Lotus Notes Developer Ray Ozzie Is Back in the Groove
The creator of Lotus Notes is back in business, unveiling long-awaited software designed to unlock more of the Internet’s potential by allowing people to communicate and collaborate in a variety of new ways.
Software developer Ray Ozzie’s new platform, called Groove, links selected groups of co-workers, customers or friends in real time, without the need for a central computer server.
The result is a secure environment for the exchange of ideas, images and sound beyond what is possible using e-mail or the telephone, Ozzie and other Groove developers say. The software surmounts the time and distance hurdles of face-to-face meetings, considered inefficient in the Digital Age.
“It brings together people, information and the tools people use to manipulate that information,” Ozzie told reporters at the product’s unveiling here this week. “What Groove is essentially creating are private communications networks between people who need to get things done.”
The software aims to allow users to collaborate through voice, video and keyboard communications and work simultaneously on a single document or image. Other products on the market offer such capability, but not together in a single package.
A basic version of the new platform was made available for free download on Groove Networks’ Web site. Ozzie’s company intends to turn a profit partly by designing and selling add-on “tools” to suit clients’ individual business needs.
Groove is the newest development in peer-to-peer networking, the computing model made famous by music-swapping services such as Napster. Unlike Lotus Notes, or other so-called client-server applications, peer-to-peer computing allows users to share information directly with one another.
Collaboration via computer has long been popular in the business world, made possible largely using the Notes groupware developed by Ozzie.
The initial version of Groove runs on the Windows operating systems and requires a computer with 64mb of memory, a 233 MHz Pentium processor and 56K modem. A version that runs on Linux is in development.
The idea for Groove was born about three years ago when Ozzie walked into his family’s house in Manchester, Mass., and found his son, Neil, playing the computer game Quake online with friends.
“It hit me, if these kids are getting together and molding this technology to what they want to do at the edge of the Internet, why are we [business people] stuck using e-mail?” said Ozzie, whose venture has won $60 million in financing, including backing by Lotus founder Mitch Kapor.
Groove won’t soon replace Notes, which is used by more than 60 million people worldwide.
But it could attract users because it easier to use and maintain and less expensive--relying on processing capability users already have on their desktops--rather than expensive central servers, said Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group, an information technology consulting firm.
“The new offering [Groove] is based on today’s world, which is largely a peer-to-peer world, on the idea that we have a lot of processing power, and that the processing power is distributed and largely underused,” Enderle said.
The popularity of Internet music file-sharing programs offers testament to the potential audience for Groove, said Charles King, a senior industry analyst with Zona Research in Redwood City, Calif. But older computer users may be skeptical about the security of a network that shares information directly from their computers, he said.
“You are asking people to, basically, leave their front doors open at one level,” King said. “If this [Groove] deals effectively with privacy concerns, it could be a very successful product.”
There has been much speculation on how software giant Microsoft Corp., which is developing a strategy it calls .Net for moving collaborative computing to the Internet, will try to compete directly with Groove.
But Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sounded more like an ally than a competitor this week, offering an endorsement of Groove.
“[Ozzie] has a history of building breakthrough applications,” Gates said. “With Groove, he and his team have built a deep and innovative application.”
