Groove Networks ships `production ready' add-in toolkit for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

Groove Networks Inc. recently announced the "production ready" version of its Groove Toolkit for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET makes it dramatically easier for developers to create collaborative software solutions for the Groove platform by using the integrated development environment in Visual Studio .NET. The toolkit is available for free download at http://www.groove.net/devzone. Groove Networks expects to ship an updated version of its toolkit that supports Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 by the end of Q2, 2003.

"The Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET is a breakthrough tool for developers who want to add collaboration capabilities to their applications," said Jack Ozzie, Groove Networks' vice president of developer services. "Developers can use the same technologies they already know - Microsoft Visual C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, Windows Forms--allowing them to accelerate development by focusing on solving the business problem instead of learning our rich, but previously somewhat overwhelming Groove development environment."

"We've been working with, and developing Groove applications for over a year," said Art Fritzson, vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton. "Earlier this fall, we developed a Groove application in C# using the developer preview of the toolkit and taking advantage of Visual Studio .NET's support for XML Web services and Windows forms. These enhancements have enabled us to quickly prototype, refine, and deploy Groove-based applications."

"The integration of the Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET with the Visual Studio .NET IDE will be a great benefit to developers by increasing productivity and ease of use," said David Lazar, director for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "By providing this valuable toolkit, Groove is providing our mutual customers with the ability to better take advantage of the benefits offered by Microsoft .NET."

With the Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET, developers can now create and test Groove applications without leaving the Visual Studio .NET environment. This allows developers to use Microsoft Visual Basic .NET or Visual C# .NET to create collaborative applications that take advantage of Groove software's unique services, including support for on- and off-line use, continuous data synchronization, transparent end-to-end security, and automatic firewall and network address translator (NAT) traversal.

Groove Networks first introduced a design preview version of the Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET in August. Since then, developers have downloaded the toolkit and begun developing Groove tools.

The Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET is available for free download at http://www.groove.net/devzone. To utilize the toolkit, developers must already have installed Groove Workspace v2.5, the Groove Development Kit and Visual Studio .NET (any edition). The Groove Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET supports Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Founded in October 1997 and headquartered in Beverly, Mass., Groove Networks Inc. provides software for secure, intra- and cross-organization collaboration that provides a 10x improvement over email alone for getting work done.