Microsoft Groove to get a new name in Office 2010

Microsoft Groove, a collaborative workspace tool, will be getting a new name in Office 2010. Microsoft plans to change the name to SharePoint WorkSpace. Microsoft hopes the new version will help companies deploy it more easily and tie into SharePoint repositories to access additional content. The link to SharePoint (even if only in name) makes sense.

Back in 2005 when Microsoft purchased Groove, it probably cared less about Groove itself than getting the services of its founder Ray Ozzie. Ozzie has helped drive Microsoft's shift to the cloud, and since Bill Gates is much less visible, he acts as the go-to guy about Microsoft's high-level technical strategy.

Ozzie might have been the real prize, but Groove was a decent product in its own right, just one that shared a lot of overlapping functionality with SharePoint. What Groove/SharePoint WorkSpace offers is a collaboration tool for smaller businesses that don't want to deal with the complexities of deploying SharePoint, but want a similar set of collaboration and document sharing tools. SharePoint WorkSpace will be part of the Office Professional Plus 2010 package.

For more information:
- see the Ars Technica article

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