9-11 Commission Report Has Broad IT Implications, Groove Founder Ray Ozzie Says

The Da Vinci Code Good to Great

Who says so? Try Groove Networks founder and CEO Ray Ozzie, that's who. The father of Lotus Notes, Ozzie has spent a great deal of time thinking about the future of information security and sharing, and some of the findings that the 9-11 Commission and others, including the Markle Foundation, have come up with for better securing our nation's technology infrastructure. For the most part, Ozzie likes various ideas put forth for strengthening the security of our systems and information, but worries that the way in which some of these ideas will be implemented could lead to trouble for consumers, government agencies, corporations and, by way of extension, the 100,00-plus solution providers that cater to these groups.

One problem: Every agency in Washington, he notes, seems to have its owns set of guidelines, its own IT department and its own way of acquiring technology. The most important thing the 9-11 Commission did, he believes, is pave the way for people in Washington and elsewhere to start working together. "But once you get past that, technology issues begin to surface relatively quickly," he says.

In particular, Ozzie points to page 16 of a report published last December by the Markle Foundation, a New York think-tank and research organization. In its "Creating a Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security,", the Markle Foundation spells out what some of the challenges are in building a secure system for homeland security:

• Today's network infrastructure is susceptible to single points of failure for both analysis and communication of information.
• The system is designed to mainly flow information up to senior officials, and not down to operational entities, and out to the edges of the network
• The systems do not adequately support real-time operations.
• There is a lack of trust between federal, state and local agencies.
• It is difficult to sort the important signals of potential terrorist activity from the noise.
• State, local and commercial information is not well-leveraged.
• Many people are concerned about potential misuses of private information.
• Information that is disseminated to first responders typically is not actionable.
• Clear lines of authority and responsibilities for information sharing and analysis have not been established.
• The system has not been well-tested to see how it meets potential terrorist threat.
• Ozzie makes the case that all of this has relevance to you because its underscores the need for more decentralized systems as potential solutions to many of our macro IT problems. They protect people's privacy, for one thing. They are less prone to failure, for another. And they guarantee that those using disparate systems do not get left out in the cold. But decentralized solutions usher in new requirements for authentication, data flow, security, etc.
• "The reason this is highly relevant to us is that since 9-11, we have been increasingly selling Groove as a commercial, off-the shelf system for doing exactly this kind of thing for the same reasons that the Markle Report says that this architecture is a good architecture," Ozzie says.
• He notes that 40 percent of his company's revenue comes from the government sector and intelligence community. Ozzie never figured that some of his biggest customers would be defense department types; he started the company with the hopes of helping enterprise customers solve cross-enterprise commercial issues. But after 9-11, various agencies starting with DARPA have expressed interest in his company's product portfolio.
• Now, seven years after the birth of Groove, the company finally has the momentum it always promised to achieve. More VARs and solution providers are signing on to sell Virtual Office 3.0, the first product from the company that has broad appeal for customers ranging in size from just a few employees to a customer the size of the U.S. Army. In just about 80 percent of the places where Groove does business, there's always a partner to be found, Ozzie notes.

• "Virtually [all] software has to be integrated with some process or system that's relevant to that enterprise. So in the commercial space, that means integrating Virtual Office with [the enterprise's] own infrastructure, but also their apps, such as Siebel or SAP, plus their own customer applications ... In the government market, it is similar, though there's less connection to centralized systems. But it's similar in that it requires significant expertise to integrate," he says. "There's a lot of opportunity if you have domain expertise in an area to pick up Groove and use development tools at any one of [several] different levels, depending on what you're trying to do."
• That includes taking the company's out-of-box templates and customizing them, writing additional scripts to access Web services, etc.
• One reason Ozzie is hoping to get his message out that he's now looking for partners is due to what happened when his company launched its first product in 2001. At the time, it had several partners onboard. But the software was ahead of its time, Ozzie concedes, and they didn't net much for their effort. Partner dropped off. Now, he says, there's a shortage of people with Groove expertise.
• "I would strongly encourage people who might have been VARs who are familiar with and build Windows forms and Notes forms type apps to download our product and start playing with it because there are opportunities where they can make some money," Ozzie sums.