Communication, coordination and collaboration are the hallmarks of groupware, says Marshak. Groupware enhances people's ability to communicate about work in progress in real-time or as work schedules permit. It enables groups to coordinate their work, often without involving a management hierarchy. And it makes possible the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams on projects such as product design and the production of reports and presentations regardless of people's locations. Consolidation through mergers and acquisitions is inevitable, observers agree, but confusion reigns in the interim.
Synchronous products operate in real-time.
In this category he includes voice conferencing, video conferencing, document sharing, scheduling and meeting management products. Asynchronous products are time-independent and well suited to the needs of participants working on different shifts or in different time zones. Such products often use an underlying electronic mail system. The first product most people think of when talk turns to groupware is Notes, which was used by 60 percent of 50 companies in a June 1995 Forrester Research survey of groupware users. Notes facilitates asynchronous discussion and collaboration, organizing working documents in a shared database.