Microsoft to Rename Groove as SharePoint Workspace

Is Microsoft loosing its Groove? No, but they are changing the name of it. Microsoft Groove 2007 - the collaboration and document sharing software for small teams working online and offline — is getting a new name. The new name? Why it will become Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010.

A Change in Production Direction

According to the Groove development blog on MSDN, the name change reflects the direction the product is going in. Microsoft has often referred to Groove as the same as Outlook to Exchange.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 will be easier to deploy and manage than its current implementation and provides the IT department with the ability to provide a more consistent enterprise information strategy based on SharePoint technology — this one should make many happy.

The plan is for SharePoint Workspace to provide easy access to SharePoint content for a more seamless experience whether you are online or off. There will be a new set of scenarios with the Workspace designed to help you be more productive.

Microsoft is clear that while the name will be different and there will be new functionality, Groove is not really changing that much.  

You will get SharePoint Workspace 2010 as part of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 release.

What Else is Getting Leaked?

No longer required to be the world's best kept secret, Microsoft is slowly leaking details of SharePoint 2010 — nothing that appears to be too shocking though.

What We've Already Told You

We've already brought you a number of new things we've learned about SharePoint 2010:

• It's Official - A New Name and Delivery Date for the Next Version of SharePoint: The removal of the "Office" word giving us SharePoint 2010.

• SharePoint 2010: Preparing Your Infrastructure: A new completely 64-bit platform and a downfall of IE6 as a supported browser.

• SharePoint Service Pack 2 - Helping Prepare for SharePoint 2010: A strong recommendation to upgrade SharePoint 2007 to Service Pack 2 and run an Upgrade command to see what you might need to do to get ready for the new version.

• Next Version of SharePoint, Search Gets FAST:  SharePoint 2010 will get a FAST Search Module and Performance Server will become a SharePoint Service.

• New SharePoint Developer Tools in Visual Studio 2010: A peak at some of the new Visual Studio capabilities coming to support SharePoint 2010 development.

What Else We've Learned

Mary-Jo Foley writes on ZDNet that there are a few other "secrets" being leaked:

• CMIS will be implemented: Now it would have been more of a shock to hear it wouldn't be implemented than it would. It would be nice to see some details on this one.
• User Interface: To bring it more inline with the look and feel of Office, SharePoint will have a Web-enabled Ribbon control.
• Architecture: The upgrade is supposed to be relatively painless considering the underlying architecture is not going to change fundamentally from SharePoint 2007.

What`s Next for Announcements

We are likely just skimming the surface of what's to come with SharePoint 2010. Just information information to keep us from getting too anxious or loosing interest (like that would ever happen).

What's coming next is anyone's guess. But you can be sure that CMSWire will be watching and listening, ready to bring you the tidbits and large bits as they come.

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