Microsoft’s Groove purchase sparks Longhorn questions

Microsoft got its Groove. The software giant said last Thursday it intends to purchase Groove Networks, but the merger raises questions about how effectively Microsoft can digest Groove’s technology and integrate it into two critical forthcoming projects: Longhorn and the next version of Office.

Microsoft plans to add Groove’s flagship product to Microsoft’s Office System lineup. Ray Ozzie, Groove’s founder, will become one of three CTOs at Microsoft reporting directly to Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates.

“We will bring together the peer-to-peer and authentication capabilities Groove has built into their application with the equivalent things we have been incubating at Microsoft to strengthen the platform. Clearly, a big thing with Longhorn is its peer-to-peer capabilities, and Groove will help us pull that together,” Gates said.

But how much of Groove’s technology Microsoft can effectively weave into its critical Longhorn and Office offerings, both due in late 2006, is very much an open question for industry observers.

“With two big releases [Longhorn and Office 12] coming next year, and with hundreds of developers well into their development phases on both of them, it is going to be hard to take a step back and stitch new technology and strategies in and around them,” said Nate Root, a vice president at Forrester Research.

By adding Groove to its Office, SharePoint, and Live Meeting Server 2005 collaboration lineup, Microsoft officials believe they have achieved a collaboration “trifecta.”

“This combination of real-time, server-based p-to-p communications with Groove’s Virtual Office should allow us to extend our lead in collaboration,” said Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Microsoft’s information worker business unit.