So they wanted either the technology, or Ray Ozzie, or both. Clearly Ray features highly in the plans, because he's now in a chief technical officer role at Microsoft, reporting to Bill Gates directly. Ray has a terrific track record as an innovator and understands the issues of people-centric collaboration better than just about anyone else. Given Microsoft's track record in this area, you can see the attraction to them of having Ray Ozzie on board.

I'm sure that the technology is attractive to Microsoft, too. Given again their track record in the people collaboration space -- the fragmented product sets and the continuously changing product plans, compared to the single box offering that is Domino and the stability of direction it's had over the years. That stability came very largely from Ray Ozzie and his team's foresight in the original design work in Notes -- it was done so well that it has endured over 15 years in the market, has changed and extended so much, yet in many ways stays completely loyal to the original vision.

But what will Microsoft do with the product set? Will they just sell it on its own, or will they try to subsume parts of the technology into their product set? I can imagine selling Groove just as now, with some success; after all, they do have a larger sales and marketing stream than did Groove. But will their sales teams understand what it is they are selling and how to sell it? Or does Microsoft want to encompass the Groove sharing technologies into the Office products, which is where Groove's 200 people are slated to end up? [Some of the information we've seen posted indicated that Groove will indeed make it into future Office releases. -- DG]

And if so, how long, and in what form, will Groove reappear as part of Office, and how valuable will it be when it's surrounded by all the rest of Office? Contrast that with IBM's purchase of Lotus in 1995. Lotus just carried on as Lotus for some years before there was any sign of it being subsumed into IBM. And Notes and Domino as a product line is still alive and well, ten years later, and should be around for many years to come.

Lastly, how long will Ray Ozzie stay at Microsoft? Will he be happy there, or will he get twitchy and want to go off on his own again? After all, he only stayed at Lotus for two years after the IBM purchase. Ray is a very clever man, bubbling over with ideas, and it may be that he will find that the intellectual and creative freedom that he needs can only be satisfied by being back in a small, flexible, nimble company again.

DominoPower Contributing Editor Tony Patton is a Domino enthusiast with plenty of experience in Domino, Java, XML, and any other hot buzzword. He has written two books (Practical LotusScript and Domino Development With Java) and is a long-suffering Philadelphia sports fan. Drop him a line at aspatton@bellsouth.net.