Software architecture of DiCE: A distributed collaboration environment

Abstract

Recent advances in network technology has significantly increased the network bandwidth as well as enriched the set of network functions, enabling a rich set of computer assisted collaborations. DiCE (Distributed Collaborative Environment) is a multimedia collaboration environment that is being developed at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. The challenge of DiCE is to explore the advanced functionalities enabled by high speed networking and multimedia computing technologies to develop effective computer assisted systems that will significantly increase the productivity of collaborations. In this paper, we describe the features of DiCE, in terms of its flexibility in supporting various types of collaborations, and then present the design of software architecture that accomplishes these goals.