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GroupWise seems to be in the news a lot recently as customers, analyst and partners continue to find value in Novell's Collaboration Solutions.

GroupWise: E-Discovery

This article, Government Agencies Look Within to Solve E-Discovery Woes recently published on law.com, highlights many of the challenges facing government agencies as their budgets are scrutinized and the demand for resources required for electronic data discovery (EDD) increases. One of Novell’s customer’s is quoted in the article as they also struggle with the burdens of EDD. The customer is NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). Jason Baron, director of litigation at NARA says, “ "At NARA, we use GroupWise, not Outlook, for our own e-mail, making us different from many other agencies.”

GroupWise has many partners who offer solutions in this space including GWAVA with their product Reveal. Computhink, Atempo, Advansys, Gaggle, Globolog, mimecast, MessageSolution, Messaging Architects, Sonian, and SilverDane all have solutions in this space.

Check out the GroupWise Partner page for a list of these partners and how to contact them.

Michael Osterman

Recently, Gert at gwcheck.com, published an interview with Michael Osterman, an industry analyst that covers collaboration. Here is an exerpt from that interview.

I believe that Novell’s problem over the years, and Attachmate’s problem now, has been that senior decision makers in many organizations that use GroupWise aren’t sure where the platform is going or what the long-term roadmap looks like.

As a result, many are migrating to Exchange – not because Exchange is a better system technically, but because Microsoft has done a very good job at establishing a long-term roadmap across all of the company’s messaging and collaboration offerings.

To be sure, Microsoft has offered financial incentives and has been aggressive in its licensing policies, but I believe the fundamental differentiator has been their ability to build confidence among those who make financial decisions about spending for messaging and collaboration platforms.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Attachmate/Novell needs to develop a solid, long-term plan for GroupWise and push very hard on the messaging around it.

If corporate decision makers can be convinced that GroupWise has a lower total cost of ownership and that it’s roadmap will satisfy organizational requirements for robust messaging and collaboration functionality for many years to come, most of them will stay with GroupWise – and Attachmate/Novell will be able to gain some new converts, as well.

This message and feedback from Michael Osterman corresponds directly with Novell's new management and their committment to GroupWise, Vibe and Mobility. BrainShare will be the place where we reveal more details about our more rapid release schedule and more aggressive delivery of solutions.

Novell Vibe Press Release by one of our partners

Share your point with Novell Vibe

GroupWise is not the only product that is getting some good press and is being recognized by our customers as real solutions for their business needs. The quote from the article is:

“Whether you need to share a document with your team, create a wiki, engineer a business process or merely blog about the activities of your company, department or team to keep everyone up to date, Novell Vibe will allow you to do just that, and more.”

With our increased integrations between GroupWise and Vibe, these collaboration solutions will become more and more compelling and complimentary.

Firestone – the next release of Novell Vibe is scheduled for mid-Q4 release and includes better file versioning management, Novell Data Synchronizer Vibe Connector which synchronizes Tasks and Appointments from Vibe to GroupWise

GWAVACon Munich

GWAVACon EMEA is being held during Oktoberfest this year in Munich. Alex Evans, Kari Woolf and myself will be attending and presenting GroupWise Ascot, Mobility and Vibe content. Of course, we will be accompanied by Kai Reichert and other local Novell team members.

GroupWise Mobility – version 1.2

Just to make sure you know, Novell DataSynchronizer Mobility Pack 1.2 shipped earlier this month. Two major advancements in this release include support for HTML email for all IOS devices and increased scalability to 500 users per server. Check out Alex Evan's blog for additional details

Dean

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.