Collaborating by Groove
Published: 16 Mar 2004 11:55 GMT
Groove was really founded based on the changing nature of business in general -- the fact that business would become more decentralised. What we saw happening in a limited form was going to happen more and more. Companies would be -- I do not think that at the time I would have referred to it as outsourcing -- partnering more and more with smaller companies. Supply chains would become important. Firewalls would be a big constraint. I think that we pretty much were right in reading that trend. It has happened more in some industries than others.
So what's changed since Groove launched in 2000?
What we have noticed during the last 18 or so months is that its focus has gone well beyond the changing nature of business -- to the changing nature of work in general. It is not just how businesses are interacting with one another in a very decentralised fashion. It is how individuals and small groups of people -- very small companies -- are assembling into teams and doing things very dynamically in a very mobile and geographically dispersed fashion.
I never could have imagined when we started Groove that by this point in time, according to various statistics, more than half of what we in Groove refer to as information workers -- people who use Microsoft Office -- work from multiple locations. I am not saying that they do not have a job in a cube. They work from home significantly in addition to working in the office. They work on a client site. So Groove's latest release really tries to focus on are the things that really cater to the individual in this mode of having the need for a "virtual office." You know, to put what they would do in their physical office into their PCs so that by virtual means, they can essentially -- and in a secure fashion -- join a meeting with various people, and organise and file documents.
Wasn't the Web browser supposed to give people access to information everywhere?
The browser does indeed give people access to information. It is the ultimate access tool, but the browser is at odds with another trend. Leave Groove aside for a moment. One of the biggest subjects I think is not written about very much -- but it is so obvious and it is going to be the story in a year or two -- are the trends around storage. The fact that right now we carry around, you know, 20-, 30-, 40-, 60-gigabyte hard disks. In two to three years, it is going to be 100-terabyte hard disks.
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