"The real issue is knowledge sharing and when firms look at programs and ways to redefine processes to be more productive and efficient, then collaboration is one of the tools to get moving along that path," he said. Locandro believes that collaboration tools such as IM, email, forums, portals, search engines can help allow users to collectively harness intellectual property and information.

"Collaboration is one way of unlocking the value of the intellectual asset," he added. "It can be at a personal level though personal networking and communications, or at enterprise level through forums and team-level collaboration groups."

Vendors perk their ears

A number of vendors are gearing up with more collaborative tools and more integration between these tools and traditional applications. IBM, Microsoft and Novell are aggressively pushing their proprietary communications platforms incorporating email, IM, web and audio conferencing as well as document-sharing.

Collaborative activities can be internal within organizations or external between disparate sites or offices, or between partners and customers.