"The command-and-control organization that first emerged in the 1870's might be compared to an organism held together by its shell. The corporation that is now emerging is being designed around a skeleton: information" – Peter Drucker

Is Ray Ozzie the Clark Kent of the software industry? Ozzie is the founder of Groove Networks, a collaborative software vendor that Microsoft acquired in March. Previously, he created Lotus Notes, the first "groupware" killer app.

Ozzie has long been respected in the computer industry as a visionary software architect. But career software architects are like writers in Hollywood; essential yet unappreciated, compensated generously but not extravagantly. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are public figures; their senior architects are not.

Microsoft already had a significant relationship with Groove, in which it invested $51 million in 2001. The two organizations were working closely to integrate Groove's "peer-to-peer" collaboration technology into future versions of MS Office.

Microsoft is the most profitable software firm on the planet, with 2004 profits of over $8 billion on revenue of nearly $37 billion. Groove, an eight-year-old privately held start-up, has not been significantly profitable, if at all.

Software giants routinely acquire smaller firms with niche technologies. But Microsoft went much further, naming Ray Ozzie as its chief technology officer, reporting directly to Gates. It clearly intends to make Groove central to Microsoft's future.

As the English writer G.K. Chesterton wrote a century ago, "there are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds." Collaborating in the physical world is complicated enough; in the "virtual" world, it is brutally difficult. Ozzie has spent his career successfully wresting with this challenge and has twice reinvented the software paradigm for collaboration.

In a CNET guest column in December, Ozzie wrote of his original vision of "an easy-to-use environment for network-based communications and collaborative work ... By good fortune, Notes was introduced in an era when corporate re-engineering was in vogue. In big enterprises around the world, internal barriers were bridged or eliminated as horizontal information sharing and process coordination became the mandate."

Lotus Notes solved a serious problem for corporations by providing a secure and reliable platform for the centralized sharing of information. Previously, mainframes communicated only with each other, while PCs allowed individuals to send e-mails, but little more.

Groove is Ozzie's attempt to create a collaborative "virtual office" space appropriate for a rapidly changing workplace, in which "lean" flexibility and outsourcing partners are part of the landscape.

As he wrote in December, "by the late 1990s, the decentralization trend began to spread. The fundamental nature of business was changing -- from vertically integrated powerhouses to a mesh of interdependent partners. The winners were companies that used information technology to create the most efficient and effective network of partners and suppliers."

Ozzie was already a respected figure in the information technology industry, for his pioneering work. But his historical impact on IT is ultimately strategic, not just technical.

Lotus Notes played a critical role in rescuing two industry giants -- Lotus and IBM. Microsoft is hoping Groove (and Ozzie) will have a similar impact on them. Consider his role in the evolution of each of these firms:

Lotus: The development efforts Ozzie led were funded by Lotus founder Mitch Kapor in 1984 and released as Lotus Notes in 1989. Notes came at a critical time for Lotus, as Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet was rapidly replacing Lotus 1-2-3 as the corporate standard. Notes, a pioneering groupware product, was elegant and robust, and kept Lotus relevant, if not as profitable as before.

IBM: In 1995, IBM acquired Lotus for $3.3 billion, driven by the opportunity to sell Lotus Notes to mainstream corporate clients. Many analysts suggested that IBM has overpaid and that the famously collegiate Lotus culture would be deadened by corporate IBM's hostile takeover.

IBM allowed Lotus to function autonomously for years, retained key employees (including Ozzie) and sold billions of dollars of Notes-related products.

But the real impact of Lotus Notes was in facilitating a cultural shift for IBM on its journey from a struggling technology vendor to a profitable services provider. CEO Lou Gerstner was trying to transform IBM's engineering-oriented culture to a customer-driven one. Lotus Notes was both a hot new technology and the sort of enterprise-wide solution IBM was skilled at providing for large corporate customers.

Microsoft: Microsoft is not in the state of obvious crisis that IBM was in 10 years ago. The Windows operating system and Office productivity suite remain international standards, although open-source (i.e. free) software like Linux continues to gain ground.

Just as IBM in 1995 was a product of its dominance in the Mainframe Age, Microsoft is still deeply influenced by its success as a vendor of shrink-wrapped PC software. In fact, Microsoft bears an unsettling resemblance to IBM, circa 1990 -- a giant with overwhelming market share whose organization dances to increasingly unfashionable music.

Can Microsoft mimic IBM's transition? It did demonstrate an ability to change in the mid-1990s, when it quickly transferred its focus from the PC to the Internet.

Microsoft has massive amounts of cash, brains and first-rate researchers. It lacks IBM's service offerings and track record in installing and managing enterprise systems for worldwide Fortune 500 companies.