Elise Olding, vice president of the knowledge, e-learning and
collaboration practice of the Hurwitz Group in Emeryville, Calif.,
thinks so. She suggests that peer-to-peer computing mirrors face-to-face
human interaction much more closely than do client/server architectures,
which makes them more attractive to users. She also points to flexible
structure and the necessity of trust as factors in richer collaboration,
which P2P implies.
Ray Ozzie, founder groovenetworks.com, thinks so too. ...
... Once a user has downloaded the Groove Transceiver and installed it
on a desktop PC, it's relatively easy to create shared spaces and invite
in other members. Those spaces can be customized with features such as
calendars, threaded discussions, sketchpads, rich-text notepads and
outliners. Groove also has built-in chat and Internet telephony
capabilities. During online sessions, users can draw, edit, brainstorm
and browse the Web together.
When users work offline in the Groove space, their changes to team
documents are synchronized with the rest of the group as soon as each
person returns to the Web. Shared files from external applications such
as spreadsheets also can be synchronized, but they must be opened in the
applications that created them. A router at Groove Networks manages
encryption and digital fingerprints. ...
Platform for customization
Ray Ozzie's experience with Lotus Notes inspired him to include hooks
that allow developers to add functions to Groove. "The fact that it is a
platform as opposed to a stand-alone solution means a community of
developers can access the services--synchronization, offline
capabilities, security and local storage," says Andrew Mahon, director
of strategic marketing at Groove Networks. "They can build and sell
collaborative environments for specific markets."
"That's their big bet," says Hurwitz Group's Smith. "Ozzie is looking at
how whole ecosystems were built around Notes. He's expecting the same
thing to happen as people begin to write applications on top of the
Groove platform."
One such developer is Agora Professional Services Ltd. of London. It
developed the first third-party Groove tool, a team status survey and
monitor board, and has also been using Groove internally and with
clients. "As a 'zero-infrastructure extranet,' it has massive value to
all kinds of operations," says Hugh Pyle, Agora's director of
technology.
Mahon admits that Groove is not a stand-alone KM solution. "There seem
to be three things important for effective knowledge management. Where
is the appropriate information that is going to help me with my work?
Who are the right people to talk to? And once the group has gathered and
has the right content, how do you focus them toward solving the problem
most quickly? ...
... A baseline version of Groove is available as a free download. A
premium version with additional functions, such as managing multiple
shared spaces, should be available in the first half of this year. ...
http://www.destinationcrm.com/km/dcrm_km_article.asp?id=775
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