Get in the Groove with Your Net Buddies

Groove Fills in Where Notes Falls Short

In the business world, Groove targets an area where group applications and Web services typically fail: coordinating on-the-fly projects among up to a dozen people spread across different locations and often different companies.

Ten years ago, I thought Lotus Notes would solve the problem of coordinating diverse workgroups. But it doesn't, because Notes is rather inflexible and basically an enterprise beast. Applications for any new project must be funneled through our excellent but overworked information system folks, so we usually don't even try.

Four years ago, I thought Web-based project services such as HotOffice.com and eRoom would save the day. But we've never actually bought into these rental services, mostly because none ever met more than a fraction of our needs.

Even Microsoft Office keeps nibbling around the edges of this problem. With the upcoming Office 10, for example, you can collaborate on documents in real time, and it's easier to post them on an intranet. But I don't know anyone who works on documents that way. And at any given time on any given project, half the participants are either outside the office or freelancers, which means they can't even get to the documents.

So in the past decade, instant messaging has been the only new collaboration tool that made a difference to us.

But looking at the cornucopia of communication tools that's now opening up, we might just start to Groove.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

"Ray Ozzie is out to do something new--in the same sense that Notes was new when it was invented," says Simon Hayward, industry analyst at Gartner Group. Success will depend on enlisting application developers and other partners, Hayward points out, but Ozzie has a good track record with Notes and its 60 million users. "Ozzie has the stature to make people look at his offer." And with the wild popularity of Napster, Hayward adds, "he has the happy coincidence that peer-to-peer is hot just now."

Will Microsoft try to quash it? Bill Gates gave a blessing via video at Groove's launch, dubbing it "an innovative and deep software product that is a good indicator of where the Internet is going."

"I don't see Microsoft competing so much with Groove as embracing it, at least near term," says Dwight Davis, vice president at Summit Strategies. "As a backer of peer-to-peer computing, Groove is making the case that there will be a continued role for powerful PCs and other clients that do more than act as dumb Web browsers.... For now, I'm guessing Groove's main challenge won't be competition from others, but confusion in the market about what peer-to-peer is and how to best exploit it."

"With the applications available now, the natural use is for meeting-type collaboration for global companies--consulting firms and project-oriented companies. But that is just the beginning," comments Kevin Morgan, director of portals, community, and content at Hurwitz Group. "This could transform the way we do business--even more than e-mail did. That is, if we can learn how to collaborate."