RSSMicrosoft Acquires Groove Networks
By Nate Mook | Published March 10, 2005, 10:01 AM
Microsoft announced early Thursday that it will acquire Groove Networks and integrate Groove's Virtual Office collaboration software into the Office System lineup. Groove's founder, Ray Ozzie, will become chief technology officer of Microsoft and report directly to company chairman Bill Gates.
Groove Virtual Office enables workers to share information, manage projects and hold meetings no matter where they are located geographically. Groove's products were already closely tied to Microsoft's Office applications, which will aid in the transition.
"I'm surprised Microsoft took this long. Groove has long offered collaboration technology complimentary to Microsoft's and in an area where the software giant wants to expand. The acquisition fits like a glove," said Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox.
Ray Ozzie, who invented Lotus Notes, is perhaps an even more significant catch than Groove's software, noted Wilcox. "Ozzie is an esteemed innovator -- and longtime Microsoft rival when at Lotus and later IBM -- whom I expect to bring much value to his new employer. From a technology and personnel perspective, the acquisition is a win, win. No doubt about it."
"Ray and his team are true innovators. Microsoft and its customers will greatly benefit from their experience," said Bill Gates. "After working with Ray for years as a close partner, it will be great to have him on our senior leadership team."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Microsoft was previously a major investor in Groove.
Groove was very expensive for what it was trying to do... it'll be interesting to see how MS will handle this.
A lot of these collaberation tools have price against them. You want to collaberate to save money, often these tools introduce complexities in other ways that don't work out so well. Compatibility is also key. Not everyone wants to go the MS route for these specialized tools.
Not everyone we worked with was willing to use groove so we were left with a product that was costing us money. [a lot]
Score: 0
Apple already have Randezous technology very long time ago.
Score: 0
Peer-to-peer, chat, IM, email, file sharing, on-line meetings... they are all just pushing bits from point A to point B. People often have face-to-face meetings without accomplishing that much.
The key is not to just communicate, but to actually collaborate, and that requires that people actually get down to the meaning of the thing that they are working on.
A really interesting and useful collaboration tool for software developers is ReadySET Pro (http://www.readysetpro.com/). It actually gives teams a big head start on formulating their use cases, test cases, security plans, requirements documents, design documents, and project plans.
Score: 0