Whether you realize it or not, the days of the traditional location-based command-control organization are coming to a close. Business owners, managers, and employees are beginning to realize that when it comes to many tasks, they can work from almost any location. Certainly there are many jobs (e.g., doctors) that must remain at least partially location-based. But for many organizations, the move to the virtual organization offers an opportunity to expand hiring options, help workers better manage work and home life, and improve the environment by keeping cars off the road.

While there are enormous benefits to moving to the virtual organization, there are also plenty of challenges. How do you help people get face-to-face time, and how do you help people collaborate and communicate? The answer is technology. There are many technology solutions in place on the public Internet today that can be implemented on your private intranet (or securely on the Web) that will boost communication and collaboration among your highly distributed workforce.

You may well have seen the term community as you visit various Web sites on the Internet. Community solutions, when implemented on an external Web site, enable site visitors to interact with each other and the owners of the site. Similarly, building your own intranet-based community will fuel internal communication and collaboration. But what types of solutions might you implement, and how much will it set you back? Community technologies are broad and can range from instant messaging to online meetings, discussion groups, video conferencing, shared white-boarding, and more.

The good news is that there are solutions that will fit nearly any budget. And, there are solutions for nearly any platform. The biggest challenge I've found is to implement community technologies that can integrate with the rest of your computing environment. That is to say, you want to collaborate online, but you likely also want to get the results of that collaboration into and out of other technology solutions that you have implemented (such as internal databases).

You needn't jump whole-hog into implementing community solutions, either. The best approach I've found is to test-drive a number of these technologies on the Internet first, then choose the ones that are a good match for your organization. For example, my organization is highly distributed. We began by using instant messaging, and many of us tried several different types of discussion software over the Internet. We've now been able to narrow down the list of products and services that meet our community needs and our budget.

I won't attempt to talk about the plethora of community solutions that exist across all the technology categories. Instead, let's look at discussion software in particular. You can implement discussion software for private communication and collaboration in two ways. First, you can install the software on your internal servers. Second, you can obtain a private discussion service from an outside provider.

The internally installed discussion software integrates with the Web server on your intranet. Most of the products I have tested install within a few minutes; then you are left to customize the discussion topic interface. If you have an IT staff or even a savvy end-user, you can be discussing things in no time flat! If you don't have technologically astute folks on hand, most of the providers of discussion software can remotely install the product-usually for a very low fee.

The discussion software that you might install internally can range in cost from free to thousands of dollars. The wide range of costs results from the amount of functionality offered and the number of different discussions you plan on having at any given time. For example, Multex's BuzzPower can get pretty pricey, but the software is highly customizable, and more important, it offers a good set of options to integrate with the rest of your computing environment. On the other hand, software such as WebCrossing can be implemented quickly and inexpensively. With WebCrossing, you can also customize with little effort the look and feel of what end-users will see in their browsers. However, WebCrossing does not yet offer the level of integration that BuzzPower does.

To get a feel for what discussion software is all about, you might try one of the many public discussion sites on the Internet. For example, at ezboard's site http://www.ezboard.com, you can create your own discussion group with little effort (and it's free). But be aware that the information you discuss will be publicly viewable. The functionality found in discussion software can range widely. In its basic form, discussion software and services let you post messages, links, and graphics for others who are signed up for the discussion. Many discussion software products and services are also beginning to offer other community technologies. For example, several discussion products now offer chat, shared white-boarding, and video conferencing.

The market for community technologies should continue to converge over the next two years. This convergence will allow you to take two different approaches to implementing community solutions on your intranet. First, you might select individual solutions, such as an instant messaging server, discussion software, or a video server. Or, you might seek out solutions that support a wide range of communication and collaboration vehicles in a single product or service. The more integrated solutions, which offer a wider range of options, will set you back a bit more, so some budgeting will be needed.

It is easier and more cost-effective to implement internal community on your intranet, gradually using solutions that support an individual function (such as discussion, video, and instant messaging). But be careful to select solutions that will mesh well together.

Those who might be concerned with the network bandwidth will be happy to know that with the exception of video conferencing, none of these community technologies consume any great amount of bandwidth. If you plan on implementing video conferencing, separate bandwidth should be allocated, or you might consider using an outside service.

Regardless of your budget and level of expertise, there are community solutions available that will meet your needs. As your organization becomes more virtual, these technologies will play a key role in facilitating communication and collaboration on your intranet. Let the discussion begin!

Maggie Biggs maggie@biggs.com is Director of the InfoWorld Test Center. She has more than 15 years of strategic, tactical, and IT business experience.