Case study: Collaboration changes in agile workspaces

When they arrive, their mobile devices, content and applications are automatically discovered by the composition manager embedded in each device and nearby infrastructure. Using the table's touch-screen interface, they quickly connect the resources needed for the collaboration. The process is as easy as connecting the dots and facilitates transparent and seamless sharing of resources across platforms - without regard to network availability.

This is an "agile" workspace, a place where environment and technology are melded to enable a collaborative experience unlike anything we know today. Here the environment is the computer and it is immersive.

Why it's a game-changer
Except for proximity, technology today is completely decoupled from our workspaces. The two may share time and place, but they are not converged in any way.

Alternatively, "agile" spaces meld place and technology so that walls, windows, floors and furniture are every bit as integral to the computing experience as the technology devices and applications themselves. These spaces are "context-aware" and composable across platforms - always ready to stitch available resources into an impromptu computing system.

Such an environment enables a collaborative experience that transforms our concept of sharing and connecting. For example, in our workspace scenario, users switch rapidly from individual to group activities in the same space. Individual mobile devices "borrow" the nearby large screen to share information with the group.

In a side conversation, multiple small screens may be stitched together to create a larger display, with documents and images stretching themselves across the ad hoc screen for better viewing. Individuals may add details or analysis data - either to the composed display or as a new layer of data seen on top. And all of the information becomes a shared meeting space that gets stored in a common repository for future access by any member of the ad hoc group.

Later, when other people enter the agile workspace, it will become something different altogether, unique to their project, devices, applications and content. No sign of the previous group's collaboration will be visible.