Groove Bulks Up Software For The Enterprise

Groove Networks

In deference to corporate concerns about bandwidth usage of peer-to-peer software, Groove now supports "binary diff" technology, meaning that only changes to an existing document get shipped back and forth between team members instead of the entire document or file, said Andrew Mahon, senior director of product marketing for Groove, Beverly.

"Binary difference based synchronization is critical to us because of the volumes of data involved," said John Parkinson, chief technologist, Americas for Cap Gemini Ernst and Young. "We often have several hundred megabytes of active content in a Groove space, much of it being worked on by groups of two to 20 people. Once a document is posted to a space, the changes are typically quite small, but often frequent. Shipping everything to everyone every time a change is made would consume huge bandwidth."

The new integration server is where connectors, or "bots," reside that tie Groove into outside applications.

John Wollman, senior vice president of solutions and marketing for Alliance Consulting, said the integration server is a "killer" feature. That enables "enterprise applications and data structures to be integrated into Groove tools and the Groove environment," he noted.

He also was bullish on the Microsoft Office integration, which allows application sharing for documents created in that product suite.

The updated management server now lets administrators centrally enforce security measures and privacy policies. The administrator can now also enforce the frequency of password changes and password length. In addition, they can revoke software licenses and data on command.

Authentication, which had been driven by end users, can now be centrally managed as well.

Also new to the client software is a communications panel that shows activity in each of the user's shared spaces. That enables a user to shut down some areas and devote more computing resources to priority spaces. An authorized user can now shut down a no-longer-relevant shared space and archive it as a binary file as needed.

Integration with Microsoft technology continues. Last year Microsoft invested $51 million in Groove. Groove Workspace 2.0 professional client software can import/export Microsoft Project files.

Integrators said corporate customers want collaboration but secure collaboration and compatibility with existing applications.

The standard 2.0 client is $49 per user. The Professional client is $99. The Professional client adds the ability to show an aggregate view of members' projects and meetings and import and export forms. It also lets developers add scripts or macros and objects to forms.

The Enterprise Integration Server is $9,995. The updated Enterprise Management Server is $19,995.