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March 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Getting into the Groove, Part 1: Outsource or in-house?
In many companies, users are clamoring for a collaborative solution that goes beyond e-mail or instant messaging. You may have missed it, but the Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Office 2007 come with a perfectly sound collaboration solution: Groove 2007.
Groove Networks, founded by Ray Ozzie (the creator of Lotus Notes), was purchased by Microsoft in 2005. Last year, the company released Groove Server and Client 2007. Collaboration anywhere, anytime, and with anyone: That's what Groove is all about.
The Groove client (available for a free trial download) comes included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Office 2007. With the client, users can create and manager their own collaborative workspaces, serving as a forum among the creator and invitees for discussion, file sharing -- even a game of chess.
On the back end is Groove Server, which you can either install in-house or subscribe to, via hosted Groove services. Both approaches have their advantages and drawbacks. I'll talk about some of the hosted approaches this week.
For small groups, consider Microsoft Office Live Groove. Essentially, this is the client software with a subscription for the hosted relay infrastructure. The benefit to this approach is that you have no infrastructure concerns to deal with, but you reap all the benefits of the application. No internal servers are required; you just need to renew your subscription every year, and you get upgrades to new releases as part of the subscription. The drawback to this approach is that all users are "unmanaged"; there's no Groove Manager support for backing up or restoring accounts, or for creating and modifying user and security policies.
If you need more control over your Groove environment or have a large user base, yet don't want the administrative overhead and infrastructure concerns of managing a Groove Server in-house, consider Microsoft Office Groove Enterprise Services. Buy the client, and in addition to the hosted relay, you get a hosted Groove Manager. This enables you to have a Groove Domain, though which IT admins can manage employees' identities, plus tailor policies to control how employees use Groove. Configuration takes place via a Web-based tool with which admins can create, configure, and manage user accounts (including backup).
One included feature that can be a real benefit to your organization is the Enterprise Services Relay. Handled through Microsoft, the tool ensures that users' collaboration sessions are in sync when direct client-to-client connectivity isn't possible. Essentially, the relay is necessary when users are not on the same network, behind firewalls, or working offline.
For on-site control and infrastructure, there is Groove Server 2007, which comes in three flavors: Relay, Manager, and DataBridge. Each Groove Server is deployed separately, with the cost depending on the number of users and the system architecture. Supporting your own Groove environment does increase your personal administrative overhead for hardware and software. On the positive side, it provides you the ability to utilize a DataBridge server for connectivity to customized in-house solutions you may be supporting, such as an internal SQL database or SharePoint Library. Generally, if you don't need such a customized solution, the hosted approach through Enterprise Services may be more cost effective.
Interested in understanding the finer details of the three Groove Server flavors, Relay, Manager, and DataBridge? Stay tuned for more next week. And if you are an administrator of a Groove environment already, I'd like to hear about your experience.
Posted by J. Peter Bruzzese on March 26, 2008 03:00 AM
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Peter,
You've put together a solid encapsulation of Groove client, server and services. Nicely done!
One small correction: It is possible to deploy Groove DataBridge onsite, while still using Groove Enterprise Services for the Manager and Relay components.
For example, an organization using Groove Enterprise Services might opt to deploy the DataBridge in house for its Archive Service (to create workspace archives). While the DataBridge is only available as an onsite server, the DataBridge can be part of a domain that is runnign on Groove Server or Groove Enterprise Services.
Thanks again for a great article.
--abbott
Hi Peter,
You provide in your concise article, associated to Abbott's complementary elements, one of the best summary of Microsoft's Groove positionning and offering.
I propose you to share my customer experience with you :
- the one associated to Microsoft Office Live for small organisations who don't really need managed users and managed devices
- the one associated to Microsoft Office Enterprise Services where a larger organisation can provide more controls on their "domain of users and devices"
- the one associated to On Site Groove servers where large companies can integrate their own PKI and specifics and control a set of Groove domains.
The strengh of a Groove infrastructure is to be able to adapt very well to a large set of needs : you add elements like the Groove DataBridge or the Groove Audit Server one you reach some organinational thresholds or security requirements. The magic of it is due to its "network adapatability" and it's highly secure web services driven applications.
A good sample of a new race of applications based on a Groove infrastructure can be found on http://www.grooveit.biz where you will surely note the smooth convergence from a personal centric e-mail approach to a distributed highly secure collaborative team or project approach.
I am indeed a passionated person engaged alongside with Groove technologies since the first available versions ... and currently among the few Groove MCTS around. I am also sincerely proud of the trust given by a long list of customers who deploy "Groove" based on their specifics. I am currently working for Hommes & Process, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specialized around Groove and able to bring together correctly Groove and SharePoint integrations, usages and positionning.
Jean-Michel
Posted by: Jean-Michel Davault at March 26, 2008 01:47 PMHi Peter,
I like the article. It’s great written and explains in a simple way the different options there are. I do however miss the point of what are the decision points on when to choose outsourcing and when to go for a in-house solution. In my past experience with Groove, I did notice, that this is not only a feature decisions. Most of our customers make up their mind based on TCO.
We are setting up groove server (manger and relay) to use in education.It main feature for us is its security.No on is allowed in unless it has been approved by teacher and principals.Once in you can collaborate with other students and teachers.Groove has workspaces(used as a virtual classroom), which teachers set work and students can complete at their own time at school , at home or anywhere in there world, no more the dog ate my homework excuse!.Also if your are a greenie, no more paper!, everything is electronic.
Our experience is kids love it, they are the driving force behind it.They like the idea of been able to talk to their "real" friends and to their teachers 24/7.
thanks
Michael
Posted by: Michael George at March 27, 2008 10:35 PMHello Guido,
One of the big advantage of Groove is that you "recalculate" traditionnal TCO costs based on real usages.
Said otherwise, you are a small team of 5 users and you must deliver unexpectedly a key project in a reliable, dynamic and highly secure way cross firewall ... you will use Groove Office Live and calculate your TCO on that particular project. You might accept this a "suffisiant".
Value is difference between your gains (travel, security,responsiveness) and 5*$75 ...
Should you be another team of 5 users working regularly on sensitive data but this time working with a set of different persons on different project, you might be willing to introduce a trusted domain for you users (clearly undoubtfully indentify users, manage them and know where you data is stored). Your additionnal costs will be those of a Microsoft Hosted Services. Difficult to provide a precise TCO response as it will depend of your licencing contract but let say to simplify if you ask to a specialized company with knowledge (so no hidden costs) : 1/2 day of time to set up correctly the domain based on company simplified security rules (except PKI integration, auditing...), 5 domains licences sold as a service, 5 user licences, some support if adequate and that's it. It is important to note that, contrary to a traditionnal client server model, you won't have hidden costs of SLAs...
Should you have advanced security concerns (PKI integration, auditing, ...) and be a 50-300 users (30 projects project with each time 10 diffents active contributors) then you will start to consider On Site servers. Above that range, you will use on site servers whatever ... I won't here start to provide a detailed TCO because it will depend too much on customer's constraints, demands and ... Let's say, that I start to work on an enterprise on site deployment for 50 targetted users at $140K with a minimum of ROI of 15% between few weeks to 18 months depending of customers constraints, interactions ... Of course in that configuration, I assume, that the hardware 64 bit machines/Operating Costs/On site management costs are not included and that the content of $140K includes 4 Groove server licences, installation and training costs, ...
So yes, you will note the gap between instant collaboration costs not entegrated into the enterprise and those a large organization with significant security, back-up, training concerns, SharePoint integration for long term repository ...
Regards,
Jean-Michel
A small drawback but not that bad for us just testing out is that you don't get the Groove server software for a 32 bit machine, only for 64 bit.
Well, probably everybody has 64-bit machines, but we sometimes run tests on our older 32 bit machines.
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