It’s all about Groove and SharePoint Workspace

Jeudi 17 avril. Seattle WA. Dernier jour du MVP Global Summit 2008.

Les Keynotes sont présentées par Toby Richards, MVP Program General Manager, Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, and Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, chez Microsoft Corp. Chaque présentation est suivi d’une série de Questions / Réponses. Et cette année, incontestablement, le sujet  de référence est Groove – SharePoint. Avec pas moins de 5 questions posées sur le sujet : Groove comme client offline de SharePoint, Groove comme plate-forme de développement d’applications distribuées, Groove avec SharePoint, Groove sans SharePoint…etc

Extrait de Ray Ozzie’s presentation transcript :

QUESTION: Hi. Thank you. I really have a question about a product you actually might know pretty well, and that product is called Groove. Perhaps.

RAY OZZIE: I do know a little bit about that.

QUESTION: Now, there’s another product within Microsoft that’s been pretty successful in the last year called SharePoint. (Cheers.)

My question is — yeah, SharePoint. My question is, is Groove the future UI for SharePoint, because that would be just — when you talk about your software as a service and talk about exposing services in new ways and in new UIs, there’s a lot of overlap there? It seems like Groove really ought to be the way to leverage SharePoint on the desktop. (Applause.)

RAY OZZIE: The word that you said, “overlap,” I like to think of as complementary. (Laughter.)

You asked if Groove is the future UI of SharePoint. I might ask the same thing, is SharePoint the future UI of Groove.

Groove is really, really specialized and does a really great job in terms of dynamic collaboration between individuals. That is the design center. It just executes that extremely well.

SharePoint is a great thing at the center in terms of a place — it’s kind of the new file system, the new age file system where we had file shares before; now we’re posting them and kind of up-leveling the conversation that happens around those things in the repository.

They are very, very complementary, and you will see in 14 and beyond increasing association with the things that you can do in SharePoint, and the things that you can do with Groove and the client, increasing levels of connections, both specific functions of the UI that are designed to work seamlessly with one another, increasingly the semantics underneath being brought together and so on.

So, it’s a good observation, and, yes, that is the strategy.

 
Extrait de Steve Ballmer’s presentation transcript : 

QUESTION: First, thanks for this. At your presentation in Bombay last year in November, I followed up your keynote with a presentation of Groove. I think, as anyone observed, the people who were most excited were actually Microsoft people themselves. So I have both a suggestion, as well as a question. The suggestion is, please don’t dilute Groove as a platform in its own right. It has a value not necessarily dependent on SharePoint or anything else.

Very often Groove is a much easier entry point into an organization. It’s also a phenomenal platform on which to build real-world applications, and I’m talking of distributed ERP, point of sales systems, and a lot of things that benefit from the security, reliability, and the ease of use of Groove, which brings me to my question. What can we as MVPs do to vitalize Groove within Microsoft?

STEVE BALLMER: Well, Groove is an important product now. If you take a look at it I’d say probably the acquisition we did of Groove was one of the top five largest acquisitions the company has ever done. And, yet, I hear what you’re saying. If everybody at Microsoft used Groove every day, maybe in every application  I use Groove, but I’m not a daily user, I’m more of a weekly-type user than a daily-type user. I’ll talk to Ray and we’ll give it some thought, which probably would involve doing things for the bootstrap. People have their ways of working, to take one of our important internal applications, and improve it through the use of Groove, so I’ll take that as a good suggestion and take it up.

QUESTION: Thank you. (Applause.)

J’ai mon propre avis sur la complémentarité entre Groove et SharePoint. Il existe en effet de scénarii d’usages où Groove et SharePoint offrent une réelle pertinence à être utilisés conjointement. Je prends souvent un moment lors des conférences que j’anime pour expliquer ces différents scénarii. C’est un sujet sur lequel les utilisateurs de SharePoint, tout comme les utilisateurs de Groove ont des questions et ont besoin de réponses concrètes, illustrées par une une réelle plus-value.

J’ai écrit il y a environ 1 an un court Livre Blanc sur ce sujet. Je suis en train de travailler sur une version plus approfondie, plus complète du sujet, mais la première version est d’ores et déjà disponible ici : Groove et SharePoint, L’intérêt d’une mise en oeuvre commune.

Plus que l’intégration actuelle de Groove et de SharePoint, le MVP Summit est également une bonne occasion de regarder ves le futur. Sans révéler des informations confidentielles, je peux d’ores et déjà dire que Groove14 et SharePoin14 fonctionnement de manière beaucoup plus proche que ce qui se fait actuellement, tout en conservant le fonctionnement connu et actuel de Groove à savoir le P2P sécurisé et inter-entreprises. Basé sur nos demandes, on peut également espérer voir le retour de GWAPI (API de développement d’applications distribuées basées sur l’infrastructure de Groove et qui était présente dans les premières versions du produit) dans les prochaines versions de Groove.

Le MVP Summit était une réelle opportunité pour la Communauté Groove et les MVPs Groove de démontrer leur enthousiasme et leur foi dans ce merveilleux produit qu’est Groove.

Au regard des articles publiés sur Internet depuis le semaine dernière, cet événement a également constitué une très bonne opportunité pour créer du Buzz autour de Groove !

Articles liés :
- Does Microsoft have a gameplan for Groove? (ZD NET – Mary Jo Foley) (EN)
- Will SharePoint Gain Tighter Bonds With Groove? (InternetNews.com – Stuart J Johnston) (EN)
- Ray Ozzie: Microsoft 2008 Most Valuable Professional Global Summit (EN)
- Steve Ballmer: Microsoft 2008 MVP Summit (EN)