Where does collaboration begin?

Even for The Register, not a very long article but it does ask some important questions.  The article, Welcome to the world of collaboration by stealth, suggests via questions that collaboration is bigger than the IT department.

Because it involves software, probably the IT department's. But is IT equipped for the task? And does it want the responsibility? Collaboration is a human process, in essence, so surely the buck stops somewhere else - even if IT provides a number of enabling tools.

The article then discusses that collaboration tools may be best implemented "by a few people at a time".  In other words, perhaps the first time social publishing systems are introduced in your organization, it may be best not to implement it through traditional enterprise software.  The article even suggests that Facebook would be a good first collaboration tool. I personally wouldn't go that far (or rather short sighted) with Facebook, however.

Tools such as Drupal, Elgg, or Alfresco are good tools to introduce the the troops to collaboration applications.  You can easily have your workers collaborating though IT without having go full force on an enterprise solution to collaboration.  The topic of CMS and collaboration in the enterprise is something we'll be spending a lot of time on in the coming months.