What About Groove?

Groove Virtual Office enables groups to work on shared documents and communicate in virtual “workspaces” hosted on their PCs, without a central server. As shown here, a Groove workspace combines some features of file shares, discussion lists, Web sites, and instant messaging (IM) sessions. Groove uses Web-based security and data transmission protocols that work across most firewalls, enabling users from different organizations to share the same workspaces. Groove also supports offline access to workspaces; a user can take a copy of a workspace and make changes to it while disconnected from the network, then synchronize the changes with other users on reconnection to the network.

Microsoft announced plans to acquire Groove in Mar. 2005. The Groove product overlaps with a number of Microsoft collaboration offerings, including Live Communications Server (LCS), Live Meeting, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), and SharePoint Portal Server. In the near term, Microsoft will probably begin selling Groove Virtual Office as one of its Office System client products and localize it into more languages, as it has done with other acquisitions, such as Visio. Less likely, but possible: Microsoft could bundle Groove Virtual Office with low-end editions of the Office suite, creating a document sharing and IM solution for smaller companies that don’t have the technical savvy or servers for products like LCS or WSS.