Office Groove Enterprise Services provides IT organizations with powerful, Web-based tools to centrally manage smaller deployments of Microsoft Office Groove 2007 without any on-site infrastructure.

Office Groove Enterprise Services includes two primary services: Groove Enterprise Services Manager and Groove Enterprise Services Relay.

No. Office Groove Enterprise Services is a Microsoft-hosted, Web-based offering that requires no on-site server infrastructure or changes to network configurations.

Microsoft manages its Office Groove Enterprise Services infrastructure in a security-enhanced, redundant, managed hosting environment.

No. Annual subscriptions to Office Groove Enterprise Services are available for an attractively priced annual fee.

Yes. Enhancements to Office Groove Enterprise Services include improved usability for Domain Administrators and localizing the Groove Enterprise Services Manager interface.

Groove Enterprise Services Manager is an easy-to-use, Web-based interface that allows IT administrators to manage all aspects of Office Groove 2007 deployments, including domain creation and certification, policy setting and enforcement, reporting, and more.

IT administrators can access Groove Enterprise Services Manager from the Microsoft Web site. After entering the required Microsoft .NET Passport account credentials, a security-enhanced Web site will provide your organization's Office Groove 2007 domain and settings.

Yes. With Groove Enterprise Services Manager, you can create, configure, manage, and back up Office Groove 2007 user accounts. You can also add or remove members from your domain and set policies for members.

No. Customers who want to use their existing directories for Office Groove 2007 account creation and configuration should acquire Office Groove Server 2007.

No. Customers who want to use their enterprise PKI should acquire Office Groove Server 2007.

Yes. You can use Groove Enterprise Services Manager to create policies that must be obeyed by all managed devices. For example, you can create policies that define which Office Groove 2007 tools domain users can access.

With Groove Enterprise Services Manager, you can set a variety of security policies that govern the use of Office Groove 2007, such as password length and expiration intervals.

Yes. Groove Enterprise Services Manager provides several reporting features that enable you to monitor the use of Office Groove 2007 by all managed domain members. Reports are available for workspace creation and use, user activity, and tool use.

No. By design, the Office Groove 2007 end-to-end encryption model does not allow you to access specific data within workspaces. However, Microsoft Office Groove Server Manager, available in Office Groove Server 2007, provides an integrated Audit Service that you can use to capture data shared within Office Groove 2007 workspaces.

Groove Enterprise Services Relay provides three essential services that enable teams using Office Groove 2007 to work efficiently and productively anywhere, online or offline, with members inside and outside their organizations.

• Groove Enterprise Services Relay facilitates communication between Office Groove 2007 clients when direct client-to-client communication is not possible, for example when Office Groove 2007 clients are not online concurrently or are separated by a network boundary, such as a firewall.
• Groove Enterprise Services Relay provides wide area network (WAN) presence and awareness services. The Office Groove 2007 client is the presence and awareness services publisher, and Groove Enterprise Services Relay routes these services to Office Groove 2007 users who are not on the same subnet.
• Groove Enterprise Services Relay optimizes bandwidth through a process called "fan out". For example, when an Office Groove 2007 user adds a 3 MB file to a workspace, Office Groove 2007 assesses the size of the file, the speed of the user's connection, and the number of members in the workspace. When it is most efficient, Office Groove 2007 sends the file to Groove Enterprise Services Relay to be fanned out to the other members, instead of sending the file directly to each member.

Access to your own Groove Enterprise Services Relay or Office Groove Server Relay is not required. The Groove 2007 client is automatically provisioned against a public Groove Server Relay hosted by Microsoft if no alternate Relay server or services are provided. Organizations that are looking to optimize network performance may select to deploy Groove Server Relay on premise; this requires an on premise Groove Server Manager as well. Organizations that want the additional IT controls provided by Groove Server Manager without deploying servers on premise should consider Groove Enterprise Services.

Yes. Organizations that want to host their own relay can acquire Office Groove Server 2007, which includes Office Groove Server Relay that is installed on-site.

Office Groove 2007 has an end-to-end security model that helps ensure workspace data shared between team members is always encrypted on computers and on the Internet. Workspace data packets that pass through Groove Enterprise Services Relay are encrypted and can only be decrypted by the workspace members. Microsoft does not hold encryption keys to Office Groove 2007 workspaces.

Customers consider two criteria when choosing Office Groove Enterprise Services or Office Groove Server 2007: cost and functionality. Generally, Office Groove Enterprise Services is more cost-effective for smaller deployments, while Office Groove Server 2007 is more cost-effective for larger deployments. Office Groove Server 2007 also provides additional functionality such as directory integration and server-side data integration. Larger organizations that value these capabilities should acquire Office Groove Server 2007.

While most of management capabilities in Office Groove Server 2007 and Office Groove Enterprise Services are identical, having a dedicated Office Groove Server 2007 on-site does provide additional capabilities. These capabilities include Active Directory integration, administrative control over server functions through roles-based access control, the ability to create multiple domains, and custom reporting opportunities using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services or Crystal Reports for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Office Groove Enterprise Services provides the same data relay functionality as Office Groove Server 2007. However, customers who choose to deploy and manage Office Groove Server 2007 in the enterprise can customize the dedicated Office Groove Server Relay to optimize network performance. For instance, an enterprise with five global offices can deploy several Office Groove Server Relays in different locations. Users in each office can be provisioned to the Office Groove Server Relay closest in proximity to reduce latency and improve performance.

No. However, without Office Groove Enterprise Services or Office Groove Server 2007, your Groove 2007 user accounts will be unmanaged and will be provisioned against a public Groove Server Relay hosted by Microsoft.

Office Groove Enterprise Services is offered on an annual subscription basis with a price-per-user fee structure.

Find pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office system pricing page.

There are no hardware requirements for using Office Groove Enterprise Services. All hardware is hosted by Microsoft.

Find system requirements for Office Groove Server 2007 and installation notes for Office Groove 2007.