Novell's Groupwise Increases Market Share In 1994

GroupWise reaches installed base of more than 3.5 million

OREM, Utah --March 6, 1995-- According to recently released market share numbers for network-based messaging systems, Novell's GroupWise more than doubled its share of the market in 1994 while cc:Mail's percentage of the market decreased 4.9 percent and Microsoft Mail's increased 4.2 percent. 1

"GroupWise is the most complete electronic messaging solution available today," said David Coursey, editor of P.C. Letter, an influential newsletter covering personal computing and communications. "While Lotus and Microsoft are years behind on promised upgrades, Novell has steadily introduced product enhancements and today offers a more comprehensive feature set than either Microsoft or Lotus."

GroupWise was the first and remains the only enterprise-wide messaging system to integrate e-mail, personal calendaring, group scheduling, faxes, Internet messages and task management into a Universal In Box. GroupWise was also the first product to provide 32-bit, multi-threading and 24x7 up-time support servers, addressing the scalability issues that the network-based e-mail market has dealt with for more than a decade.

GroupWise is also the only product on the market to provide users with server-based Rules, enabling them to define actions to manipulate their incoming and outbound messages. GroupWise provides users with basic workflow capabilities, Access Lists that allow users to give other users proxy rights to their GroupWise messages, and the ability to track and retract messages through the Out Box.

"Between the time of its release in June, 1993 and Novell's acquisition of WordPerfect Corporation in June, 1994, GroupWise enjoyed a gradual increase in market share because of its technological superiority in the messaging market," said Bob Young, vice president of marketing, Novell GroupWare.

"However, since the acquisition, GroupWise sales have soared. With the acquisition, GroupWise inherited Novell's channel which immediately recognized the opportunity of selling GroupWise to their NetWare customers. We are confident that the growing interest in GroupWise will continue to demonstrate itself through consistent and rapid increase in market share."

In addition to increasing its market share, GroupWise continues to rise in the e-mail review ratings. For example in its Jan. 23, 1995 issue, Communications Week awarded GroupWise its coveted Max Award, saying: "Novell's GroupWise claims Communications Week's Max Award this time around as best overall E-mail package because it is the simplest and most efficient to integrate and operate over this broad mix of network NOSs, transport protocols and clients. It inched just ahead of Microsoft Mail as the best product for large organizations that sport a mix of network environments."

"We have chosen to install GroupWise because of its integrated suite of workgroup tools for the client coupled with the clean administration on the backend," said Joe AuBuchon, information systems program manager at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. "According to our evaluations, GroupWise is the easiest of the messaging products to manage and administer. Plus, the integrated look of the application for our PC, Macintosh and UNIX users is a significant advantage that no other vendor could provide."

1. E-mail Share Report, Dataquest, December 19, 1994.