Implementing of Data Conferencing in The Boeing Company Steven E. Poltrock and Gloria Mark Between 1996 and 2000 The Boeing Company implemented a data conferencing service to support collaboration within the company and with external partners, vendors and customers. By the end of 2000 usage of this service exceeded 40,000 user hours per month. The challenges by implementing a conferencing service to a large company. What is the article about? Started looking at different solutions in 1989: XTV (UNIX) Not reliable and robust Aspects (Mac) Couldnt handle collaboration on very large, complex and highly structured documents Smart2000 (Microsoft) Needed similar software installed on all computers. Which technology were used? DC-Share Only two-person collaboration and hard to use. Employees had problem connection to the other pc. Tried it, but employees didnt like it. Microsoft NetMeeting A software based on DC-Share. Created a conference server acting as a bridge. This made it easier to connect to other computers. Microsoft later released a solution similar to the one they developed (ILS). Which technology were used? The service is mostly used in: Conference rooms Employees own desk The service is mostly used to: Interact with documents with other Talk to other employees Chat with other employees Share documents What can the service do? The service is mostly used to Rapidly growing demand for virtual meetings Not many good and complete software's available Had to make unique solutions to make it user-friendly How modern was the technology? Talk with other employees and collaborate on the same document Be able to use this with multiple persons at once A complete collaboration tool What is new with this software? Started implementing in 1996 Matured and well priced technology Introduce the service to early adapters who could see its usefulness and recommend it to others Apply it to the central IS organization How was it implemented into Boeing? Assessing technology suitability and readiness Implementation complexity Poor usability Technology integration Technical challenges implementing the service Barriers to new collaboration technologies Justifying collaboration technologies Conflicting organizational objectives A need must develop Timing is everything Organizational challenges implementing the service One of the problems implementing collaboration technology into Boeing was justifying the technology. Why is this so hard, and is this still a problem? What do you think made this project end so well? Questions to discuss with class