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Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks
namalc writes "In a huge shot across the groupware bow, Microsoft announced today that it would acquire Groove Networks, and Ray Ozzie, the founder of Groove, would become Microsoft CTO.
Ray Ozzie, the
creator of Lotus Notes, had positioned Groove to straddle both the IBM/Lotus and Microsoft worlds. It will be interesting to see what direction Groove takes now."
- Who or what is Groove?
- What do Groove do?
- Why should we care that Microsoft, king of aquisitions, have acquired Yet Another Company?
If this information had been provided in the article introduction I'd be reading about it now, rather than asking silly questions like these.I guess the MS BOB team needed someone they could look down on.
Wow, this sounds huge. I have just two questions:
What the hell is Groove Networks?
Why should I care that MS bought them?
Mitch Kapor isn't a happy man right now.
"It will be _interesting_ to see what direction Groove takes now."
I believe you have mis-typed "bloody obvious and deeply depressing" in that sentence.
Another day, another assimilation.
There are a TON of people using Lotus Notes. It's only recently that Exchange has exceeded Notes in number of seats used. For the developers and admins working on Notes, this is the equivalent of Linus saying "What the heck, Server 2003 ain't that bad. Let me join up."
Conversely, Groove gets to present its unique approach to a larger audience than ever before, as well as having better access to improve and extend its compatibility with Microsoft products.
It's an exciting time for laptop warriors, that's for sure! Never before has this level of versatility been offered.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Here's a press release from Microsoft with more information and some Q&A with Ozzie and Jeff Raikes, Microsoft group vice president of their Information Worker Business group.
Yeah, Slashdot! There are people here with thousands of posts and replies who haven't yet once RTFA. And you want to ruin their streaks?
So if Microsoft will be incorporating these elements into Microsoft Office, will that include the OS X line? Right now I use Virtual PC to connect with my coworkers in our various Groove spaces (and while I know there are some OS X third party tools to connect to Groove shares, they're not exactly the same - besides, I'd have to get my company to pay an extra fee, and they're not going to do *that* just for me).
Groove is an interesting and pretty secure P2P system, and I wouldn't mind being able to use it without having to fire up a second OS on my Powerbook just to use it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Mailman
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
From the school of absurd design limitations:
"Nobody will ever need more than nine windows open" -- RO
Wow, they must REALLY be running out of ideas to sell more copies of Office.
This is great news for OOo.
Groovy
I have no clue what Groove does (or care), but I just wanted to say "Groovy, Baby."
But since Exchange only recently exceeded Notes, wouldn't it be fair to say that Ray Ozzie can bring his expertise to the table and make Exchange that much better? I think that's one of the improvements we'll see.
How is it that MS keeps AQUIRING ANYTHING? :P
Could someone PLEASE tell me WTF is going on in Washington?
This is getting nuts. LET THE MONOPOLISTS KEEP MONOPOLIZING MARKETS. It's all good.
I was exploring and using it to explore colloboration. With MS buying it, I now know that it will never go to other platforms - Mac, Linux. Oh well.....
Given my experience with Lotus Notes, Microsoft has some work to do.
;-)
You know, adding things like automatic virus loading, extremely slow message filtering, brain-dead mail search, and so on.
Virtually all functions of LotusNotes are better served by other technologies, like the classic Apache/PHP/SQL combos etc. (Keep in mind that LotusNotes evolved in parallel with the WWW but most corporations were completely unaware of HTTP until Microsoft "discovered" it)
It is quite amusing to me that someone would proudly take credit for the creation of that monster. I think it goes to show tha there is no such thing as bad publicity for self-promoting "geniuses" ....
Offer somebody some money and a stupid title and they'll pimp out their mothers.
Anybody betting Ozzie won't last a year at Microsoft?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Groove always seemed to be one of those really, really cool solutions, if only it weren't so tied to MS Office, Outlook, and Windows. Obviously that won't get any better now that MS owns Groove.
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
Groove is an excellent (as of a demo I saw a couple of years ago) integration of pretty much all your collaboration tools. /. and MS Office, throw in IM, and server storage, and make it work well on crap hardware.
Think
It's the kind of turn-key integration that will take quite a while longer to realize using FOSS.
Truly, the pieces are all there, but getting them all to work as smoothly is non-trivial.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
news.zdnet.com
While most of you probably don't care much about the products Groove Networks have in their suite, the real story here in Microsoft acquiring a new CTO. This man has an impressive track record in the technology field. He is responsible for the creation of Lotus Notes, a technology that Microsoft Exchange is just starting to catch up to both in features and install base. 100 Million people use his technology worldwide. He is also rated among the top five developers of the century.
This article has more to do with Microsoft continuing to build an impressive array of innovators and visionaries to carry the company for another 20 years. If they happen to integrate a few of his company's technologies into the current Office suite, that's just a bonus.
I can see this happening as this will be the next big release of office to get sales up again.
I have seen many treads relating to office features being minimal, and releases being very few. Maybe this would be a new release with a outlook/word/lotus notes mirgration.
Who knows (note I havent kept up with lotus notes in about 5 years) maybe with the migration of those 3 items they would be able to create a very nice system for communication as well as sharing documents accross offices etc etc.
But then again maybe they will just keep them seperate.
TruePunk | Games
It will be interesting to see what direction Groove takes now.
"Dude, you're going to hell."
Here's your handbasket.
IgnoramusMaximus is just playing the part of John the Baptist here...the truth needs to be told!
Hula
Toilets outlets are always shaped that way to keep the stink down.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Isn't Bill Gates the current CTO of microsoft? what happens to him. I reckon his redundancy package is probably alright though.
Like elm. Or Zmail. Or carrier pigeons. Or anything other than Lotus Notes. Nothing ruins your day like the red box of death!
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Click the Link --- see how "Groove Networks" is underlined? The underline indicates that if you click it (with your mouse) you will be presented with more infomation.
For example if there is a link to "Groove Networks" more information about Groove Networks will appear! Wow!
I have never seen a Notes virus, it wouldn't be impossible but the execution control list would stop it doing anything, no idea what you are on about with message filtering and searching. My mail file is about 2GB and full text searches over the whole thing are sub-second. Outlook doesn't have built in full text search, and yes it does do automatic virus loading.
I skimmed TFA and didn't see it.
I don't care how easy it is to chat and share files, that does not really make teams work that well together. Teams need to be sharing the right information that actually helps them reach decisions.
One groupware "tool" for developers that I have been really happy with is http://readyset.tigris.org/.
No it won't. We all know what direction Groove will take now.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
It's another pointless opinion by gaylord Maximus.
The thing that Notes does (and apparently Groove's Virtual Office does) that MS does not do well is replicate. Ozzie knows replication so it sounds to me like MS has decided to hire in someone to help them figure it out.
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
1. Buy original content at blow out prices.
2. ??????
3. Profit !
Man those underpants Gnomes sure have taught M$ a lot in the last decade.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
1) create product that creates compatablity between 'deep pocketed' competitors products
2) wait for one or the other to purchase your company to control said compatablity functionality
Simple, yet genius. Although, once again, I am probably wrong.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
CleverCactus
I nearly shit myself when I read the title as "Microsoft to Acquire Google Networks".
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
TZ
This should not be a surprise to anyone who worked there or anyone they tried to recruit. (Hi there!) The Beverly, MA company was a 100% Microsoft house from the beginning with no provisions for Linux, UNIX or anything else. Why eschew crossplatform? Why use only MS for development? Why care so much about being single-platform when companies don't care about what runs back-office software? The answer is in today's headlines.
but at least we are in agreement. Outlook sucks, Notes rocks.
When I first glanced at the artitle, I thought it said "Microsoft to Acquire Google"... [shudder]
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Nothing funny about it, MS is resorting to buying its innovation in the form of developers of other major software; it's indicative of how difficult it is for the major companies to move anywhere. MS has real trouble unless it can continue to support the OS platform; this is another attempt to shore up the dam, and not a bad one.
It's not so good for OOo. per se, but the whole FOSS movement indirectly benefits as the market differentation smooths out. IOW, if the only alternative is MS, it's much easier to sell your solution if it has sufficient utility.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
went ages ago. It was a bit odd I will admit. The oddest thing about it was that Lotus said it was a limitation of the underlying operating system. That I never understood. Anyhow, please don't critisise an app for bugs/limitations which have not existed for the past 5 years or so.
How Microsoft got their groove back
Like a good watercolor painter, I think Ray Ozzie's talent I admire most is knowing when to stop. In the technology world, it's easy to get consumed by adding just one more thing or moving just a bit more. Knowing when is the best time to abandon ship or to keep going is tough. In some ways it's the lesson that makes Steve Jobs a good marketer in my mind.
On the other hand, I think this sale shows that Ray Ozzy's main interest is in satisfying Ray Ozzy. A title is just a title; will Ray have real power and be happy? Will he really be able to do things that he wants to do? Is his goal really to help Microsoft or just to help his own business goals by making a bigger name for himself and abandoning them in 5 years time to start his own super-company?
I've never heard anything about this Groove, btw the site says:
"Groove Virtual Office - Virtual office software for sharing files, projects and data."
And that reminds me Novell iFolder...
With Screenshots
I am very glad that today of all days I find myself with mod points to burn!
Oops I forgot the url: http://www.novell.com/products/ifolder/
It was pretty obvious once MS invested such a huge amount that they were going to acquire them. Groove took on so much VC that they were going to have a really hard time generating enough revenue to deliver value back to their investors without a buyout.
What's really interesting is that just about the only place Groove has gotten any traction is in the government. I think they're by far the largest customer, and I think enterprises have been extremely cool to the solution. MS will certainly help provide legitimacy to them, but without a lot of reworking, it probably still won't "feel" like an enterprise product the same what that AOL/MSN/Yahoo don't.
Otherwise, the product is definitely very Windows centric, and not all that good to begin with. They most certainly bought them for the team. I bet a lot of it has to do with ego. The product is rather gimmicky and reeks of something that has all the neat things "on paper" but just isn't nice to use as an application. It's not something you enjoy using.
However, expect MS to up the ante with some serious interaction between LCS 2005, Groove, and SharePoint. It will be interesting to see where they go with it, especially whether Groove can bring some security (or at least perception thereof) to Microsoft's realtime messaging properties. IM is such a strategic piece of the overall picture it's not even funny. This is why companies are perfectly happy to run a free service out of their own pocket for so long, to increase stickiness and be in a position to build on top of a global messaging system, but unless privacy, security, and authentication as STANDARDS lead the way, they will all be opaqued. If the Internet told us anything, it's that eventually your "network" will get pulverized by an "internetwork" of some sort. Hopefully we'll see some such product do the same thing in the IM space.
Groove is something that someone around here decided would be cool to use. It's used as groupware, offers file sharing, instant messaging, shared browsing, and lots of other cool features.
;)
Nobody uses it now since we got online a simple phpGroupware. You see, Groove isn't web.
But it's a very powerful tool for working in team, specially if some members are teleworking.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
what the hell has begging to be allowed to use OpenOffice got to do with Notes? I use OpenOffice all the time, In fact I haven't had a PC with Microsoft Office on it for 3 years. I develop and use Notes applications every day. Notes isn't an office package, OpenOffice isn't a distributed groupware environment.
It will be interesting to see what direction Groove takes now.
Down.
Is there anything in Linux (preferably using Open Office) that is like Groove Virual Office?
Any projects like this in the works?
It seems like a very cool concept.
Lookin' for fun and feelin' Groovy...
Message to Bill Gates: Slow down, you move too fast. You've got to make the exploits last...
M$'s "Exchange" isn't a centralized solution per se- it depends on all the other M$ crap working together. Notes can stand alone, and IT RUNS ON Linux !
I hope IBM Keeps maintaining Notes, but I have an ugly feeling that they're going to let it obsolete and be replaced with... a general mess of loosely cooperative stuff that /. ers will just loove making tons of money playing with. Oh well.
PS- I don't think you're a troll- you just suffered with bad implementations, like everyone else. You know the drill- you can write spaghetti code in any language
Ray Ozzie, the founder of Groove, would become Microsoft CTO. Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes
It is official; Anonymous Coward confirms: Microsoft is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Microsoft community when SlashDot confirmed that Microsoft brainshare has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of normal thoughtpower. Coming on the heels of the recent hiring of Ray Ozzie, who plainly states that Lotus Notes is the best thing since sliced bread, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by hiring the fiend that created the most horrible groupware nightmare known to man...
Users who have touched this software generally tend to hate it. The "groovespaces" that are used to exchange data don't cooperate with anything else, and are very annoying to manage. Really in a web-enabled environment where people have IM and collaborative editing (wiki), this product serves no purpose whatsoever. If MS did not buy them they would be dead in three years.
Groove is what notes/exchange/outlook should have been. Its got the coolness/slickness of an Apple product. It will be interesting to see how MS screws this up when the Office team takes hold...
When we bought Lotus and by default Ray Ozzie and the Notes creators we inherited a tiny development culture that was utterly impenetrable. As much as Lotus kept us at arms length and did everything their own way, the Notes dudes wouldn't even let us on site. Hell they wouldn't let Lotus on site either. They just stayed locked up in Ray Ozzie's barn, crunching code. A big part of Notes failure to grow and develop and frankly, thrive, the way we wanted was the technical brilliance and organizational paralysis that the Ozzie-ites created. Eventually we found it easier to bypass them and this is why Notes 6 came out 2 years after Notes 5 which was 4 years late and is why Notes 7 is more than a year late and there are serious discussions over whether Notes itself won't be submerged into Workplace.
This article from Lotus Advisor goes into some depth of the core architecture of Notes and Domino. This is the really really cool stuff that Ray came up with. This is why Notes is used by 118 million people and loved with Mac like passion. I was at Lotusphere in Florida earlier this year with about 7000 other people, all passionate about Notes. The Notes UI comes in for some stick occasaionally. Normally by people critisising version 4.1 or something when the rest of the 118 million users left that behind years ago. The UI is not what it is all about people! Be a geek, see past the wallpaper and look at the house. Recent versions like 6.5 have built in instant messaging integration so names in all applications come alive when people are on line, this is real contextual collaboration. Version 7, a beta of which I am using allows the NSF store to be held on a DB2 relational database. It remains an object based store at the high level but with access views for close integration with relational applications. This makes Domino a really great geeks playground, and even better, you can get paid fairly well to play.
The real question here is how this will affect Open Office. Strong integration between Groove products/services and Microsoft Office could be interesting. A good thing would be for OOo to be proactive here and look at groupware concepts/functions that can be provided within Open Office.
r
Companies nowadays - and microsoft pretty much from day one - seem to show a nasty habit of buying out another company, big or small that poses a threat, acquires their resources, mashes some elements of the acquired technologies into their own and discard the rest.
Groove, if any elements of it remains, is pretty much done in for, like microsoft swooping in like a cloud of locusts, consuming everything and moving on.
With all the resources at microsoft's disposal, why is it easier to buy out other technologies than to design their own? Is their R&D dept that dysfunctional they can't do anything themselves?
The acquire trend is not unique. I worked for a local high tech firm that bought out another, including most of their employees, and now practically everyone who was there when I was hired is long gone, fired, laid off or quit and the products designed by the original dev teams are scrapped and to a greater extent the acquired tech is no longer recognizable. I quit 5 years ago because we were ourselves bought out by another and for all my hard work, I was given a token job as their sole QA person rather than remain as a software developer switching from unix to windows. The irony is that now, the very product they develop runs on linux. If they'd just kept me on, even in a junior developer role for the windows environment, I might have been a really good asset to them when they went to linux.
That was a severe blow, I suppose for both myself and for them.
Technologies bought out is quickly obsoleted and the human resources are finicky and tempermental and will also surely become unrecognizable years later.
Now when I see takeovers, hostile or otherwise, I see it as the purchaser unable or unwilling to come up with their own technology and essentially commiting a psychotic act (large companies exhibit the same psychotic traits as individuals). In 5 years, what will be the shape of that technology, if it even exists in any usable form? That's what I'd like to know.
In Other news there will be job cuts at Microsoft and a small group of employees will Groove their way into the unemployment line.
I followed Groove when it first came out. It is a secure P2P collaboration software. They have some neat concepts implemented in their software. I don't know of any open source software that does what Groove does. I heard there was a linux port that never made the light of day.
I wonder if this was a preemptive move agaisnt a Google OS or whatever it will be named?
Google has the Gmail, News, Groups, etc. I can see these technologies being rolled up into a collaboration suite similar to the Groove Networks idea.
M$ might have realized they aren't going to beat Google on a search solution alone. Maybe I'm just giving them too much credit?
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
After years of trying i never got it.
30% of the company for some time. Developers from Groove sit in Redmond and developers from Microsoft sit in Beverly Mass. Groove has time and again scooped features Microsoft has envisioned but been unable to rollout in basic OS functionality (just too much to code, inject, test with X set of features, make work on an ancient machine).
.NET API for injecting tools directly into the platform. They discontinued it recently in favor of a web service interface however.
I'm a long-time Groove user and have dabbled in component development for a little over a year. Until recently, Groove had a
I think the product could use a bit more maturity, but I think it's got some great potential. Ownership by Microsoft, I believe, will just strengthen their marketshare. Hopefully they won't lose any of their good points.
Because Groove competes with the existing Microsoft product, Sharepoint, I think they're just gonna kill it off. Maybe drag it out a bit, announce new versions but not deliver, and maybe bugfixes, just so they aren't accused of anti-competitive behavior, but I doubt they'll kill Sharepoint for Groove.
Microsoft to Acquire Google Networks
Whew!
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
They aren't worth $5
People have a love/hate response to Groove. I know I definitely had the hate response. We got Groove at work for a project with an outside consultant, about two years ago. We got brand new PCs at the same time, and my first complaint was that Groove was extremely slow, and not just to work in. It slowed down every PC it was installed on; I think it had a memory footprint of over 200 MB! In any case, it took from one to thirty (!) minutes to launch on my 1.4 GHz/640 MB PC. We had so much trouble with it that a tech from Groove -- an engineer/programmer actually working on the product, I found out later -- to try and sort out the mess caused by starting Groove as a user other than the one that installed it. Problem: Groove by default starts as soon as you log in, I guess so it can check if you have any "instant" messages. I was never able to get satisfactory ansers to questions like: how do I fix a virus-infected file from Groove without deleting it? How do I make backups of files that are stored in a proprietary conatiner on umpty-jillion workstations? How do you manage file permissions without creating additional "spaces" just for restricted files? We were working on this project with a Danish company, and it seems the standard reaction from a Dane to a feature request is "Why would you want to do that?" This was essentially my response to Groove, which is just another stinking heap of buzzword-compliant bloatware that does nothing for anyone except make PHBs think they are helping. They're not.
If you haven't used Groove, it's about the best use for a LAN that I've ever seen. Something tells me that MS will try to go client-server with it and screw it all up, but it's a GREAT product. It might be a compelling reason for people to upgrade from Office 2000. (XP and 2003 certaily werent.)
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
When the EOLAS case was in News, Ray Ozzie claimed Lotus notes had a prior art. By this acquisition, Microsoft may feel a little easy to defend themselves in the EOLAS case.
It'll be interesting what happens with the Sharepoint product line now that they've got their Groove on.
jb
And office integration.
Some nice change tracking/merging features (office specific). That's basically it. It makes sense Microsoft wants the company, it's perfect (especially so they can ditch LiveMeeting and Sharepoint)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Well, I got strong-armed by my management to do a very spendy implementation of Groove on our enterprise network and let me just say these things.
Groove is fat fat fat bugggy program (Go figure that MS would aqcuire something with that footprint). It isn't a web based or server based application it is indeed a p2p application (though there are backend servers that handle certificates and mediate communication for clients that are behind NAT and firewalls). There always seems to be a new release of the software that will "fix" things.
The one thing that does impress me is that it does have a very interesting built in PKI architecture that is completely transparent to the user. All commo is encrypted and all data is encrypted on the drive. How well is this done? Well, seeing as how there are new releases and patches every few weeks, it's anybodys' guess.
Maybe the typical Slashdot reader won't care, but we're saddled with Outlook/Exchange at my company, which are big, slow, resource-hungry, funky piles of poo IMHO.
:-)
So if this will end up helping improve those in any way, I'm in favor of it
For those who don't remember playing
Duke Nukem 3D, when you picked up an RPG weapon.
The player said: "Hmmmm... Groovy!"
Ray Ozzie has always designed his products with built in security - not as an afterthought. Lotus Notes pioneered RSA based encryption on desktop computers.
It's still the most transparent and easy-to-use email security system available (note, easy to use != easy to administer). You never even think about it, once your preferences are set, emails just get encrypted and decrypted, signed and signatures verified, automatically.
Same thing with Groove products.
Let's see what he can do at Microsoft.
How many people this day and age outside of this site even know what Microsoft Bob is? It was an expansion shell on top of Windows 3.1 that came out 11 years ago for kiosks and some home users. Jesus, get over it!
Same with Clippy, who I haven't seen in a default install in five years. Whenever I did see him all those years ago, I magically clicked the right mouse button and selected "Hide." He never returned.
Undertaker43017 wrote: Even if they admitted that they are no longer innovative (or never were) I don't see this causing people to change their mind about using MS products. If you took a poll about why people use MS products, I suspect: "because they are innovative" would be well down the list...
The immediate purpose of the "innovation" argument is not to impress customers, but to persuade lawmakers and regulators not to pursue anti-trust actions. The implicit argument is that a company of the size and dominant market position of MS is necessary for "innovation" to occur. Of course, buying their "innovative" technologies from smaller companies undercuts this argument.
It's called the standard process of capitalism. Business buy and merge with other businesses all the time.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal. If buying Groove Networks isn't abusing a monopoly position, it's a perfectly valid purchase. You can't step in and stop a company you don't like from doing things just because you don't like them. That would be unfair and biased intervention.
If your thinking of Bloatus Notes as an improvement, yes it's more secure and easy to use, but it is slow, terribly slow.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
And yes, I have heard of it, that was a joke. But isn't it one of those things that you swear by, or have never even seen? I know which camp I fall into. Honestly, I could give a rat's banana who is at the various helms of Microsoft. I just don't care about them any more.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Since MS made an investment, Groove became more and more of a MS-centric tool. It acquired presence technology, but only using Messenger. It integrated into Outlook, but nothing else. It published information to Sharepoint. And the development environment was nothing but COM objects from here as long as the eye could see. It saddens me that Groove did not make a real P2P collaboration platform, providing a platform independent object layer via specifications. The end result was a Windows-only collaboration platform that business purchase but never really knew what to do with.
...tizzyd
Everyone's noted Ray's invention of Lotus Notes, but his experience is even deeper and broader.
When I joined Lotus back in 1985, I was intrigued by a project from a small, independent company run by Ray Ozzie. Its codename was "Notes." About 5 people at Lotus understood what it did and why the concepts were BIG. You have to keep in mind how long this predated the web, hell, how long it predated Windows! I had an 8088 on my desk.
If memory serves, Ray left Lotus in late 1984. He had been a key developer on Lotus 1-2-3 "version 2" which later became Symphony. Granted, Symphony's sales were dwarfed by 1-2-3's ongoing popularity and its eventual eclipse by Excel and later Office. But think about fitting a spreadsheet, WP, DB, and Comms module in 300K of code today! Symphony had an extensive macro language and introduced addins, paving the way for VB and VBA. (I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I actually implemented a full-featured BBS entirely in Symphony macros in 1984.) For the time, it was a brilliant piece of technology, used by millions of people.
Ray was deeply involved in designing office software more than 20 years ago -- the dawn of creation.
Sure, as a former Chief Architect at Lotus and IBM, I may be biased . . . but I actually knew how to use Notes. Every time someone complained about Notes, it was not Notes they were complaining about. They were complaining about some crappy Notes DB that was so poorly designed that it worked horribly. Put a bug tracking system in Notes; good for under several hundred bugs. Anything more, and you can't do it easily. As for Apache/PHP/SQL, sure, you could reproduce what you could do in Notes, to a point. But, it would cost you A LOT MORE, and you would never get off-line capabilities. Something those of us on plane trips always appreciated. So, don't complain about the technology when you should be complaining about the implementation. Notes was good for certain things. RDBMSs are good at other things. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. But don't confuse the two. Notes is not a transaction system, and despite the hype, BLOB support still sucks under RDBMSs.
...tizzyd
Please, when you are bashing Lotus Notes, if it's the mail client you have issue with, try to state that. Saying you don't like Lotus Notes is like saying you had a bad experience with a car you owned in college, therefor all cars suck !
If you don't like the mail client, use Outlook instead, the servers have IMAP and POP.
If your apps suck, thank a developer (I guess if a VB app you used once sucked, that would mean all computers suck or something?).
Red Box of Death ? Try moving to a version from this MILLENNIUM !
Letsee, I remember distinctly years ago when LoveBug virus hit, everyone was down but the Notes folks... the UI may not be exactly like Microsoft (which is why I think many of you don't like it, it's not Windows:) but the "mail" is robust and secure enough that it doesn't get viruses, you can restore a single user or many (Exchange 2k3 just recently got that I think), and the PKI security is enough that the CIA, FBI, NSA and other TLOs have to use it. Or, if you prefer, you can authenticate using LDAP (even to Active Directory) and even BE the LDAP authentication server for other apps.
Sure, the next argument is that small little 8 person companies don't need the level of security, failover, extensibility, etc. that an enterprise environment requires... That's true, but they don't want Exchange and the overhead it requires either.
A special note to the consultant or whomever in another posting here - *you* haven't converted any shops to Notes lately (and you are The World???) - but the net turnover last year was almost 1500 big shops switching from Microsuck to Lotus (next time research before you slam). Check out the recent case studies if you like.
For those folks that care, you should know that Lotus Notes isn't email software - email is like 10% of what it does... Lotus is workflow applications, web applications, blogs, middleware and integration, document management, presence awareness (Lotus Sametime IM is #1 in the Fortune 500). And let's not forget, they support open standards more than anyone, period (you would think OSS folks would get this???) If you want you data in XML, you got it... with Microsuck you get their closed version. You can have an app server that runs Domino, attaches to MySQL, output pages using Perl and PHP... anything you want really (simply put, it's incredibly extensible).
Platforms ? You can run it on Windows, AIX, Solaris, z/OS, iSeries, o yeah, they even have a version FOR LINUX, RedHat and UnitedLinux certified ! (where's Exchange for Linux?).
Check it out for yourself.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Groove started out supporting Microsoft products, like so many new companies, simply because of their market dominance (so far as I could tell--I didn't confirm this impression with the Ozzies or anyone else). They started in pre-.NET days.
But they quickly found, as .NET ramped up, that they could develop components very quickly and meld them with Office pretty seamlessly.
So .NET paid off for them, and their contributions to Office made them attractive first for Microsoft collaboration, then Microsoft investment, and now...this.
I think open source advocates had better learn (although I won't say you should necessarily do what the Mono team is doing) from what .NET's has achieved. It makes Microsoft more flexible, and in its own unique way, to some extent open. See my article on the O'Reilly Network on the topic:
Applications, User Interfaces, and Servers in the Soup
.
My office is in the same huge complex in Beverly as the Groove offices - so if Microsoft pumps money and bodies in there, it'll just make it more difficult to park than it already is!
Other than that, it's really not too big a deal in my eyes. Microsoft's been pumping money into Groove for a few years now, and Groove has been putting all their development efforts into Windows for a long time (it was originally supposed to be a multiplatform product). Maybe Groove will become more than a niche product now?
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
1. Fix Entrourage to work seamlessly with Exchange server using their proprietary mail protocol.
2. Virtual PC to use the local sound card and ATI/Nvidia chips without emulation and freeing the CPU to emulate just x86 and the BIOS
3. Port applications like Access, Visio, Project, allow Mac Office users to fill out forms in Infopath
4. Get Groove to be cross platform compatible
Will it happen? I don't know...then again I never thought Apple would make iPods compatible with Windows or iTunes (iTMS) work with Windows either. (1) and (2) are important for everyone, (3) and (4) less so to most users and is only more needed in corporate environments
The UI is not what it is all about people! Be a geek, see past the wallpaper and look at the house.
This is exactly why Notes is universally hated by its users. Geeks buy it as a development platform, envisioning all these rapidly developed in-house workflow apps. But the majority of users are not geeks and actually care about things like usability. And they outnumber you proto-geeks who've forgotten that features are simply roadblocks if they aren't designed with usability in mind.
...is a whiner. Now he can show his strongest skill off as the technical leader for the biggest whiney company. ("No, our products don't suck! It's you who sucks! I fart in your general direction!")
You would think all the people clicking through to my blog from the opening link of this article would stay around long enough to learn something about the current state of Notes.
Ed Brill
http://www.edbrill.com/
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
May mean good things for Microsoft as a whole.
You must never have had to use Lotus Notes...
'Cause nobody can actually look down on MS Bob anymore because Gates himself married the MS BOB Team Chief.
Pop Culture Theme Quizzes posted onto my blog. Have fun.
Well wait just a minute here....... Microsoft already has two CTOs. with Craig Mundie (the grumpy old man from 'Soul of a New Machine') being the big-swinging-dick of CTO's. He reports to Bill and runs the office of 'Advanced Stragegy and Policy'. I forget who the other one is, but he is less important. The issue of real importance is 'WHAT HAPPENS TO CRAIG MUNDIE?'. Maybe they now have three CTOs, but that sorta makes a mess of the 'Chief' part of the title. Shakeup ahead? Mundie is responsible for good things like the Tablet (don't flame me), but is known for crazy stuff like Kid PCs and losing about $5 BILLION dollars on a deal in the communications space. Is he on his way out?????
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
"Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes, had positioned Groove to straddle both the IBM/Lotus and Microsoft worlds. It will be interesting to see what direction Groove takes now."
Excuse me while I straddle the toilet.
I mean, besides the whole thing about not working with anything ever. Here's my story of Lotus Notes.
I'm asked to take some information, copy it into an HTML file, and format it so it looks great. I do that. Then, I send it to a lady in data entry, who takes my HTML file, prints it out, walks down to the Lotus Notes server, and proceeds to type it into a blank Lotus Notes document. She has to strip out all my formatting so it'll work with Notes. In the end, none of my nice HTML survives.
Hello, my name is Mister Useless. Can I transfer you to Purgatory?
Oww. I always liked that annoying thing
How was, "How Microsoft got its froove back?"
I don't get it.
PowerPoint, FrontPage and Visio were intergrated very successfully into the Microsoft Office Product Suite.
Don't let the downmods bother you; we all love you.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Having said that - why are people complaining about Groove being bought by MS while in the same time no one tried to create an open-source project along these lines? Or maybe something similar is already being developed?
Because I see MS's move a bit as a part of keeping their business productivity software (Office and everything around it) good enough to sell. Now that Open Office catches up on basic office functionality with the MS's suite they have to have some other advantages.
1. Groove never acquired presence technology from anyone. It uses its own protocols for presence and awareness, Device Presence Protocol (DPP). They have recently announced support for Jabber clients via an XMPP Proxy. This is worth a read: http://compnetworking.about.com/library/weekly/aa1 03100c.htm
2. Groove integrates into both Lotus Notes and Outlook mail clients.
3. Groove publishes to Sharepoint natively, but the company also offers an Enterprise Data Bridge, a piece of middleware that integrates Groove spaces with systems such as Oracle, SAP, Lotus Notes, Exchange, and most other flavors of RDBMS. There have also been prototype integrations done with MySQL and Zope/Plone.
4. Although Groove itself is written in C++/COM, its collaboration services are exposed via XML web services, which are the standard means of integrating external components with Groove. The development kit on their website includes sample code in Perl.
But to log into a Notes account, all you need is a copy of the .id keyfile, with a known password.
.id keyfile?
.id keyfile, with a password known to the sysadmin on it.
.id files. And when they fail to do so, and forget their password, telling the user "Sorry, your mail is lost forever and not even the NSA can help you now."
And how do Notes sysadmins handle the situation where a user has forgotten the password which unlocks their
They keep a backup copy of the users
The alternative is trusting the user to make and keep backup