScope........................... 29 5.2Finallistofproductstobesurveyed......................... 30 5.3FileManagementSystems............................... 31 5.3.1 AlfrescoEnterpriseContentManagement.................. 31 5.3.2 BSCW - Basic Support for Cooperative Work . 34 5.3.3 PloneCMS................................... 37 5.3.4 MicrosoftSharepoint.............................. 40 5.3.5 Subversion................................... 43 5.4GroupwareSystems.................................. 46 5.4.1 CollanosWorkplace.............................. 46 5.4.2 eGroupware................................... 49 5.4.3 OracleCollaborationSuite.......................... 52 5.4.4 SimpleGroupware............................... 55 5.5Real-timeOffices.................................... 59 5.5.1 CoOffice..................................... 59 5.5.2 GoogleDocs.................................. 62 5.6 Real-time Audio, Video and Data Collaboration Systems . 64 5.6.1 Coccinella.................................... 64 5.6.2 Skype...................................... 67 5.7WikibasedSystems.................................. 70 5.7.1 MediaWiki................................... 70 5.7.2 MindtouchDekiWiki.............................. 73 5.8ComparisonofEvaluationResults.......................... 75 6 Findings and Future Trends 77 7Conclusion 79 Acronyms and Abbreviations ACT Advanced Concepts Team ACL Access Control List AES Advanced Encryption Standard API Application Programming Interface AS Application Server CRM Customer Relationship Management CMS Content Management System CWE Collaborative Working Environment DMS Document Management System ECM Enterprise Content Management ERP Enterprise Resource Management ESA European Space Agency EU European Union FTP File Transfer Protocol GPL General Public License ICT Information and Communication Technology IIS (Microsoft) Internet Information Server IM Instant Messenger / Instant Messaging IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol IT Information Technology JAAS Java Authentication and Authorization Service JSR Java Specification Request LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol MS Microsoft MSI Microsoft Installer NTLM NT LAN Manager ORM Object Relational Mapping P2P Peer-to-Peer PIM Personal Information Manager PBX Private Branch Exchange REST Representational State Transfer SIP Session Initiation Protocol SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol SoW Statement of Work TUV Vienna University of Technology VoIP Voice over IP WCM Web Content Management WebDAV Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol 3 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Purpose Recent advances in hardware and software technologies have fostered the collaborative work across administrative/organizational boundaries. Various tools are available for users to conduct joint projects, regardless of the location and the organization of the users. For example, wikis1, SVN2, and document management systems3 allow different users to share and coedit documents, instant messaging4 and voice chat5 allow multiple users to converse online, just to name a few. With the support of existing Collaborative Working Environments (CWEs), many new con- cepts, such as virtual teams and communities, are introduced and realized today. Furthermore, the concept of user participation, such as collaborative blogs6 and collaborative tagging [13], sub-