E-mail environments and decisions about them are usually driven by IT, while collaborative applications that embrace business processes are usually driven by individual business groups. This separation can result in disagreements about the focus for collaborative technology. This means getting the right people sharing information about the requirements and alternatives early in the process. Bringing users up to speed also adds to the costs of such a project. You've got to train administrators and end users so they can fully utilize the system.
Carter cautions against deploying an integrated solution in pieces.
Take the time to understand each vendor's application and determine where it fits within your business processes. This much home-grown development won't be the way some organizations will want to go. But at this point, uniting these two seemingly related technologies requires IS expertise.