Ray Ozzie Interview in eWeek
by Volker Weber
eWeek: Groove announced three servers last year. Does this mean that more logic will be put on the server and less on the client, and does it mean that you were wrong about the server not being necessary?
Ozzie: [...] The Relay Server has always been a piece of the architecture because otherwise you'd have no way to work offline. Relay Server, Enterprise Integration Server and Enterprise Management Server—those originated about the same time. [...] The fourth server, which we haven't talked a lot about, is an audit server. It's key to pharmaceutical and financial services users because it maintains a verifiable audit history of what people on those clients are doing, for regulatory reasons. The audit server will be in 2003: tested in the first half of the year, gold later in the year.
eWeek: What about a Web services server?
Ozzie: That's another one. We're calling it Web Services Access Point. Consistent with the Groove philosophy, there's no applications logic on it. The Groove client is where the applications live. Each application is called a tool set and exposes Web services on the client. The Web Services Access Point is told by the clients where they are. That is going into beta in the fourth quarter [of this year].
[...]
eWeek: Some critics say collaboration software ought to use a browser interface.
Ozzie: The browser interface is the best answer for universal access to transaction systems and applications. But it's not the way to work with other people. People work offline, they use their laptops, they go home, they work on planes and in hotel rooms, where there is not high bandwidth. You need to pick the right architecture for the problem you're trying to solve.
