Many organisations have staff located at different sites.
Many research and development activities nowadays are collaborative ventures, involving scientists from different disciplines, countries and cultures in laboratories scattered around the world. The use of e-mail and the Web has undoubtedly made a fundamental impact on the way some forms of collaboration are done and has opened up new forms of collaboration. The dedicated video conferencing suite is also proving to be effective in eliminating the need to travel to a common location, for some kinds of meeting. Video conferencing enables richer forms of interaction between participants in a project than can be provided by e-mail and the web alone. However, participation in such a conference typically involves leaving the normal working environment and going to a separate room equipped for this purpose.