An analysis of IT platform and organizational requirements for multimedia cooperation on the Internet - A case study on the international office of the future

Office systems have gained a state of maturity in handling strictly defined business processes. Research on the 'international office of the future' shows that they are inappropriate for handling cooperation in general and are not well suited for the increasing numbers of multi-side/multi-time/multi-culture workgroups. Recent developments on multimedia systems and networking technology show that using desktop multimedia conferencing for group decision making and cooperative work on wide area networks such as the Internet is possible. In this paper the design, hardware and software requirements and organizational issues in a desktop multimedia conferencing system as a fundamental cooperative tool in the 'international office of the future' are reviewed. This article focuses on a case study on urban planning using desktop multimedia conferencing on the Internet. Further some implications for future research on desktop multimedia conferencing tools are discussed.