Groove: The Peaceful Force: revisitied

In http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/04/10/groove_the_peaceful_force.htm Robin Good rightfully went to task with Sanjana Hattotuwa of Info-Share - and Groove Networks - about two main subjects. Why is Groove supposedly so good for Humanitarian projects (and over the competitors), and why use so much marketting guffaw that serves only to obfuscate both the problem and solution.

Dealing with the latter as a technocrat I feel that I do not waste words. My powers of English may not be the best but I try to be succinct (and my apologies to all when I fall well short of ideals). And here I agree with Robin: too many flowery words can only tend to hide the message. Marketspeak from both Groove and Info-share alike has at times fallen foul of this. And when it happens one has rightly to ask why - and hope that the reason is not to hide unpleasant truths. And because of where I come from (ie PopG), I have had to deal head-on with some of these powerful words since often times the philosophy of PopG's architecture may seem at odds to Groove's own.

The heart of this is when we get on the bandwagon of p2p (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=define%3Ap2p) versus sbc (google does not understand the term server-based computing). The sales pitch from many Groove employees and enthusiasts can be made as if it is a battle of two titans - P2P or SBC: and this approach goes across sales literature.

Now I may be pretty poor at selling PopG's strengths but one debate I do not get het up about is this. And this can be demonstrated with two ways. Firstly SBC is very much sold on the back of "easily demonstrable" cost savings. And yet Groove coming from the opposite end of the computing spectrum argues the same. So who is right? The simple answer is both. Both are right - depending upon the organisation, its history and its hoped for future. A further more important reason I don't get upset about this is simple. With Groove+PopG you can have your cake and eat it. Each organisation can choose its own proportion of SBC versus P2P between 0% and 100% - and that can change over time.

The second is to do with bandwidth and resources. I am really very proud of the provable fact running Groove on PopG largely consumes a flat 20kbps bandwidth to the end-user regardless of how much Groove traffic is moved, be it 20k or 20gigs. You can share gigs of Groove data - but your line to the PopG service is unaffected. Great. This is fantastic news for humanitarian projects.

But let us dig deeper. That 20k requires a steady-stream quality of service higher than a Groove delta consuming the same 20k. We are investigating session reliability techniques and so forth. But the bottom line is Groove for small bits of data is phenomenal. One of my previous blogs went into how Groove (P2P style) can operate at at levels around that required by PING.

Also Groove (2.5 more than 3.0) was considered a resource hog. It may be better now but you still need a new computer - if only for the OS (support for Win98 is now dropped for example). But PopG is backward compatible with 98, 95, 3.1 and even DOS. (Give me a DOS network with half-decent video cards and a PopG server - and I can show you Groove flying.)

So suddenly a lot of technology positioning of "this is better than that", "no it isnt.", can go out of the window. Because now Groove can run in a P2P and a SBC environment and so real customer needs can come to the fore. It may take more effort to think about what the customer really wants/needs. It may take some people some time to get off their hobby horse of either SBC or P2P is better.

And the incredible beauty of it is that Groove runs beautifully and seamlessly in both (not either, both) modes.

And now let me come to the most important aspect. Why is Groove+PopG so good for Humanitarian projects. Technically and sales wise I have tried to address this above. And, Sanjana, if you will forgive me here is one of the most important points which did not seem to come across at all in Robin's interview. The edge.

Groove is so good for Hum... because it is so good at the edge.. By the edge we mean the ability to effectively collaborate outside company boundaries. By the edge we mean the ability to integrate the single person outside the company, be s/he the customer, the specialist, the negotiator, the or whatever. Typically this edge is thought of as being company firewalls, though actualy a larger problem is computer hardware and software.

I want to go further. I want to extend the definition of the edge beyond just to physical boundaries. For true edge computing you need to include the time dimension. Suppose Sanajana wants to bring in a new group to use Groove. Does he have to go to some computer supplier and by 10 computers? Does he have to get a purchase order, computer support personnel, change people's desktops, train them in their new computers. And all this before he installs Groove! By the time that is done everyone - and I mean everyone - has potentially forgotton the original question.

The edge for PopG includes the concept of being able to bring on new people in minutes, in seconds. Over the next week one person in PopG will FULLY configure around 200 Groove accounts for California State University and Creighton University. One person will largely do this from one computer. In the same time quite soon we hope to be able to do 1000 accounts. Once configured these accounts will be fully usable instantly: what is left is training on Groove. Simply put PopG is the fastest way to deploy new seats. We are working on being able to create a new Groove account in seconds, fully automatic.

I feel I have got on a hoobby horse there. Sorry if I have gone over the top. The point is that Groove+PopG is quite unbeatable in the Humanitarian collaboration marketplace. That is not marketspeak. It is fact my firmly held opinion. The reasons are incredible flexibility in deployment schema, incredible adaptability in terms of performance profile, incredible usability of product. And one more reason.

Groove, I have said before, is a democratising technology. By which I mean it treats gives almost every person the same access and rights. PopG is also a democratising technology because you extend access from any computing device. Put both together and that democratisation goes to new and important heights. And that is why together they are absolutely unbeatable for Humanitarion projects.

Now let's look at practice. Recently PopG was immensely pleased to be given the opportunity to demonstrate itself in a mock up of a Humanitarian project running in an austere environment. This was to participate as a supplier to Strong Angel II in Hawai'i. Major tenets of this project were adapatability and flexibility in collaboration technologies. In case of a incident requiring Humanitarian relief you know almost nothing of the circumstances you are going to be faced with - until you get there. Then, on arrival you have to be up and fully running in no time at all with people and organisations who may know nothing about each other.

I am very pleased to report that participants in Hawaii saw the benefits of a PopG solution at first hand using our service in Omaha supported by our management from Oxford, UK. The feedback we recieved was effusive and unqualified.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 8:06