Buce Marjorie C

BSIM – OOA

SYSANAL

 

Case study

 

Ray Ozzie

Founder, Iris Associates,

Groove networks

 

Ray Ozzie was the founder of Iris Associates, Groove Networks. Ozzie works on Plato notes, then later he wanted to develop software on his own but he has lack of funding.

 

They started Groove in the fall of ’97. They worked out of their house. Then they code a primitive version of Synchronization algorithm. The ideas they had were not based on technology but for the user to use a product. He’s an engineer and he believes that if you want something to accomplish just set our mind on that thing.

 

Lotus notes ended up being a multifaceted piece of software. It used as a content management system as an application server. While Groove was meant to fulfill the collaborative workspaces piece. They are laser focused to dynamically assembled in virtual environment, share documents and then disassemble.

 

The web on the open Internet is an alternative way of doing it but they were targeting people in highly mobile fashion in a secure manner behind or outside firewall.

 

Before starting a company, they typically wrote a couple of founding documents. Then he creates a second bottom up document describing technologies that assemble its vision.

In Grooves case it was a very risky piece of technology. Groove was a real contrarian play.

 

It was October 2003 when they launched Grooved in beta. The first commercially version of Groove was launched on April 2001. GlaxoSmithKlire was a big costumer and saw the opportunity to address sole cross boundary in bringing new product in the market.

 

In notes it was a database and replication environment and the security aspects while groove was in security aspects and in this transaction synchronization and the peer-to-peer XML based communication.

Ozzie funded the company first with his own money then Mitch Kapor and other funded the company.

 

He’s advice to someone who’s starting a company is to learn about leadership. Learn to respect and appreciate others people skill sets and be comfortable in the things that you are creating. And don’t do something just to have money.

 

Things that I’ve learned:

 

In starting a company we should have knowledge on what we are doing and if we really want to do something then go for it and try to do it until we succeed. From Ozzie I learned that in all we do we need to respect other people and appreciate their work. We can’t do something if we don’t love what we are doing and most of all we don’t need to do something just to have money. Money is a part of it but the most important is we help other people and we create something that we really like.