Microsoft Acquires Groove Networks, Mar 11

Two days after its real-time collaboration and communication day, Microsoft announced that it is acquiring Groove Networks (there's also a Q&A available). I have equivocated over whether this would happen: when Microsoft initially invested in Groove, I felt it was a definite, but over the last year I thought that all hope was lost ... for two reasons. Firstly, Groove Virtual Office was too much of a direct competitor to Windows SharePoint Services. Whereas Microsoft used to position Groove Virtual Office as its solution for offline access, it hasn't been doing that in customer accounts for about the last year (with iOra being the strategic enabler instead). Secondly, Groove has failed to garner much buzz in the marketplace, aside from fairly bounded times around new product releases.

At the teleconference announcing the acquisition, the following points were made:

• (Jeff Raikes) has a high degree of excitement about the shared vision for collaboration, both within and across organizational boundaries. Ray will become one of Microsoft's three CTOs, and will work with Bill. Customers were stressing that offline access to information worker content was important.


• (Bill Gates) this acquisition is good for Microsoft, and it will help information workers. Ray has made a huge contribution to the industry. Two pieces of Groove are particularly interesting: its peer-to-peer capabilities, and its authentication approach.


• (Ray Ozzie) a very exciting day for the team, and for Ray personally. While Groove was based on the premise that the nature of business was changing due to decentralization, server-based systems remain important. Collaboration requires both approaches.


• During the question and answer session, little was revealed about how the products from both companies will be merged.

Here's my first take:

• This was a do-or-die deal for Groove, and Microsoft was a natural acquirer given how much effort Groove has put into integration with Windows and SharePoint. IBM wouldn't buy them, and they were faced with declining market influence. The company just wasn't big enough to survive as an independent player, and was struggling to get heard among key buyers.


• Jeff said, and the press release repeats it, that this gives Microsoft a trifecta of offerings: real-time collaboration solutions (Live Meeting, Live Communications Server), server-based collaboration solutions (Portal Server, SharePoint Services), and peer-to-peer collaboration solutions. This absolutely the wrong way to think about it. Microsoft's line needs to be that they offer collaborative workspaces that integrate real-time capabilities for shared work, with aggregation and cross-site search via a portal. At this goes to say that I think the stark difference today between SharePoint and Groove will disappear in 12-18 months.


• iOra is dead. It has just lost a key strategic reference point.


• The presence and availability technology in the Groove Virtual Office product will be stripped out, and replaced with Live Communications Server-based capabilities.


• My hunch is that this has come about due to the continued slippage in ship date for Longhorn. If Longhorn was more on track from a time delivery perspective, this would not have happened.


• We can expect some major changes in Windows SharePoint Services. Ray will want to put his stamp there, because the product suffers from some major weaknesses, a few of which will be addressed by greater integration between Groove and SharePoint.


• In terms of timing, it would have been cool have announced this at the collaboration and communication day two days ago.


• In time, customers will benefit from this. Ray needs 18-24 months, but his strategic viewpoint and clout in the collaboration space will make a big difference for Microsoft.


• Nothing was said about Groove's range of server-based offerings, so here's my pick. The functions from tts Enterprise Management Server (for managing Groove deployments) will be merged into Microsoft SMS. Its Enterprise Data Bridge will be disassembled, with functions added into BizTalk Server. Its Enterprise Integration Server will have some functions but into Microsoft SMS, and others into BizTalk, while its Enterprise Relay Server (for within the firewall control over peer-to-peer communication) will be merged into Live Communications Server.

What Do You Think?
Is this a good thing for Microsoft? What points of integration make sense between the Groove technology and Microsoft's multitude of things? Please drop me a line by email, or leave a comment below.

UPDATE (March 12): Strategic Viewpoint Report Available
Shared Spaces released an independent Strategic Viewpoint report assessing Microsoft's acquisition of Groove Networks. It is a 7-page report, available for immediate purchase.

Comments

[Brian Hoogendam]

Michael,
Good posting about the merger of MS and Groove. I agree with a number of your points. I personally think that they are setting it up to be the next gen SharePoint. But, to my knowledge, Groove does not have a real time component, or do they? Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Brian

[Michael Sampson]

Brian, thanks for posting. Groove does offer a number of real-time components ... chat embedded into each virtual office space, plus one-to-one almost real-time co-editing of Microsoft Word documents. The latter is ok, but not wonderful. M.

[Mike]

Groove is a cool but useless software - no organization that already have IBM or Microsoft groupware and collaboration environment will find any use for it. I believe Microsoft actually bought Ozzy , the fact that they had to buy Groove in order to get him is not important for them.

[Ted Thomas]

This is my first post *into the future* (since it is still March 10th here in the US)... cool.

Earlier this week I was at a training session sponsored by MS for CASAHL tools to migrate Domino into the MS stack, and Groove kept coming up. Some were aware of it, but no one had actually used it. What was interesting was how much of Groove functionality that Domino has offered for years, and the MS folks didn't know about it. My take is that MS bought 2 things-- Ray O. and off-line support know-how. This confirms a very important point-- offline support in Longhorn still has a ways to go.

Next Big Question: when will seamless federation actually happen in SIP (or something) so that users on IBM/MS/open source collaboration products can easily talk without using AOL/IRC/MSN or anything not up to business level security?

[rim]

I have tried Groove and it worked great that it was p2p.
It was useless that the software had to be installed at each computer before it could be used.
I think Microsoft will strip p2p functionality as their primary goal to maintain central control and profits of online collaboration. Now there is a new opportunity for p2p meeting software.

[CD]

Ray Ozzie is clearly a visionary when it comes to how people can work together better via innovative technologies.

Remember what tools were available in 1992? Certainly Lotus Notes was a paradigm shift and provided information workers with a new tool to share information and knowledge. It was just awesome and MS had nothing to compete against Notes!

More views at http://eforms.blogs.com/blog/

[Richard Schwartz]

I'm of the opinion that the best thing Microsoft could do is give Ray the opportunity to save WinFS from all the troubles it has been having. The real lasting legacy of Ray so far is the NSF container. For all it's flaws and it's pre-standards era architecture, NSF is the container which IBM and Lotus have been building collaboration on for 15 years. Sure, IBM wants nothing more than to improve on NFS in the Workplace products, but Microsoft doesn't even have anything to improve on! Microsoft needs WinFS to be what NFS is: the foundation on which true collaborative applications can be built; but more integraed with the OS, and more friendly to standards-based data.

-rich

[Suresh Kumar]

Bill Gates,

went on record a few years back that he had wished that he bought Lotus Notes (Iris Development)... back in the day...

Whatever attempts Microsoft tried to replicate Notes (if you excuse the 'pun) was only really be seen as genuine admiration on Microsofts parts.

Well Bil got his man... and i think there are immediate-term, short-term and long-term consequences..

Immediate-term
Product positioning of Groove Tools with Microsoft Tools.

Short-term.
Components of Groove technology, .e.g folder sharing, p2p, and authentication components will become core in Longhorn. ( i expect Groove have been playing around that for quite some time).

Long-term.
Profound- rearchitecting of the Microsoft product line, with Ray finally getting to use 'network-effect' to change the way we use technology on the MS-Platform.

I think this is not just a benefit for Microsoft but for users of computers all over the world.

Ray is usually 10-15 years ahead of what most people are thinking...

[Andy Swarbrick]

Brian Hoogendam comments that word's co-edit is not fantastic. As a Groove advocate, that is what I used to think - and say. Now it has developed into a great design. (Not as good as multi-user Excel over Groove from www.Gtoolbox.com, but that is because of Word & Excel design not Groove's.)

Rim comments that Groove has to be installed on every computer. That is wrong since our server solution for Groove delivers just that.

[Brian Hoogendam]

Andy stated that I made comments about co-edit not being good. That is not what I said. I was asking if Groove contained the component for real time collaboration - please go back and read my post.

We believe that collaboration within MS Excel and MS Powerpoint should be done via the native application. That is what we have developed - a Peer to Peer, real time collaboration solution for both of those products. They work directly from the application. Our adapters work stand-alone or can be integrated into a Groove framework. We have already integrated them within Sharepoint to show how real time collaboration can work within the Sharepoint environment. I did goto gtoolbox.com and I think that your products are very interesting. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Brian

[Jim McCusker]

I agree with Michael that the real-time components (like Chat) will be gutted and replaced with MS technologies. I disagree with those who feel the product is useless, but it does have it's problems:

- Large client-side install (most likely to be bundled into the next release of Office)
- Local workspaces tend to create a lot of client-side bloating in disk usage. The more workspaces you belong to the more disk space you use up locally.

I believe MS should work hard with Groove to tightly integrate the product with Sharepoint Team Sites. I believe that Groove Workspaces will be more tightly tied to actual Sharepoint Team Site content, thereby allowing for offline access.

Microsoft needs to be VERY careful not to create confusion between Groove collaboration and Sharepoint collaboration technologies. My fear is that some users who have both technologies may end up with content in two separate places (local client-side Groove workspaces and Sharepoint team spaces). Administrators of the products need the ability to control things like:

- Allow admins to enable forcing workspaces to be tied to a Sharepoint team space.
- Allow admins to enable/disable users to invite external collaborators into a Groove workspace.
- and more ....

Grooves current integration with Sharepoint is rather kludgy and reliese on having a single user act as the gateway between the content in the Sharepoint site and content in the Groove Workspace. This has all sorts of validation problems for regulated people like myself (Pharma).

If I was Microsoft, I would change Groove's integration in the following way:

- Allow a team site to have a SINGLE Groove Workspace that replicates the security (for users in the Sharepoint domain that access the Sharepoint team site).
- Allow the Groove Workspace to permit invitations of external collaborators (outside of the Sharepoint domain) so that they can collaborate in the Groove Workspace but have their content synchronized with the Sharepoint team site. (This features needs lots of administrative oversight, especially in regulated industries.)

[Pete Holzmann]

Jim's comments indicate possible misunderstanding of the value of Groove:

***The more workspaces you belong to the more disk space you use up locally***
That's a key design feature! How else could Groove provide full offline access to all collaborative data? I think anyone unwilling to "pay" the cost of local storage probably has minimal need for the Groove collaboration model.

As was noted above, the online and offline collaboration models each have their strengths. In our experience,
* core team / senior knowledge workers require more of the localized access -- they have more personal storage/cpu power wherever they are, vs having a "good pipe" to centralized data. "I need to work with my data wherever I am, and I have a computer that can hold it all. I can go online to sync but may not always have a good connection."
* high volume collaboration can be centralized effectively. Very high volume (read only / submit-only) collaboration can be webified effectively. "My online 'pipe' is fast/reliable enough that I can use it to work with my data; I may not have enough local storage to work with the data on a separate system."

***My fear is that some users who have both technologies may end up with content in two separate places (local client-side Groove workspaces and Sharepoint team spaces).***
Isn't the scary bit of that scenario the "separate" part? As long as the two remain integrated, there's no issue. We've found that great collaboration architecture involves synchronization across spaces and platforms. Perhaps Groove/SharePoint can aspire towards one of our best historical models: Ecco Pro. It gives fully automated sync between servers, workstations, and disparate PDA's (no custom PDA app, just good sync work!) at the field (not record) level. Disconnect and run; reconnect and sync...A real pleasure to use.

***Groove's current integration with Sharepoint is rather kludgy and relies on having a single user act as the gateway between the content in the Sharepoint site and content in the Groove Workspace. This has all sorts of validation problems for regulated people like myself (Pharma).***

Is "single user gateway" an issue with respect to the data itself? All Groove users (normally) have fully replicated data copies (including author id's). Isn't the primary issue the inability to access or control the user directory across platforms? Yet perhaps that too is not a huge issue?

I believe we will eventually see three levels of collaboration access...
"Groovey" user sets with full localized / offline-capable access
"Sharepoint" user sets with full centralized "wired" access
"Webified" users with limited (readonly and/or limited data entry) access

...each with the possibility of synchronized, managed access both to the information and to the other access directories.

***If I was Microsoft, I would...
- Allow the Groove Workspace to permit invitations of external collaborators (outside of the Sharepoint domain) so that they can collaborate in the Groove Workspace but have their content synchronized with the Sharepoint team site.***
I'm a bit surprised if this is not already "how it works"... showing my ignorance here?

[John Costa]

Does anybody knows how iOra compares with Groove? or is everybody already dismissing this software?