Microsoft on Thursday said it will acquire Groove Networks and make Groove’s founder, Ray Ozzie, a chief technical officer at the software giant.

Microsoft said it will incorporate Groove’s “virtual office” collaboration software into its Office line of productivity applications. Ozzie, the inventor of Lotus Notes and a collaboration guru, will report to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect.

Google is not the only company scooping up new talent. Of course in this case, Microsoft scooped up the entire company, along with Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes. This is a move to build collaboration into Office apps and I’m sure that enterprise-level people are high-fiving the news. Lotus stayed afloat a long time on the pluses provided by Notes. Now we’ll likely see Microsoft Office gain some of the same abilities that Notes users have been fond of. Ozzie is also known for keeping security in mind, which will no doubt please Steve Ballmer as much as ‘office virtualization’.