Passing files back and forth is great, but in many cases companies want employees to work on the same documents or files collaboratively. For instance, when designing a car or airplane, engineering departments either send paper drawings via FedEx or send large electronic files back and forth. In these cases, it would be better if each person could view the same sketch at the same time and immediately see any changes made by anyone with access. A startup software company in Beverly, Mass., is trying to serve that function. Groove Networks has been getting a lot of attention because it was founded by Ray Ozzie, the brains behind Lotus Notes, the most popular software for letting groups of employees collaborate on projects.
Many executives resist the technology for security reasons.
Then there's the reaction the EPA's Niemann got when he first approached various federal agency heads about using the technology. He pitched it as a way to give people all the data and tools they'd need to compute the consumer price index themselves.