Collaborative virtual engineering for SMEs: Technical architecture

Collaboration and mobility are two actual trends in new product development today. Due to the globalization of the economies and the outsourcing of specific tasks, companies have to work together as Virtual Organisations. However, the work environments of the collaborating people are very complex. In every company different processes and IT systems are used. Additionally, people are seldom at their company site, especially in small and medium sized companies (SME) the key personnel are often on the road. There they have no access to their digital files and information resources of their companies. This paper describes the architecture concept of a mobile collaborative environment addressing these problems.