Applications and Suites

Really, it's those apps that give our computer functionality. All the rest of the software on your computer is really designed to support apps so that way we can do certain functions on our computer.

What counts as an application

When we mention applications, generally speaking we're not talking about system software and operating systems and drivers and all of that. We're talking about something that the end user will use — the people that are using a computer and they're using it for some sort of function. It's that function that we consider an application. Although there is some gray area between this, in that there are some utilities that we could consider as an application as well. So it's not a perfectly clear-cut line, but generally speaking it's for the end users to carry out some sort of function.

We could categorize applications into several different types, whether it be productivity — things that we do to do our job — or collaboration, to be able to communicate and connect with others. We have web browsing software. We've got remote support software. We've got entertainment. And there's quite a bit more as well.

The ones covered here include word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software and visual diagramming, along with email clients, conferencing, online workspaces, document sharing and instant messaging, and several other apps — how we can use these to carry out the function of our job, or just for our personal use, or whatever the case may be.

Software suites

Another term that we should probably be familiar with is something called a software suite. A software suite is a bundle of applications. As an example, Microsoft Office is a bundle of applications. It includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, presentation software. So it has quite a few of these different applications all rolled into one suite or one bundle.

Collaboration software

Before getting into what collaboration software looks like and what it is, let's talk about what collaborate is. It just means that we're working together to produce something: working together on a project, working together on a document, working together to actually get some work done.

I look at collaboration software as having two different categories. One, software that we add collaboration tools to. And number two, a tool that's used for collaboration, and that's what it was built for.

Let me give you an example. A tool that was built for collaboration is like Microsoft Teams. It was set up so that way we can instant message, or do phone calls, or we could use it to actually do video conferencing. It was built for collaboration so we could collaborate on things. There's project management software that's built for collaboration.

Then there is software that has collaboration tools added to it. A good example of this is like Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word is built so that way we can type out a document and save a document, but there's reviewing tools that are built into it. So we can add comments, so other people can see those comments. There's also document sharing, and that way we can add information while the other person is still in that document — we can do it together. So that's an example of both software that has collaboration tools added to it, and tools that were built for collaboration.

Online workspaces

There's also this idea of an online workspace. I have my workspace right here. I've got my monitors and I've got my board where I can write stuff on here, and so I've got my whole setup here, and that's my workspace. Well, this is a little more in the lines of maybe a workspace at your business. So I show up at a business and I have other people that I'm collaborating with — that's a workspace.

Now take it and say, let's go online with it. What does that look like? That just means that we're doing the same type of activities, but we're doing it in a virtual world, online, in the cloud.

So those two terms work together: the collaboration piece, where we're working with other people like we would inside of a business, inside of an office, but an online workspace where we're working together in that space. An example might be that we pull up a document and start editing it together. We can do that because of these online workspaces, and we can collaborate because of those online workspaces. So that's the idea behind an online workspace: a place that we can virtually get together, just as if we were in the same office together working together.