Blog Entry

Submitted by redds on 25 January 2009 - 6:16am.

Will this new solution include OTA and push technology or will it have to be tethered to a PC/laptop?

Submitted by redds on 26 January 2009 - 6:40am.

Does this mean that this new solution will only run on Windows servers? How will OTA syncing work?

Submitted by WGamradt on 26 January 2009 - 11:27am.

"Novell will support GroupWise Mobile Server through
October 31st, 2009,"

Tell me that is a typo. Novell has stated that they and Nokia would support Mobile Server for the next two years. Now all of a sudden support is ending in a few months and the product to replace it has not even hit beta?! Is that right?!

It is stuff like this that continues to make Novell solutions increasingly difficult to recommend and sell.

Great.

Submitted by FlyingGuy on 26 January 2009 - 3:07pm.

Alex, this is getting to be a habit with you and one that I am really begging to dislike. This is also leading to me and a few others I would imagine to start to wonder if we should continue to trust you.

So how about some details like:

1. Will this be a Linux Implementation?
2. Will it require a Windows Server and all the expense and hassle that comes with that?
3. This year, uhmmmm care to be just a BIT more specific?

While we were all *** begging *** for info and making lots of suggestions, had you already made this decision to lock your GW user base into a MicroSoft product?

You need to stop playing coy with us and either be informative so we can make plans or you can just keep losing more and more customers.

We have to sell this! When a customer hears, "Well the Novell mobility solution is really a Microsoft product how much longer before they say to themselves, "Hell I should just shift to Microsoft because it is their software and they can integrate their software together better then these guys can."

And what about licensing cost, what about IP issues, what about a LOT of things like is this going to ge yet another JAVA/TOMCAT/Apache/ god alone knows what kind of fresh H*&L mashup that is going to yet again be dependent on 5 or more layers of software? Is it going to crammed full or Perl and python scripts that at best unfathomable except ( and possibly not even to them when it's finished ) to those who wrote it?

When it breaks are we going to be faced yet again with error messages that spew forth 50 lines of java classes that lead you to absolutely nowhere like the infamous "MainHallway" errors? Or will it be some Microsoft error codes that MS, even if you pay them, wont deal with?

Submitted by redds on 26 January 2009 - 8:37pm.

Why another Microsoft solution? Isn't Novell a Linux company. Again start acting like it. As a customer I have moved to OES2 Linux and getting rid of many of my Windows boxes. I don't want to add another one.

Submitted by tmstone835 on 27 January 2009 - 10:24am.

I don't think that you have much choice other than to have an ActiveSync enabled GroupWise. All of the smart phone vendors are supporting it and it is too big of a market to ignore. If GroupWise wants to be a player, it has to come out as soon as possible. I would like to see early-summer as the target rather than the end of the year.

I believe the APIs are published for ActiveSync so move forward now instead of later.

It has to be a Linux solution and not reliant on a Windows server. I agree with the previous comment about that. We are trying to eliminate Windows servers rather than adding them.

Submitted by Magic31 on 28 January 2009 - 1:26am.

WGamradt : Not seeing where you are reading GMS support will be dropped this year? I'm reading they are pushing to get out the new solution for Groupwise Mobility to ease the current uncertainty for a Groupwise solution.
They way I interpret the news (as also other postings/blogs), is that the 3.0 GMS series will be maintained but not developed any further. In that sense the support can still be given while a new product is pushed out.

I'd rather have seen Novell buying the GMS solution from Nokia.. but then Novell would also have to keep developing all the clients and other extra aspects. Following where others seem to be headed (even Nokia) might be wiser in this case.

I do share the concerns others here have posted :
+1 to maintain a Linux version of your solution!! Many customers are VERY happy with the fact GMS is running on their SLES boxes. I do hope (strongly) the next solution will offer the same platform choices.

Keeping an eye on your developments!

Cheers,
Wj

Submitted by DaveHowe on 28 January 2009 - 4:49am.

ActiveSync is the defacto standard for phone syncing - not supporting it will hurt more, and lead to customers going to microsoft to give them systems with the functionality they need.

It would be nice if there was a rfc standard for this which all phones supported, but we have to live in the real world here.

Submitted by ackitsme on 29 January 2009 - 10:55am.

I'm hoping that this will follow a similar format to the existing GWMS in that I can have a server on the outside of our network that does all of the customer interfacing so that I don't have to open up direct access to my post offices.

We're an extremely security conscious company and, aside from the GWMS and BES, we do not allow ANY access to e-mail without a VPN client.

Submitted by gurneetech on 29 January 2009 - 11:01am.

I realize its still early in the process and details that can be released publicly are sparse, but I have to thank you for the news. Once released, no longer will we have to worry about 3rd party support for a sync client. While Activesync isn't perfect, it does do a good job.

This is exactly the kind of integration that I've been hoping to see come from Novell. If the MS agreement had a hand in it, then excellent. At the end of the day this will benefit everyone.

Submitted by foccer on 29 January 2009 - 5:12pm.

Good news that you have a direction but please consider the fact that SyncML is also a standard supported on many phones.
In fact quite a few phones that do not support Activesync support SyncML just fine.

hoping the next server will at least attempt to support more than the one protocol

Submitted by glofish on 29 January 2009 - 9:51pm.

Novell does some great things sometimes that just make sense. Looking forward to seeing this one play out.

Submitted by stideswe on 5 February 2009 - 2:34am.

Much as I hate MS, ActiveSync is widely adopted and works very well (even behind a reverse proxy for instance). As such, Novell making a native ActiveSync gateway for GroupWise is bloody excellent news. Thank God you finally decided!

I concur with foccer who requested SyncML support: I'd imagine ActiveSync and SyncML are not hugely different and providing protocol level support for both would make good business sense for Novell and help to support a truly open standard.

You might consider MS to be buddies now but we all know what a total bunch of *****s (think of your own expletive here) they are and you shouldn't just fall in line to support their protocol without supporting the open standard which they don't own and which is also widely used. Try not to kick Open Source/Open Standards in the teeth as you are reliant to some extent on differentiating yourself from the Redmond beast. When it has ceased to be convenient for MS to be mates with you they will try and screw you over without even blinking an eye - and that day will come pretty soon.

Isn't is odd how people are so focussed (including me) on supporting the bloody iPhone. Now that people have them they realise how power hungry and overrated they are and the whole furore about how crap GroupWise is because it doesn't support iPhone has died down. In the long term though Novell cannot ignore this sort of thing because eventually the iPhone and others will improve and actually be worth owning. Also Novell should not ignore RIM/BES whose product is way superior to any other option and who did the right thing by providing support for GroupWise way back. If we didn't buy a BES server some years ago we would have ditched GroupWise a long way back. We only still use GroupWise now because BES was there and ready to use and works so bloody well.

Simon

Submitted by stideswe on 5 February 2009 - 2:47am.

You'll produce a solution faster if you just concentrate on one platform. And the platform you should choose is Linux of course. It makes sense for Novell customers to have a Linux solution that doesn't require them to purchase or manage a crappy Windows box.

You'll also keep your internal costs (of coding and testing) the product down if you only provide it on one platform - Linux of course.

ps. Testing - do I need to explain what that means, as I sometimes wonder where Novell is concerned? My relationship to Novell is as a paying customer which means I should be treated differently and have different functions to perform than the people who work in QA at Novell. I'm paid by my company to perform IT support/projects - I'm not paid by Novell to spend countless hours helping them debug their lousy code.

pps. Do I need to explain QA? It is the department at Novell where there is one old man asleep in a darkened room. A word of advice get more staff in there and/or train them better, and/or inversely relate their pay to the number of bugs that leak out, as that lone man is doing a pretty poor job of late and he seriously needs some help.

Simon

Submitted by rovabu on 5 February 2009 - 1:10pm.

Hi Alex,

If you say: "Finally, we continue to have a great relationship with RIM that rounds out our mobility strategy", I have two questions:

- when will BES 4.1 have SOAP/XML support for GroupWise 8? Both Novell and RIM seem to be a bit vague about why this doesn't work and when BES 4.1 will be 'certified' and tested for GroupWise 8

- will you Novell attend the WES in Orlando in May? Last year Novell's complete absence was surprising for many.

Roel

Submitted by pintoa2000 on 17 February 2009 - 1:40am.

We are a large customer of Novell products incuding Groupwise and have a growing iphone user base.. We recently approached Notifycorp for an eval since need to Sync groupwise email and contacts to our iphone users..

The product installation took a while and we had a few configuration issues to resolve which took a couple of weeks.. Our 5 iphone users did not get sufficient time to evaluate the product and the eval period expired.. we approached notifycorp to extend our eval for another month so that we can have users test this properly .. but they refused.. they wanted us to pay for the extension which is absolutely ridiculous.. after trying to explain to this sales person that we are not satisfied with our eval and would like some more time.. he refused.. we cancelled the evaluation and are now looking at the only option of moving to exchange or waiting for Novell to provide the activesync for gwise functionality..

absolutely frustrating.. and to think we were on the verge of buying this product but all we needed was a little more time to evaluate.

Submitted by PN134 on 18 February 2009 - 3:47am.

Please advice the time lines set to enable iPhone integration with GroupWise? I see that the real development will be on ActiveSync so if this is the protocol to be used, when will it be available? Is there a an alpha or beta available to test this? A customer who has been using GroupWise for years are asking about this and due to the large volume of iPhone customers, they are being forced to move to Exchange. Thank you for your quick response.

Submitted by AngeloP on 18 February 2009 - 3:15pm.

Will the GroupWise 8 ActiveSync protocol work on NetWare OES1 servers also? Or do we have to upgrade servers and migrate them over to Linux OES2?

Also, will the ActiveSync protocol be coming out at the same time for all the platforms? If not, which one is going to get it first?

Thanks for helping me out with this needed information.

Submitted by mconradt on 20 February 2009 - 1:50am.

Since we deployed Notify Link Server we sync all our iPhones and even iPod Touchs with GroupWise it works great and the email handling on these devices is pure luxury against all the other devices I've see and testet.
It emporing against furstating, it's easy and fun !
Calendar works perfect with invitations, even that there still some little bugs inside. But from the past, I'm confident that they will be fixed !
Go ahead and email Paul dePond and I'm sure he'll extend your license !

Submitted by iphonebecky on 1 April 2009 - 5:57am.

Aevans,

Do you have a better sense of timing for the release for ActiveSync? I need to sync my iphone with Groupwise. I'm trying to decide if I can wait for your release, or if I should pay for a stopgap until it is released.

Thanks!

Submitted by thsundel on 27 April 2009 - 12:26pm.

Any update on release date for Active Sync support?? The number is growing for devices that won't work with GMS.. We really need your solution asap, and please do not release the Windows version of this product before the Linux version!! We really would like to have Linux servers instead of Windows servers... If you release the Windows version first them most of your customers will deploy that instead of running it on "your" operating system!!!