Groove: A P2P Collaboration Platform

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Groove A P2P Collaboration Platform
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Collaboration Where the Technology Stands Today?

• Groove Workspace technology Coordinated supply
  requests on the front lines in the war in Iraq

• Groove system was
• collecting damage assessments and supply needs
  on laptops while offline and
• then transferring the requests back to the
  supply center when connectivity was available

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What is Groove?

• Combination of software and services that
  transform the Internet into a personal medium for
  direct communication and interaction.
• Peer-to-Peer network technology
• Virtual space for small work groups (ideally for
  30 or less)

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How Does Groove Work?

• Shared space a secure environment for invited
  members
• Stored locally on members computers
• Space synchronized
• Offline usage
• P2P architecture

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System Level Services

• Security
• Public/private key and user authentication
• Local storage, synchronization and peer
  connection services
• License management
• Component management
• Usage reporting and monitoring

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Capabilities of Groove

• Communication tools
• Live voice, instant messaging, text-based chat,
  and threaded discussion
• Content sharing tools
• Shared files, pictures, and contacts
• Joint activity tools
• Co-Web browsing, multiple-user drawing and
  editing, and group scheduling/calendar

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Advantages of Groove

• Ease of connection
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Self-updating
• Cost effective
• Reduced centralized management resources

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Strengths of Groove Gartner Research

• Messaging
• Secure, flexible and microphone applications
• Cooperation
• Distributed state-management engine allowing
  multiple users to share/currently operate
  programs
• Application Platform
• Compatibility with other web technology

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Strengths of Groove Gartner Research

• Multilayered security
• Encrypted through public and private keys
• All data, objects and transactions are fully
  encrypted

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Weaknesses of GrooveGartner Research

• Server licensing
• Inability to license the products server modules
  
• No third-party service providers
• Lack of workflow management
• COM-centric
• May not be attractive for Java only environments
• Easily imitated

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Groove - Ideal MatchGartner Research

• Unstructured collaborative efforts employed by
  knowledge workers
• Private messaging communities
• Wireless or remote environments
• Adaptable with a variety of portable Internet
  devices
• Small group interactions

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Groove Pricing

• Revenue Model
• Licensing Network Service
• Licensing
• 49 per user (one-time license fee)
• Service
• 8 per user per month

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Introduction

• The basic idea behind Grooves implementation is
  to provide a shared workspace (also known as
  shared space ) where users can simultaneously
  perform operations
• This shared space is virtual in nature, as it is
  implemented by always keeping all users local
  copies of shared space synchronized
• The Groove tools are designed to support
  operations in this shared space
• All the users have their own local copy of shared
  space and every user can perform one or more
  operations in the shared space
• If these operations cause changes to the shared
  data and view, these operations are sent to other
  users to be executed on their local copies of
  shared space

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Introduction

• In order to enable the updates across large
  numbers of users, Groove offers the necessary
  services for
• Network communication
• Security
• Data storage and persistence
• Fault-tolerance, and
• User presence awareness
• Further, it also incorporates complimentary
  services for user interfaces and user accounts
• Groove makes its shared space management services
  available to the developer community via
  published APIs and special development kits

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Groove Architecture

• The concept of shared workspace is the center
  point of the Groove architecture
• Users can join shared workspaces to collaborate
  and leave at will, without disrupting the shared
  workspace
• Another important concept behind Groove is that
  of tools operating in a shared workspace
• All copies of a shared workspace are synchronized
  e.g. operations on one are executed on all

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Shared Space Services

• Services are responsible for shared space
  management
• Member Services
• Deltas and Dynamic Services
• Communication services
• UI Services
• Storage Services
• Component Services
• Network Services
• Security Services
• Device and User Awareness

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Member Services

• These services maintain and provide user account
  information
• A user account can contain one or more user
  identities, where each identity can belong to
  many shared workspaces
• An identity contains three important pieces of
  information user contact information in vCard
  format, security information and network
  addresses of all user devices
• To support Groove users access to shared
  workspaces from multiple and different devices,
  member services manage user accounts over all
  devices in use
• User account information is stored and
  synchronized across all user devices using a
  special purpose shared workspace
• Further, these services provide mechanisms for
  account/identity management including creation,
  update and deletion

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Deltas and Dynamic Services

• The shared workspace synchronization is provided
  by delta and dynamics services (DS)
• Delta, the construct used to represent change in
  Groove is a collection of operations/commands to
  be executed on a tools data storage
• DS are responsible for the creation,
  dissemination, and execution of the deltas among
  all workspaces
• DS use communications services for actual
  transfer of delta over network

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Deltas and Dynamic Services

• The DS sequence the deltas upon creation, to
  provide a deterministic data model across the
  shared workspaces
• Upon receiving a delta from the communications
  services or from local shared workspace tools,
  the DS use delta sequence numbers to decide on
  delta execution order
• This practice ensures consistent data among all
  shared workspaces
• By having the same data in all local shared
  workspaces, every user can see changes made by
  other users

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Deltas and Dynamic Services

• Delta processing involves contacting
  corresponding tools in the local shared
  workspaces and passing the commands to be
  executed by each tool
• Deltas are applied to the local data storage in a
  synchronous fashion
• However, all remote instances of a shared
  workspace are updated asynchronously
• This avoids any delays for changes in the UI of
  users to ensure a better experience
• DS themselves have no knowledge of active shared
  spaces and/or tools within them
• It is the responsibility of the tools to register
  with the DS in order to receive deltas of their
  interest

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Deltas and Dynamic Services

• Services are also responsible for delta recovery
  and cleanup
• A delta recovery is performed by requesting
  re-submission of delta from the delta originator
• In cases, where the originator cannot be
  contacted e.g. the originating user has gone
  offline other shared workspace members are
  requested for delta re-submission
• The DS also removes all executed deltas from the
  shared workspace when they are no longer required
  (garbage collection)

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Deltas and Dynamic Services

• Lastly, smart bandwidth consumption is also
  embedded in the DS, e.g. upon detection of low
  bandwidth availability, deltas are only submitted
  to one shared space user with possibly high
  bandwidth to further disseminate deltas
• The shared-space services allow delta
  transmission among many heterogeneous online
  users without any centralization
• However, in case of offline and firewall
  protected shared workspace, Groove uses relay
  services for delta transmissions

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User Interface Services

• The first set of UI services provides management
  of UI components
• Examples of these components include buttons,
  text areas, menus, lists and forms
• Each UI component has its own set of design-time
  properties, which can be set to customize
  components look and behavior within tool
• UI services also provide many layout schemes for
  UI components such as HTML tables, and X/Y
  positioning
• UI components within the tools make it possible
  for user to modify tools data
• Groove has also made it possible to use platform
  specific UI components
• This enables tool developers to provide platform
  specific look and feel to their tools
• The second set of UI services are responsible for
  updating UI components upon changes in underlying
  tool data storage

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Communication Services

• Communication services (CS) provide wire
  transport of deltas to dynamics services
• These services include routing, session
  management and device connections
• CS are capable of supporting transmission in
  three different modes
• Unicasting,
• Multicasting and
• Broadcasting

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Communication Services

• CS establishes the best mode of communication
  after discovering device bandwidth and end point
  availabilities
• If targeted user(s) are online and originating
  device have sufficient bandwidth, deltas are
  directly sent to other users
• Otherwise communication services send data to a
  selected device or to relay server, which on
  behalf of device can forward data to requested
  end points

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Storage services

• All Groove data, including both system and user
  data, is stored in XML
• Storage services provide data integrity, update,
  security, programmatic access, transactions and
  logging
• These services are only responsible for
  operations on local data storages
• Other services such as DS, which are responsible
  for data persistence across all workspaces, use
  storage services to achieve persistent data
• Using these services tools can query data storage
  to display data in their user interfaces
• All data access is within the scope of a
  transaction and is done in a secure fashion
• Groove transactions are typical ACID transactions
• Security is provided through data
  encryption/decryption prior to read and write
  operation

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Component Services

• Groove is a component-based implementation and
  the Groove tools require many components to be
  available and updated in order to function
• A Groove component offers a set of services that
  can be used by other components
• Component services are responsible for
  identifying component requirements for a tool,
  retrieving, verifying, and installing required
  components
• Identification, retrieval, and verification of
  component are done asynchronously, where as
  installation requires user interaction and
  therefore is a synchronous process
• Component services employ communication service
  and its wire transport mechanism to download
  components

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Network Services

• Services in this category refer to services
  hosted by Groove Networks
• These services provide downloadable components
  for Groove users, directory listing of Groove
  users, and relay services
• Relay services play four main roles and are
  essential for Grooves functionality
• They provide storage of deltas for offline users
• Deltas are forwarded to users when they come
  online to ensure that their workspace is
  synchronized with other shared space members

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Network Services

• Second, relays can act as proxies for delta
  transmission to users behind firewall
• Groove uses its proprietary transport protocol
  (Simple Symmetrical Transmission Protocol),
  however, in case of users located behind a
  firewall, it switches to HTTP
• Third, relay servers are used for delta
  transmissions in situations when the originator
  is of low bandwidth and needs to submit deltas to
  a large number of users
• In this case, deltas are only sent to relay
  servers, which can then multicast deltas to all
  shared space users
• Forth, relay service transmits device presence
  information between users

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Security Services

• Security is a key issue within the Groove network
• All the data either on-the-wire or on local disk
  is confidential
• Data is also ensured to be correct hence Groove
  provides data integrity and authentications
  mechanisms for users of shared workspaces
• All of this is part of the Groove security
  services
• Tool developers can access these services
  programmatically to define roles and perform user
  authentications.
• Further, security services are used by other
  services, e.g. the DS uses security services to
  encrypt data before it is sent to users in shared
  space

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Security Services

• The security services architecture consists of
  three layers
• The top layer is responsible for the
  implementation of the security protocols using
  primitives provided by lower layers
• All other services requiring security communicate
  with this top layer.
• The middle layer provides abstract interfaces,
  which are then implemented in the bottom layer
  also know as concrete layer
• The main idea behind this layered architecture is
  to allow easy access to different implementation
  of security primitives
• For example, various encryption algorithm
  implementations can be interchanged in the
  concrete layer to make them available for use by
  the top protocol implementation layer

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Security Services

• Groove runs automatically with out-of-the-box
  defaults for universally trusted algorithms, and
  for key lengths that are more than sufficient for
  almost all users
• Users only have to provide a strong pass phrase
  Groove handles all the details of securing the
  data
• Behind the scenes, the default secret-key
  algorithm is MARC4 (Modified-Alleged-RC4)
• The default public-key algorithms are ElGamal and
  DiffieHellman
• The default digest (hash) algorithm is SHA1, and
  the default integrity-protection algorithm is
  HMAC-SHA1
• The default size for secret-keys in Groove is 24
  bytes (192 bits), and the default size for
  public/private-keys is 192 bytes (1536 bits)

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Security Services

• User public-private keys are generated when the
  user creates a new identity in an account
• Public keys are exchanged among shared space
  users upon sending and receiving membership
  invitations
• These keys are also used to confirm a users
  identity
• A hash of public-private keys is used for this
  purpose
• Private keys exist only in the user account and
  therefore, it is impossible to spoof
  public-private key hash
• Every custom groove tool must sign its component
  before it can be deployed in Groove to ensure
  component authentication

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Device and User Awareness

• There are two types of awareness in Groove,
  device awareness and user awareness
• Device awareness is related to online status of
  any user device, where as user awareness refers
  to the online status of a particular user or
  identity on any device
• A Groove relay server is used for device
  awareness
• Devices register with the relay server upon start
  up so that the relay server can announce their
  presence to other interested devices
• At start up time, devices also obtain information
  about other available devices and can then either
  communicate directly or use relay server to
  communicate with other devices, which might be
  located behind a firewall
• Devices also un-register with relay server when
  Groove is shut down to notify other shared
  workspace members of their unavailability
• User presence awareness is possible without using
  a relay server
• Every Groove client can poll other users in the
  shared workspace or can subscribe to events from
  other clients to learn about their presence

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Groove Transceiver Shared Spcace
Architecture
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Groove and XML
XMI (XML/SOAP)
Calendar Tool