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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
How to make workgroups really work

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, Mar. 15, 2004
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Ray Ozzie, the man who invented Lotus Notes and more recently Groove Networks, is probably the most important tech industry player the average AnchorDesk reader has never heard of.

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And Groove--a peer-to-peer business communication and collaboration tool--may be the most important product you've never seen. Not that it's for everyone, at least not yet. But it's important enough that, if you consider yourself technologically literate, you should investigate it.

FORTUNATELY, that's easy enough to do: You can download a personal use copy or a 60-day trial business version for free. The software itself costs $70 to $150 plus as much as $100-a-year for optional services--which most business users won't really find optional.

For paying customers, the company is about to start a semi-public beta of its 3.0 release, due later this year. I say "semi" because the only public that gets the beta are current paid 2.0 customers. That's probably not such a bad thing. But, as I've seen the 3.0 beta, I'd like to be able to offer you a preview. Maybe once the beta has been out a little while, the concept of 'public' will be expanded to actually include the public.

What Groove does is allow people to work securely with one another--sharing documents, project work, and business processes--without needing a server in the middle to get the job done. Groove keeps shared files up to date even if you're only occasionally connected to the Internet.

This way, Groove lets you create a virtual office, which users can take with them wherever they go. This isn't software-as-a-service: You need the Groove client to connect to other Groove clients. But it is highly mobile and especially well-suited for workgroups in which members from several organizations need to share information but can't log into each other's corporate servers.

The rap on Groove is that it's complex. That's certainly true for version 2.0. And, while 3.0 is much improved, it's still an application that's best for people who are really motivated to use it, rather than those who might be ordered to do so by their managers. Ease-of-use may improve in version 4.0 or even 3.5, but I have no idea when those will appear.

THAT SAID, Groove said its most successful installations occur where someone--typically a manager--has both a vision for how information sharing would help a group or project and the authority (and budget) to implement the Groove solution.

The company isn't really concentrated on any specific vertical markets, although the pharmaceutical industry and government have been top purchasers. In government service, Groove's secure, peer-to-peer architecture and mobile support are winners in Homeland Security and intelligence applications, a Groove exec told me.

The next-gen Groove 3.0 is also more tightly integrated with the operating system, handling the synchronization of Windows XP folders from within the file system. That's when Groove looks like a precursor for Microsoft Longhorn, which treats the file system more like a database and the files themselves as data objects.

Someday, much of what Groove does will find its way into a fairly standard collaboration environment, if not into the operating system itself. (That perhaps explains why both Microsoft and Intel are Groove investors.)

AGAIN, when the public beta goes really public you can see for yourself. But I'd start with version 2.0 anyway, because it gives you a better foundation in what Groove is trying to accomplish.

Ray Ozzie has never been a guy to take the easy way out. In fact, if he'd just learned to invest his time in tweaking his previous work rather than in pushing the envelope with new stuff, he'd have more money and be far better known that he is today.

But Ray never learned to do that. If and when Groove does find its way into the mainstream, I expect he'll be off on another quest, looking for more ways to improve the ways we work together using technology. And most of the people who do so will have never heard of the man they may have most to thank.

What do you think? How do you coordinate widely scattered workgroups now? Do you think Groove could help? TalkBack to me below! 

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