LogicLibrary, Groove Team To Enable Collaborative Software DevelopmentLogicLibrary, Groove Team To Enable Collaborative Software Development

Software asset-management vendor LogicLibrary Inc. is hoping to increase the collaborative capabilities of software-design teams by forming an alliance with Groove Networks, a provider of peer-to-peer collaborative workspaces. The alliance--which links two companies in which Microsoft has invested--is intended to let software-development teams reach into the vast software-metadata repositories in LogicLibrary's Logidex application from within a Groove workspace.

Logidex includes light chat and workspace functionality, but the Groove integration will enable much richer collaboration in the form of application sharing and document workflows, says LogicLibrary CEO Greg Coticchia. "To be able to create and share persistent knowledge, and to be able to share office documents related to software assets, creates a much richer development environment for an application development team," he says. The first customization to emerge from the alliance is a discussion tool LogicLibrary built specifically for teams to communicate around a software asset stored in Logidex but being accessed from within Groove.

LogicLibrary customer CNA Financial Corp. has been collaborating via Microsoft Outlook and E-learning software from Collaboration Architects, but it's looking to integrate a collaborative workspace tool with its intranet portal, says enterprise architect Dmitry Tyomkin. No single vendor has yet combined collaboration, search, and software-asset management in the way LogicLibrary and Groove are attempting, says Tyomkin, and so he plans to look at Groove as a possible option for the portal integration.

In the meantime, he thinks the combination of workspace collaboration and software asset management could be especially helpful when starting software development projects--especially with tasks such as tracking down pertinent software assets or getting up to speed on previous projects that may provide helpful hints on making use of existing assets. Tyomkin says he turned to LogicLibrary six months ago to give his team a more consistent view of its software assets. Being able to access those assets from within a collaborative workspace embedded in the intranet portal would be a logical next step, he says.