JULY 21, 2003

TECHNOLOGY
By Lisa Miller


For Some, the Godsend of Groove
[Page 2 of 2]


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Davis says the decentralized architecture also works as a handy automatic backup for people's work. "Everybody has a backup of everybody else. When somebody loses or gets their laptop stolen, which has happened in our firm, or they lose their whole laptop because it breaks, we have backups [with] everybody else who is participating in that group."


Since Groove uses the Internet to communicate, it can cross firewalls without breaching them, so team members from different companies can work together without getting access to each other's internal company records or being blocked by companywide security systems. Plus, Groove uses military-quality cryptology to keep documents secure.

Security was a major issue for Jeffrey D. Lazar, senior vice-president for clinical research and regulatory affairs at AlgoRx Pharmaceuticals, a startup based in Cranbury, N.J., where outside consultants working on drug-development projects make extensive use of Groove.

FAST TRACK.  "We never really thought that we would bring our outside consultants in [when we first got Groove]," Lazar says. "If you think about a company's intranet, it would be pretty unusual to allow consultants into that. But what we could do was set up very carefully defined workspaces, and invite the consultants in, and be very productive without worrying about security and without [having to worry] about where they might go on our network once they had access."

Some of Groove's customers exhibit a frankly evangelical zeal for the product, and Lazar is no exception. "We went from a concept to a final protocol submitted to a regulatory body in under three weeks and I think Groove had a major role in that," Lazar says. "Had we worked this through in the traditional way, either with endless rounds of e-mails or calls or even a trip or two across the Atlantic, we never would have met that deadline. So it has just had a nearly inestimable positive effect on us."

Groove's Ray Ozzie says he hears a lot of stories like these.

"The feedback that we're getting is that there is an under-served market out there," Ozzie says. "No one is addressing the issues of, 'What if I want to do some of these things that the big companies do, but I don't have these IT resources?'"

Ozzie says his company originally marketed Groove only to large corporations -- such as GlaxoSmithKline, an early customer -- but his inside sales team started hearing from small businesses that were also using the product.

UNINTENDED AUDIENCE.  "I would like to tell you that [the fit with small business] was brilliantly planned and conceived on our part," says Ozzie, "but in fact, it's something that is a side effect of the product architecture, the fact that we built the product the way we did, in its purely decentralized mode."

Despite the up-tick in interest, Groove is not commonly known to people who aren't advanced users of computer technology. Nor is Groove a panacea. Folks with dial-up Internet connections find it difficult to use, because their connections just aren't fast enough to handle the downloads efficiently. And there is no Groove product strictly for Macintosh or Linux users, although customers can make it work if they have software that allows Windows-based products to run on Mac or Linux operating systems.

Many companies, especially ones with server-based systems installed before Groove came along, end up with a hybrid. Collaboration on projects takes place in Groove, while final documents might go through an editing and archiving process maintained on a server.

Lazar, however, is ready to put everything on his beloved Groove. "Our CEO at least once a day is cursing at me about our server and our networks, so I would love to see the day when all of that will disappear," he says. "I could really see just doing away with the network and doing all of our functioning on Groove. I think that is within the realm of possibility." For this business at least, Groove is getting everyone on the right track.

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Miller covers small-business issues for BusinessWeek Online
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