COLLABORATION
OVERVIEW
DISA procured two commercially managed services to meet DoD enterprise collaboration requirements. This transformational approach allows DoD to pay for the actual amount of collaboration services used without having to invest in expensive hardware, software or dedicated support personnel. The Government also reaps immediate benefits each time the commercial service provider updates its commercial software baseline.
The Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) Collaboration service enables synchronous and asynchronous communication using instant messaging, low-bandwidth text chat, and web conferencing. Instant messaging and web conferencing both include text-based communication, while web conferencing adds shared whiteboards, desktop & application sharing, and the ability to invite non-DoD personnel into collaboration sessions.
NEWS
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) acquired DoD's first collaboration service, E-CollabCenter, which is based on IBM Sametime, in July 2006. The Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) completed Early User Testing of this service on the NIPRNet in December 2006 and on the SIPRNet in May 2007. This service is now available for operational use. The upgrade to 7.5.1 was completed for NIPRNet in September 07 and SIPRNet October 07.
In June 2007, DISA acquired a second collaboration service, Defense Connect Online (DCO), which is based on Adobe Acrobat Connect and Jabber Instant Messenger. This service is currently in early user testing with operational availability in April 2008.
