IT Consultancy Breaks Down Barriers to Global Collaboration With Productivity Tool

When a global retailer turned to the IT consultants at Avanade to redesign its e-commerce Web site, Avanade assembled an international team of experts - designers and project managers in the United States and application developers in India. The 11.5 hour time difference and network latency issues introduced a unique set of collaboration challenges. To address these challenges, Avanade deployed Microsoft Office Groove 2007 software to the project team. The India team used the offline capabilities to maintain productivity even when network latency issues prevented them from accessing other Web-based resources. The U.S. team used the transparent discussion threads to quickly respond to developer queries.