Groove Networks Launches Next-Generation Product; Secure ''Virtual Office'' Software Addresses the Changing Nature of Work.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BEVERLY, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2004

Groove(R) version 3.0, now in public beta, addresses the information sharing and coordination needs of virtual teams and mobile

workers, and the organizations that support them

Groove Networks Inc. today released for public preview the third generation of its secure virtual office software, which lets teams of people work securely together over the network as if they were in the same location. Groove version 3.0 goes further than ever to let companies, government organizations and small businesses support their virtual teams and mobile workers with secure solutions that support intra- and inter-organization information sharing, project work, and business processes.

Groove v3.0, which will be commercially available later this year, includes across-the-board enhancements that meet: the ease-of-use, work styles, and performance needs of end users; the rapid on-demand deployment, management, scalability and accountability demands of IT organizations; and the ease-of-development requirements of software developers. The beta version of Groove v3.0 is available today at www.groove.net for licensed users of Groove version 2.0 and higher.

Organizations using Groove software have secured rapid returns on their investments by responding more quickly and decisively to opportunities and challenges, and involving partners, suppliers, and customers in key business processes. A set of core Groove capabilities - secure data synchronization, activity awareness, and contextual conversation - lets teams work together virtually, online and offline, independent of geographic or organizational boundaries, while flexibly supporting their unique work styles and requirements.

"A consistent theme has emerged in our work over the past three years with commercial and government organizations: Advances in communications, changes in lifestyles, increases in partnering between organizations and expectations for on-demand services have changed where and how we work. No matter the size of the organization, people are seeking ways to better cope with the evolution of work," said Ray Ozzie, CEO of Groove Networks. "The work setting is clearly shifting from a physical environment to one that is increasingly virtual.

"Your 'office' is where you keep your most important files, and where you meet and work with others on important tasks. And these days, this 'office' is increasingly wherever you and your wireless laptop happen to be: in a conference room, your home, an airplane, a hotel, a coffee shop, or on-site with your customer. With version 3.0, we're taking a major step forward in securely supporting the needs of virtual, mobile teams who must work together even though they are rarely in the same physical location," Ozzie added. "Yet we do this while complementing and extending our customers' existing IT investments to minimize costs and maximize return."

Approximately one quarter of the U.S. workforce works from home at least some of the time while another quarter is mobile or works from customer locations, according to a recent study commissioned by American Business Collaboration.

"By relentlessly reducing the costs of coordination, new information technologies like Groove are taking us across a threshold into a place where dramatically more decentralized ways of organizing work become at once possible and desirable," says Thomas Malone, the Patrick J. McGovern professor of management at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and author of the soon-to-be-published The Future of Work. "Groove embodies on a software level a decentralized philosophy that's critical to success on a management level, too. As managers, we need to shift our thinking from command and control to coordinate and cultivate, and Groove provides a communication infrastructure to support this."

Rapid On-Demand Solutions for Application Mobility

The current business environment requires information technology professionals to rapidly:

-- Assemble solutions to specific business problems;

-- Connect those solutions to appropriate enterprise systems; and

-- Securely deploy those solutions to users, wherever they are.

Hampered by layoffs and budget cuts, IT organizations are struggling to meet the demand because, in some instances, concept-to-deployment deadlines are too tight. In other instances, issues result because the solutions must be extended to highly mobile and occasionally connected employees, or because the solutions and data must be extended securely to the desktops of customers and business partners.

Expanding well beyond capabilities in previous versions of the product, Groove v3.0 directly addresses these needs with its forms-based application environment. The rapid solution development capabilities of Groove forms allow end users and corporate developers alike to create customized, process-specific solutions that support mobile, geographically distributed work teams. With the use of Web Services or the Groove v3.0 Enterprise Integration Server, Groove forms applications can easily be connected to existing enterprise systems. Moreover, the form-based applications, which reside within Groove workspaces, place business data on users' desktops, in context of their teams, projects and processes.

"As part of our High Speed Logistics process improvement project, Siemens Medical Solutions USA developed a solution based on Groove software to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction by providing close collaboration among all project team members," said Doug LaVigne, the company's Vice President of Logistics. "We envisioned a solution that brought together all parties involved in an installation, reducing coordination costs by adding shared context and structure to our logistics processes. This meant linking our centralized systems, desktop applications and team members with a solution that matched the mobile, distributed, cross-company work style of our project teams. Groove was the answer; we had a solution developed and deployed within 90 days. As a result, we expect to obtain our ROI in one year. Based on this success, we're tremendously excited about Groove version 3.0, which takes on-demand solution development to the next level."

Groove Forms Capabilities for Developers and Individuals

The forms tool within Groove v3.0 allows power users and corporate application developers to easily create lightweight, recyclable applications that can be used to capture, search, track, measure, and report on information. Because this rapid application development and deployment environment is built into Groove, it inherits all the product's other secure, core capabilities. As a result, full access to such applications can instantly be provided to a mobile workforce, customers or business partners without deploying special application servers outside a company firewall, or costly virtual private networks (VPN).

With Groove v3.0, form designers benefit from a simplified interface for creating project- and process-based applications. Moreover, designers will find it easier to create scripts or macros using JavaScript and VBScript, and custom styles using Cascading Style Sheets, an industry-standard mechanism for adding style (fonts, colors, spacing) to documents. Perhaps most important, developers can programmatically connect enterprise data with Groove-based data via a new Web Services API. To serve desktop productivity needs, Groove forms also supports comma separated values (CSV) based exchange of data with spreadsheets, databases, or other analytical tools.

The new forms designer, with an intuitive graphical display and drag-and-drop capabilities, lets end users build customized applications without software development skills or training. Individuals will also benefit from the product's improved performance, greater customization options, improved search, and updated templates that address business project and process needs.

Enterprise Deployment and Management Enhancements

Groove software is based upon a hybrid architecture of both peer-to-peer client software for users and server software for centralized management and integration. The enhanced Groove v3.0 enterprise server family provides organizations greater transparency, security, scalability and customizability. The new Enterprise Management Server features a host of major enhancements, including native support for an organization's existing Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for identity authentication, a new centralized auditing capability that lets IT organizations track actions and data within Groove workspaces, improved directory integration, and more granular administrator and security capabilities. The Enterprise Relay Server, for asynchronous communications and firewall transparency, features improved performance and scalability, while the Enterprise Integration Server provides new .NET and Web services APIs for data integration needs, and supports Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

End-User Improvements

Already recognized for its ease of use, Groove v3.0 provides an improved experience via a streamlined user interface that helps individuals become productive quickly. Perhaps most significant from an ease-of-use perspective, Groove v3.0 includes new secure file-sharing technology that enables standard Windows file folders to automatically be synchronized across any number of users' own PCs, or shared among multiple users, even across firewall boundaries. The back-and-forth volleying of emails with file attachments can be eliminated as remote file sharing and collaboration occurs directly within the Windows Explorer. Individual employees can use this encrypted folder synchronization technology to securely synchronize business files between home and work PCs, avoiding the time and trouble of manually transferring documents back and forth. This secure file sharing can also help organizations avoid the expense and virus-related security problems when providing employees VPN access from their unmanaged home computers.

Additional end user enhancements include:

-- Groove LaunchPad - a new starting point that makes common

tasks related to workspaces and contacts available from a

single location, and enables awareness of user presence and

activity occurring within individual workspaces;

-- Groove Workspace Explorer - an improved, customizable user

interface for working within Groove workspaces;

-- Expanded Alerts - improved visual, audible and "spoken"

notifications that signal when individuals come online, enter

workspaces, and perform important activities; and

-- Improved Performance - speedier start-up, downloading and

navigation; and reduced network bandwidth consumption.

Pricing, Availability & System Requirements 

Groove v3.0 will be available in the third quarter of this year. Individuals and organizations must be licensed users of Groove Workspace version 2.0 and above to participate in the public beta of Groove v3.0. A 20-percent price increase for Groove Workspace Professional Edition and Groove Workspace Project Edition will take effect July 1, 2004. Prior to July 1, individuals and organizations can purchase Professional Edition for US $149, and Project Edition for US $199. After July 1, 2004, Professional Edition will be priced at US $179, and Project Edition at US $229. Standard Edition will continue to be priced at US $69. Pricing for Groove Hosted Relay and Management services will increase by 10 percent on July 1, 2004 as well. Currently, combined Hosted Relay and Management services are priced at $70 per user per year. The list prices for customers who want to deploy their own servers are: Groove Enterprise Relay Server, US $14,995; Groove Enterprise Management Server, US $19,995; and Groove Enterprise Integration Server, US $9995.

Groove v3.0 runs on Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) 4.0 (with Service Pack 5 or later), Windows(R) 2000, or Windows(R) XP, and requires Microsoft(R) Internet Explorer 6.0. The software requires a PC with an Intel(R) Pentium(R) 400 MHz or higher processor (or equivalent) with a minimum of 128MB of RAM, 100 MB of hard disk storage, and a 56 kbps modem (local area network, DSL or cable modem preferred). A sound card, speakers and microphone may be required to use the software's voice and audible alert capabilities.

About Groove Networks

Founded in October 1997 and headquartered in Beverly, Mass., Groove Networks Inc. delivers the "virtual office" through software that allows teams of people to work together over a network as if they were in the same physical location. Groove software helps organizations, large and small, save money, time and eliminate travel by offering both a desktop application for instant joint work, and a set of customizable, open collaboration capabilities that enhance the utility and value of existing solutions. For more information about Groove Networks, visit http://www.groove.net.

Groove Networks and Groove are registered trademarks of Groove Networks Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective companies.