Groove Networks™ Delivers First Customer Shipments of the Groove™ 1.0 Enterprise-Class Peer Computing Platform

GlaxoSmithKline signs initial order for 10,000 licenses; Abbott Laboratories, Raytheon and Department of Defense are also early adopters

BEVERLY, Mass. - April 9, 2001 - Groove 1.0 software is being used by its early enterprise adopters to bring people together spontaneously and securely across enterprise boundaries to work on time-critical projects, and to host high-value custom solutions specifically designed to reduce time-to-decision and time-to-action.

Groove is a unique software and network services platform that transforms the Internet into a medium for direct, secure personal communication and interaction. The software comprises a set of immediately useful communication and information sharing tools, built upon a powerful peer computing platform that developers can use to integrate Groove with existing business systems such as customer relationship management, document management, product design, or enterprise resource planning.

Groove 1.0 software includes many enhancements to the version initially released for preview in October 2000, including support for a wider range of firewalls, reduced resource requirements, support for secure roles and permissions, improved Microsoft Office and NetMeeting integration, and, most significantly for enterprises, the introduction of Enterprise Network Services enabling companies to centrally control product deployment and security policies across their global networks.

"Our mission is to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer," said Ford Calhoun, chief information officer of GlaxoSmithKline. "Teams working to discover new drugs typically comprise our own scientists, together with collaborators from biotechnology companies and universities. These teams need to share sensitive information and coordinate activities, and often times team members change as the project progresses. With its ability to work across firewalls and its highly secure environment, Groove appears to lend itself uniquely to our challenge of supporting these teams with technology that can assist their
life-changing research."

"Raytheon is a company that is a combination of diverse cultures resulting from significant merger-and-acquisition activity and independent business units," said Saul Fisher, director of strategic initiatives, Raytheon Corporation. "As such, we have a significant opportunity to leverage expertise and facilitate meaningful team interaction among our employees and with our suppliers and customers as well. The Groove platform represents an exciting opportunity for us to enable secure collaboration through the firewall, and to reduce our cost of goods sold by decreasing the cost of connections throughout our supply chain."

"Groove has been selected as the communications infrastructure for the collaborative environment that will support a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) investigation studying human and software agent interaction utilizing peer-to-peer technologies," said Dr. John Poindexter, senior vice president of Syntek Technologies Inc. "DARPA is investigating how this technology can be applied to research it is conducting on 'aids
for human reasoning'. If successful, this investigation could lead to a full-scale project and broad application of its concepts throughout the national security community."

Groove 1.0 Software
Groove is software for PCs and workstations that meets the dynamic, secure collaboration needs of both individuals and IT managers. The product is also a software platform a sophisticated "component framework" for peer computing enabling custom solutions to be built specifically to the needs of line-of-business managers.
Although Groove software technically can be used without servers, operating in a pure "peer-to-peer" manner when communicating with other computers using Groove, the product is dramatically more useful to enterprises when combined with the capabilities of the server-based Groove Network Services.

Groove 1.0 Network Services
Groove Network Services provide Groove 1.0 software with the capabilities of adaptability, network transparency, and manageability. Although bundled as a "package" of services, Groove Network Services uniquely provide:

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• Management services: These services allow the enterprise IT manager to centrally control the deployment and behavioral characteristics of widely dispersed Groove software. It provides centralized services such as:
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  • Deployment and management of client software and licenses;
    
  • Dissemination of component and tool security policies;
    
  • Dissemination of user identities to be consistent with a corporate directory;
    
  • Dissemination of software version upgrade policies; and
    
  • Aggregation of software usage, behavior, and fault information.
  
  
• Relay services: The Groove relay service is, in essence, a store-and-forward "message queue" designed to augment the standard direct PC-to-PC message transfer that is the basis for Groove communications. This "message queue" provides Groove users the following benefits:
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  • They don't have to be on-line at the same time in order to work together, whether across time zones, or at the locations and hours that the users choose;
    
  • They can work from behind firewalls or network address translators; and
    
  • The software can be used more efficiently with low-bandwidth Internet dial-up.
  
  
• Device presence services: Devices (such as PCs) running Groove software must announce and "publish" their presence to the Internet so that other devices can transmit messages to them. Similarly, devices wishing to transmit messages must "subscribe" to the on-line presence of destination devices so they are aware when those devices connect to the network.
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• Component hosting services: The Groove software consists of dynamically assembled components and tools that are automatically downloaded from "component hosting farms" distributed worldwide. Groove Network Services include access to these hosting servers.
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Also available today is the Groove Development Kit 1.0 (GDK), which provides developers access to hundreds of interfaces that are exposed by Groove 1.0 software for creating solutions with the peer computing platform [see related release]. The updated GDK includes significant enhancements and many examples of sample code to help developers more quickly and easily create Groove 1.0 tools, applications and solutions.

"The updated GDK demonstrates the depth and elegance of the peer-to-peer architecture that Groove has created," said Hugh Pyle, technical director of Agora Professional Services in London, United Kingdom. "Independent developers such as Agora can only invest in new technologies that have a significant likelihood of longevity. For Groove Networks' vision of creating an ecosystem around its product to be realized, it's essential that the platform be powerful, accessible, enterprise-ready, and 'future-proof.' The Groove component framework is one of the very rare platforms that meets these requirements."

Pricing and Availability
Enterprise pricing for the Groove product is $49 per user; Groove Enterprise Network Services are priced at $8 per user per month (volume pricing available). Pricing for individual purchase of Groove software and services will be announced later this year. Groove Preview Edition, a subset of the full Groove product, is available at no cost for personal use or business trial from www.groove.net.

System Requirements
Groove 1.0 software requires Windows Me, 95, 98, NT 4.0 or 2000, and an Intel-compatible personal computer with a minimum 48 MB of memory, 233 MHz Pentium processor, 56K (or faster) Internet connection, and Internet Explorer 4 or higher.

About Groove Networks
Founded in October 1997 and headquartered in Beverly, Mass., Groove Networks Inc. provides software and services that transform the Internet into a personal medium for direct communication and interaction. The company's peer-to-peer and peer-to-Web solutions provide businesses secure, online working relationships with key customers and partners, allowing dispersed project teams to reduce time-to-decision and problem-resolution by responding in real time to critical incidents and opportunities. For more information about Groove Networks, visit http://www.groovenetworks.com. For more information about career opportunities, visit http://www.groovenetworks.com/jobs. For more information about enterprise sales, visit http://www.groove.net/products/enterprise.