Two days after its real-time collaboration and communication day, Microsoft announced that it is acquiring Groove Networks (there’s also a Q&A available). I have equivocated over whether this would happen: when Microsoft initially invested in Groove, I felt it was a definite, but over the last year I thought that all hope was lost … for two reasons. Firstly, Groove Virtual Office was too much of a direct competitor to Windows SharePoint Services. Whereas Microsoft used to position Groove Virtual Office as its solution for offline access, it hasn’t been doing that in customer accounts for about the last year (with iOra being the strategic enabler instead). Secondly, Groove has failed to garner much buzz in the marketplace, aside from fairly bounded times around new product releases.
Read on : [Via Shared Spaces Research & Consulting]
Some nice insights by Michael on the Microsoft aquisition of Groove. It’s more than ‘just’ the offline capability for Sharepoint that’s for sure 🙂
