Groove, Microsoft Team Again, This Time On Sharepoint Team Services

The two companies said Monday they are integrating Groove Workspace with Microsoft's own Sharepoint Team Services. Last October, Microsoft invested $51 million in Groove, the Beverly, Mass., brainchild of Ray Ozzie, the developer of Lotus Notes.

The goal is to provide customers with a secure collaboration tool that lets them work both online and offline with automatic synchronization to update users who are not always connected.

Groove Workspace lets workgroups share access to documents and annotate and revise them together. Customers will be able to use an integration kit, which will be offered this fall from http:groove.net, to do their own integration work, the companies said.

Since last year, Microsoft split its Sharepoint collaboration work into two offerings. The Sharepoint Portal Server provides enterprise search, discussion and notification, as well as check-in-check-out, versioning and publishing capabilities, all accessible from a browser and Office 2000/XP. Sharepoint Team Services, which lets small workgroups set up discussions, notification and surveys, is accessible from a browser, Office XP and FrontPage 2002. In addition, Sharepoint Team Services is now included in Office XP.

Groove has been working to ensure that its offerings work well with Microsoft applications and systems software. Soon after the Microsoft investment was disclosed, the company said corporate Office users would be able to add the Groove Files Tool For Microsoft Office to their shared workplaces, and multiple workgroup members were able to edit a Word document simultaneously for the first time.