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 TEST CENTER Groove delivers on groupware's promise By Steve Jefferson , InfoWorld Test Center October 23, 2000 Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie launches exciting peer-to-peer networking program that may finally revolutionize the way employees work together
Although Notes is nothing to sneeze at, the client server model on which it is based has hampered it from becoming the killer application that revolutionizes the way we work together. Likewise, the file sharing concept behind Napster is laudable, but the tool has little to offer big business in its present state. This week, it finally seems that Ozzie's Groove Networks is onto something potentially as big as the Web browser itself. Simply called Groove, this new application allows users to share files, create group workspaces, and communicate over the Net to get work done faster. After a quick look, we're happy to report that this is an exciting product with enormous potential. Not only does it represent the first viable use of peer-to-peer networking for the corporate world, but Groove could also be the long-awaited answer to the groupware idea that got a lot of attention but never really took off. Like Napster, Groove is a peer-to-peer application that resides on a local machine. (A preview version can be downloaded at www.groove.net.) Users, after creating an account, can then either choose to work from a predefined workspace or to create a new one by deciding which member to invite and which tools to use. This is a unique product, stripping the baggage from groupware, and employing the brilliance of peer-to-peer. Some of the tools include a white board, a chat utility, a file sharing utility, picture viewer, a contact manager, and even a couple of games, tic-tac-toe and chess. Participants can opt to navigate together or work on their own. For example, Joe can put up a Word document for everyone in his company to see. Mary can then open it -- provided she has Word installed on her machine -- cut the portion of the text she wants to work on, and then paste it in Notepad so that her co-workers can view and edit it . Once done, Henry, who has quietly been playing tic-tac-toe by himself, can paste the new section as soon as Mary notifies him that she is done with her task in the process. Also available is the Groove Developer's Kit (GDK), which allows developers to create, for example, a much more robust word processor that allows group editing of Word files in their native format. As is to be expected in an early release, we had a bit of trouble. First, we could not get it installed on a number of Windows-based machines supposedly supported by Groove, and we could not find out the reasons for this before press time. We did get it successfully installed on two Windows 2000 Server machines on the same LAN and were able to use all of the tools between the two. We tried unsuccessfully to connect to another machine running Groove via the Internet. We suspect a firewall may have prevented the connection. The most significant bug we found was that Groove allowed more than one person to have the same username. This caused untold frustration when we realized we were asking someone in NY to join our workspace when we thought we were inviting another computer residing on our network. Also the instant messaging tool is a little clunky, so we had to use AOL Instant Messenger instead. The file-sharing tool allows entire directories to be shared, but only if you drag and drop them. If you use the "browse" function, you must select the files one by one. Despite the glitches, we have already found ways Groove would be useful to the Test Center -- not bad for a beta product. The ramifications of widespread adoption of Groove for the way enterprises conduct business could be enormous. We believe it will deliver on the promise shown in Napster and Notes. Steve Jefferson (steve_jefferson@infoworld.com) is a senior editor in the Test Center.
 RELATED ARTICLES  Interview with Groove's Ray OzzieIn the peer-to-peer grooveFormer Notes guru gets back in the GrooveRELATED SUBJECTS NetworkingSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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