Groupwise Gateway For Lotus Notes Available

Gateway allows GroupWise and Notes customers to seamlessly exchange information

OREM, Utah --March 14, 1995-- Novell, Inc. today announced that it has shipped the GroupWise Gateway for Lotus Notes, which is fully compatible with the Notes mail system and enables users on both systems to seamlessly exchange information. Through the gateway, GroupWise users can send Notes users any GroupWise message type, including e-mail messages, tasks and schedule requests, and can receive Lotus Notes Memos and phone messages from Notes users.

"It's our goal to provide an infrastructure that enables users to share information, regardless of their own or others' work environments," said Willie Tejada, senior director of product marketing, Novell GroupWare Division. "With the current momentum of GroupWise it is imperative that our users be able to seamlessly communicate with users on foreign systems. The GroupWise Gateway for Lotus Notes is another example of Novell's commitment to providing a solid communications infrastructure."

The gateway converts all GroupWise message types into the Notes message format, and sends them to a Notes domain via the Notes Server. Messages sent by Notes users to GroupWise users are automatically translated to the GroupWise message format. Features which are supported in both GroupWise and Notes are preserved in the translation process.

Once the gateway is installed, configured, and the initial directory exchange is completed, all the Notes user IDs will be listed in the GroupWise system and all the GroupWise users will be listed in the Notes system as a Notes Secondary Address Book, named the GroupWise Address Book. GroupWise users can send an unlimited number of attachments through the gateway, which transports the attachments in their original format to the Notes Server. Administrators can also configure the gateway to convert attachments to any of 140 different formats.

"We use Notes internally, but most of our clients use GroupWise for its calendaring, scheduling and task management capabilities. The GroupWise Gateway for Lotus Notes provides us with a solid link to our clients and the rest of the world," said Stuart Raburn, president of AA Microsystems, a systems integrator specializing in legal services.

The gateway supports full continuous/automatic directory synchronization, which keeps the GroupWise user list and Notes Primary Name and Address Book synchronized at all times. Any time a user is added to, modified in or removed from the GroupWise system, the changes are automatically sent through the gateway to the Notes Secondary Name and Address Book via the Notes Server. Likewise, any modifications made within the Notes Primary Name and Address Book are automatically updated in GroupWise.

If an administrator elects to disable the directory synchronization capabilities, the GroupWise Gateway automatically performs a directory exchange every 24 hours. Directory exchange performs a daily exchange between the Notes Primary Name and Address Book and the GroupWise user list, as well as between the GroupWise Address Book and Notes.

The GroupWise Gateway for Lotus Notes was designed using the core engine technology used in all GroupWise gateways, providing administrators with common administration, installation and configuration procedures and tools. This gateway also supports a migrate-user utility, which enables an administrator to encapsulate a Notes user's mailbox and re-establish that mailbox in the GroupWise system without losing any of the user's data.

The GroupWise Gateway for Lotus Notes which has a suggested retail price of $3,495 (US) requires a GroupWise Message Server, Lotus Notes 3.0 and Notes Server 3.0. The gateway requires OS/2 2.1 or higher and can run on the same workstation as the OS/2 GroupWise Message Server.