Collaboration market to reach $1.1bn

Gartner is predicting that online collaboration will be worth some $1.1bn (£625m) by 2008.

In the short term, the analyst says growing demand for collaboration technologies will drive the worldwide market to $681.7m (£387m) in 2005, a 16 per cent increase over 2004.

While still in an early phase of adoption, the market is converging and transitioning, according to Gartner analyst, Tom Eid.

'Vendors are providing more integrated collaboration functionality spanning a variety of content, communication and collaboration technologies. Overall adoption will continue to increase as these technologies become more integrated with business processes,' he said.

Other forms of collaboration such as instant messaging (IM) and video conferencing, will also see increasing demand, the company says.

IM is anticipated to become as popular as email and, through the use of international standards, interoperate with other communication types. Video conferencing will evolve to the desktop to support ad hoc conversations and become better integrated with web conferencing and IM.