• Illustration: A Groove Workspace
• Illustration: Groove Infrastructure

Groove collaboration products will get a boost when a key Groove component ships in the Office 2007 suite in late 2006. Groove is a client application and a set of server applications and online services that enable groups to communicate and work on shared data in virtual workspaces. Groove can help small groups, particularly those that cross organizational boundaries, to work together on short-lived projects. The Groove 2007 products improve integration with Office, but large organizations must weigh Groove against existing collaboration technologies that might attract more future investment from Microsoft than Groove will.

Collaboration On The Fly for Small Groups

The most visible Groove product is the Groove Virtual Office client, which will be renamed Groove 2007 in the next release. The client enables groups to work together in virtual workspaces that hold shared files and data (such as calendars) and provide tools for communication among group members, such as discussion boards, text and audio chat, and instant messaging. (For an illustration, see "A Groove Workspace".)

Data and files in a workspace are stored on the client computers of the group members and are synchronized among all these computers whenever a change is made, using encryption to secure data from eavesdropping. Synchronization works across firewalls and can occur even when some members of the group are offline—changes are stored in a queue, and files are updated when the computer is back online.

Groove is designed for small groups (of up to 30 members) working on projects in which shared files and data are changing quickly, group members won't all be online at the same time (perhaps because they are working across time zones, or have unreliable network connections), and group members don't share a server or IT department to back them up. One successful use of Groove has been in emergency response situations, where officials from multiple government agencies create an ad hoc team and must respond quickly to an evolving situation. Groove can also be useful for working with business partners and vendors. For example, a company might use Groove to work with a public relations firm to compose a fast response to company news, or to work with an investment bank and law firm on a merger.

For these kinds of situations, Groove improves on several existing collaboration methods. Like e-mail, Groove enables group members to work even when separated by firewalls and when some group members are offline, but Groove coordinates changes to shared documents and data more automatically than e-mail can. Like Windows file shares, Groove enables users to take data and documents offline and synchronize them later, but Groove traffic can cross firewalls and does not require a centrally hosted file share. Like Windows SharePoint Services Web-based team sites and Exchange public folders, Groove workspaces support mixing of files with structured data sets (e.g., calendars, task lists, data records from filled-out forms) in a single location, but Groove workspaces don't require a central server to host them, and workspaces are available even to users who are offline. Like instant messaging (IM), Groove shows who is online and offers text messaging, but Groove provides more detailed presence information (for example, who is currently working in a particular workspace), and supports shared documents and data better than IM does.

The Illusion of Peer-to-Peer

Behind the scenes, Groove uses a proprietary message queuing protocol to carry communications traffic and synchronize workspaces among users. To users, Groove seems to be a peer-to-peer system, but Groove also relies on servers. Specifically, relay servers transport Groove messages through firewalls and store messages for users who are offline, while management servers maintain and back up directories of Groove users, authenticate users, and support exchange of encryption keys. (For an illustration of this architecture, see "Groove Infrastructure".)

Microsoft data centers host relay and management servers for "unmanaged" users, who install the Groove client and run it without oversight from any other organization. Organizations can, however, take control of relay and management servers to monitor Groove usage, improve security, and enforce corporate policy. Organizations looking to control Groove have two main options:

Groove Enterprise Services (currently known as Groove Hosted Services) are Microsoft-hosted Groove relay and management services to which customers can subscribe. Among other benefits, subscribing organizations can control their own Groove directories, manage enrollment and removal of Groove user identities, reset passwords, enforce password policies, and enforce other security policies (e.g., prevent Groove traffic from leaving the organization). Enterprise subscribers also receive service-level guarantees for relay services.

Groove servers on-site provide organizations with all the control they get with Groove Enterprise Services. On-site servers offer additional benefits, such as synchronization of the Groove directory with a local Active Directory instance, the ability to use Windows Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to issue and remove encryption keys, and logging of Groove traffic on clients to comply with records retention requirements. Organizations with on-site servers can also centrally back up Groove workspaces through the Groove Enterprise Data Bridge server, which essentially hosts "bots" (automated Groove users) that read and write data in workspaces. The Enterprise Data Bridge also provides a customizable platform for synchronizing data between workspaces and other enterprise applications. For example, an organization could write an Enterprise Data Bridge application that synchronizes a product catalog between sales team workspaces and an enterprise resource planning system.

Groove 2007: More Integration, Some Lost Features

The 2007 versions of the Groove products have significant changes from the current Groove 3.1 versions.

Several features exploit the development muscle of the Office team. The Groove 2007 client will incorporate a number of Office features, including spelling and grammar checkers, Windows Error Reporting and Customer Experience Improvement Program instrumentation, and the new Office 2007 installer. The Groove 2007 client also will be localized into 28 languages (the previous version was English-only).

A number of new features also integrate Groove more tightly with other Microsoft products. Groove 2007 workspaces will get tools for filling out InfoPath 2007 forms (the native Groove forms tool is still available). Groove 2007 workspaces can synchronize documents with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 document libraries, enabling Groove to exploit WSS for document management and workflow. Also, Groove 2007 users who have the Communicator IM and voice client can see their Communicator presence information in Groove and can launch Communicator sessions from Groove. (The native Groove presence and IM functions are still available.)

Also notable is the product line's new packaging: The Groove 2007 client software will ship in the Office suite for the first time, in the new Enterprise and Ultimate Editions. These will put Groove in front of hundreds of thousands of new users and simplify deployment of the client. (The client will also continue to be available separately.) For smaller businesses, Microsoft will offer the Groove 2007 client and relay service as an annual subscription called Office Live Groove, which will have lower upfront costs than buying the full client. Microsoft has also simplified the Groove server licensing model by creating a single Groove Server license and product. A Groove Server license is valid for a computer running any combination of the Groove Server components (relay, management, and Enterprise Data Bridge), which can be installed separately or together.

Groove 2007 poses some problems for users of existing versions. Most importantly, users of Groove 3.1 and earlier cannot access workspaces that were created by Groove 2007, although Groove 2007 users can access workspaces created by earlier versions. Workspaces create by Groove 2007 do not support some features from earlier versions, (such as the Contact Manager, Document Review, and Outliner tools), although Groove 2007 users can still employ these tools in workspaces created with earlier Groove versions. Groove 2007 also has dropped support for co-editing Word documents, group viewing of PowerPoint presentations, and integration of SharePoint data other than document libraries. The Groove Development Kit for creating new workspace tools has been eliminated, although developers can still customize existing Groove tools (such as the Groove and InfoPath forms tools). According to Microsoft Group Program Manager Marc Olson, the company saw the Groove 2007 release as a "one-time" opportunity to rethink features such as SharePoint integration, and remove features that would be too costly to localize and then maintain for the company's 10-year support life-cycle.

A Large Enough Niche?

Groove still faces a fundamental challenge: overlap with better-established collaboration technologies. Groove provides unique advantages over technologies such as e-mail, file sharing, Web-based team sites, and IM, particularly in its support for offline users and cross-organization collaboration. However, the other collaboration technologies are more familiar and already installed in most large organizations. The other collaboration technologies also have useful capabilities which Groove lacks, such as document versioning, workflow support, and centralized logging. Consequently, organizations might be reluctant to deploy Groove alongside the established technologies.

The Groove team itself forges ahead despite these concerns. They plan a series of Groove 2007 add-ons, such as a Groove workspace template to support document review, and are already designing the next Groove release. The team has a powerful ally in Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, the former Groove Networks CEO. However, other factions at Microsoft might try to limit further investment in Groove as a product, hoping to incorporate its capabilities into better-established, more broadly applicable collaboration products, such as SharePoint Server.

The final test might come in the next three years. If Groove spurs upgrades to Office 2007 Enterprise Edition and brings in additional server sales, it will probably continue as a product. If not, Groove could get minimal further investment from Microsoft or be canceled altogether, as happened with technologies such as Exchange Conference Server, the Local Web Store, and Visual Basic 6. Organizations interested in Groove should plan their own investments with that possibility in mind.

Availability, Pricing, and Resources

The Office Groove 2007 client and Office Groove Server 2007 are planned for release in late 2006.

When sold separately, the Groove 2007 client will have an estimated retail price of US$229. The Office Live Groove subscription service, which provides the client and basic hosted services, will cost US$80 yearly per user. A fully functional, time-limited free trial edition of the client will be available and will be useful for users who need to participate in a short-lived Groove workspace. Prices for Groove Server and enterprise hosted services have not been announced; earlier versions of the servers cost US$10,000 to US$20,000 each.

The original Groove Networks site still has useful information about the Groove products; see www.groove.net.

Groove 2007 preview information is at www.microsoft.com/office/preview/programs/groove/highlights.mspx.

Groove's 2005 acquisition was summarized in "Groove Buy for Collaboration" on page 16 of the Apr. 2005 Update.

Groove manager Marc Olson's blog is blogs.msdn.com/marco.