Who, what, when, how
Resource sharing requires sophisticated access control. Shared resource providers need control over who can access what, when, how and there can be many who, what, when, and how in large collaborative environments.

Rich entitlement
This level of access control is also required to be a dynamic process so that access rights and permissions can be updated easily at any time, and especially during operations. A rich entitlement system is required as not only the resources, users, rights and permissions can change, but the structures (ex: organizations, departments, groups, etc.) to which users and resources are attached can and do change (ex: acquisitions, reorganizations, refactoring, evolution, etc.).

Entitlement management
Such a rich distributed entitlement environment also requires powerful distributed management and graphical modeling tools that provide administrators with adequate support, automation, and validation for this management process efficiency.

Costs of failure
Again, failure to provide adequate entitlement and entitlement management support prevents the collaboration process from operating successfully, leading to project failure, cost and investment waste, and major frustrations. And, of course, this is further amplified when collaborators also happen to compete in some markets, which is usually the case.