Pervasive collaboration comes to manufacturing businesses

Schahram Dustdar, coordinator of the EU-funded inContext project, makes the point that, with global teams often dispersed over different time zones, and team members potentially using an array of devices, getting organised isn’t trivial. Hence the new bundle, which provides an understanding of context – and specifically where people are, what they are doing and how they can be reached. “We developed a service-orientated architecture, called ‘pervasive collaboration service architecture’, that can be plugged into other scenarios and applications,” explains Dustdar, adding that it will be provided as a service, integrated into the projects of partners such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. Interestingly, the development was inspired by autonomic computing, and that means that PCSA can learn to identify types of team interaction, based on previous interactions. That, in turn, implies that it can set up the most efficient system for managing a team as it develops. “What is unique about this project is that it focuses on the work of the team as a whole, and manages collaboration from that perspective; whereas efforts in the past have focused on the individual,” comments Dustdar.