In addition to containing basic information such as names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, directories may contain information about groups and roles. This information could be used to automate the formation of Groove groups. You could specify, for example, that all managers in the accounting department have access to a particular Groove shared space. During collaboration, integration with back-end systems would facilitate integration with business processes. However, this integration with back-end systems isn't automatic.
Additional software is required, typically from third-party developers.
Thus, Groove should have much greater potential than P2P products that aren't platforms. But, judging from experiences with Lotus Notes, it could take years to build up enough Groove intelligence in the developer and integrator communities to really show what the platform can do. Back-end systems integration also requires a premium, or managed, Groove client. This client wasn't available at the time of this writing, but was expected to hit the market in the first quarter of 2001. Currently available is Groove's free, basic client.