Despite many years of research in the area of human-computer interaction, there are still remarkably few computing platforms in existence that permit remote collaboration over various software applications in an intense manner. Visualisation and Interaction on a Collaborative Access Table (ViCAT) is a new project whose aim is to allow intense collaboration between multiple users at multiple remotely located sites, as if the users were gathered around a physical table. This paper introduces the ViCAT design philosophy and how it addresses the mixed presence groupware concept, and then describes the relationship between the ViCAT project and current horizontal interactive human-computer systems research.