Peer-to-peer and group collaboration do they always match?

Online collaboration systems allow workers to cooperate and communicate with each other even if working in dispersed settings. They enable frictionless sharing of explicit and implicit knowledge. Several applications that implement a support media for team and group collaboration are implemented and already used for a long time. Since some time Peer-to-peer based tools are a serious alternative to those established applications of client/server type. They seem to provide better services at even lower costs. But there are important but commonly not recognized differences between the particular types of P2P applications. This demands for further research, in particular on nontechnical aspects. The paper provides a research frame to enable covering descriptions of P2P tools from different views. The frame includes a data/content, a user/community and a contextual view besides other more common focii. As example Groove.net, a commercially available P2P collaboration tool suite is explained along the research frame. Teams vs. communities are rarely in the focus of P2P research. Even if these parameters seem to be highly relevant in practical use as they separate different classes of P2P systems they are rarely mentioned as distinctive characteristics. The paper uses data from a research survey among teams that use Groove for their teamwork. It shows that not all P2P tools fit to the needs of every size of group. Groove seems to support teams but does not match the demands of communities. As well one can state that communities need their own type of P2P tools for efficient support of the collaboration processes. Therefore the proposed research frame offers valuable pointers to aspects that need to be considered in discussions - in this case it points to the users of the system.