Since Novell’s acquisition earlier this year, the company has been reorganized into four businesses units focused on speed, simplicity and success.

The majority of Novell’s heritage offerings are now part of three business units: Novell, NetIQ and SUSE. Attendees got a glimpse of the future for each business unit as each president took the stage. You can see the keynotes here:

Novell: Bob Flynn, President, General Manager, Novell
NetIQ: Jay Gartner, President, and General Manager, NetIQ
SUSE: Nils Brauckmann, President and General Manager, SUSE

Bob Flynn, president and general manager for Novell shared with the audience what a renewed focus on customers will look like in the months to come. The business unit structure allows Novell us to be 100% focused on the technologies it delivers. This includes collaboration solutions (GroupWise and Vibe), endpoint management solutions (ZENworks) and file and network services solutions (Open Enterprise Server and Novell File Management Suite).

Flynn’s commitment to reestablishing trust and confidence with customers while also delivering more frequent product updates received a resounding applause from the audience. Specifically Flynn touched on Novell’s commitment to GroupWise as a critical part of the company’s success by inviting his team to provide a sneak peak of its new version, GroupWise 2012.

Flynn exited the stage allowing his teams to showcase new product features in Novell’s collaboration, endpoint management and file and network services solutions.

With a reassuring commitment to the audience and Novell customers, Flynn stated: “The measure of our success is how we execute against these commitments I’m making to you this morning. We’re going to help you maximize the value of the products you get from us.”

It’s been about 2.5 months that I have been in the role of President and General Manager of Novell, and since joining The Attachmate Group, Novell has taken many steps towards defining the next great chapter in its evolution and history.

I want to take this opportunity to articulate our renewed focus and plans – where we are going, how we want to build on the strengths we have in our innovative and battle-tested technology, loyal customers, strong partners, and dedicated employees.

With our portfolio streamlined, our product focus is on collaboration, file and networking, and endpoint management technologies. From a customer success perspective, our focus is on engineering excellence and lasting customer and partner relationships. Our future is tied to how we deliver on our solutions, our word and how our customers perceive and define successful outcomes.

My team and I have much to share with you at our customer and partner event, BrainShare (October – 10 – 14, 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah) and we encourage you to come hear first-hand our plans. For now, I can tell you that we have a lot to share with you over the coming months. We are committed to:

Delivering higher-quality solutions and greater customer value faster: To do this, Novell is hiring more R & D resources in Provo, UT and reinvesting in our core products with more frequent releases. In CY Q4, look for a series of product announcements to our core product families: Novell GroupWise, Open Enterprise Server, ZENworks and Novell Vibe.

Enabling customers to upgrade to latest versions at their own pace: For long-time customers, we’re making it easier to upgrade at your own pace by aligning and extending support for NetWare 6.5, Novell GroupWise 7, Novell ZENworks 7 for Desktops and the Novell ZENworks 7 Suite.

Enabling a portable workspace across wired and mobile devices securely: In today’s economy, employees need to be productive from anywhere and have the ability to access files from the device of their choosing (desk, laptops, tablets, mobile devices). Novell is ensuring GroupWise and Messenger functionality is accessible via today’s devices. Moreover, with ZENworks, we’re bringing together the ability to monitor and enforce endpoint and data security in one place and integrating management and secure file access across devices.

We are combining the ideas of social sharing with enterprise file discovery and access across devices with innovations that are complementary to Novell Open Enterprise Server. We’re leveraging our new File Management Suite to continue to drive down the cost of managing and storing data even as user output from new applications and devices skyrockets.

Consolidating and leveraging social experience across collaboration portfolio: Novell is incorporating key social experiences from Novell Vibe into GroupWise to bridge social and traditional email collaboration for our customers. We’re accelerating the consolidation of the Vibe platform with Novell Vibe OnPrem as the foundation as well. We’re incorporating the most user-requested functionality from Vibe Cloud into the combined platform rapidly over the next several releases. These strategic decisions and renewed focus have led us to the decision to decommission the Novell Vibe Cloud service as of September 30, 2011. We will communicate directly with Vibe Cloud users on what this means to them in the coming days.

I am honored to lead Novell and this great team into the next chapter of its long and decorated history. We have a bright and exciting future ahead. Our success will be measured on the success of our loyal customers and partners. Today’s Novell is more focused than ever on delivering enterprise-class capabilities in a social, mobile and multi-platform world. We are committed to helping you optimize the value you derive from your current investments and providing compelling reasons to extend your Novell investment to meet your business objectives.

Be sure to register for BrainShare to get the latest updates on these topics and more. I look forward to seeing you then. Can’t wait until then? Share your thoughts here.

GroupWise Calendar and Task Sync: A top priority for Novell Vibe OnPrem customers who also utilize GroupWise, this new connector leverages Novell Data Synchronizer to initially sync calendars and tasks from Vibe OnPrem to GroupWise. Bi-directional synchronization (from GroupWise to Vibe OnPrem) will be added in the next release.

Task management improvements: As more customers utilize Vibe OnPrem for project collaboration, new capabilities have been incorporated to improve productivity of task management, including sub-tasks; task ordering; completed time stamp; changing Priority, Status and Progress in list view; auto-date calculation; and quick search for folders.

User experience improvements: To meet customer demand for better access to information updates in their Vibe OnPrem system, enhancements to the “What’s New” user interface and Vibe OnPrem’s landing pages have been added.  The What’s New activity stream is now more interactive, and building landing pages to suit your purpose is easier than ever, with drag and drop editing, HTML and iFrame widgets, as well as new displays for calendars, tasks and surveys.

Enhancements for customers migrating from Sitescape Forum: For customers still using the Sitescape Forum product, making the transition to Novell Vibe OnPrem is easier, as the product  now offers folder views, workflow transitions, notifications, the ability to disable/retire users, individual form/folder notification schedule; and access through multiple domains.

Search improvements: As key components of Vibe OnPrem and how it performs, the search engine and index now feature basic stemming support, better handling of punctuation characters, stop-word filtering and improved search matching with acute characters.

Novell Vibe OnPrem 3.1 is currently available. To learn more or to request a trial, visit: http://www.novell.com/products/vibe-onprem

This week, Novell, SUSE and openSUSE joined the ranks of Google, Facebook and more than 1000 other participating websites for the Internet Society-organized World IPv6 Day.  During the June 8 global-scale trial of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6, more than 400 participating organizations enabled IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.  Success!

According to this week's Internet Society newsletter

By providing a coordinated 24-hour “test flight”, the event helped demonstrate that major websites around the world are well-positioned for the move to a global IPv6-enabled Internet, enabling its continued exponential growth.

The June 8, 2011 event demonstrated that major websites around the world, including Novell, SUSE and openSUSE are well-positioned for the move to the next generation Internet protocol.

Check if you and your provider is IPv6 ready by clicking http://test-ipv6.com/.  If your ISP does not support IPv6, click here for advice.

Check out some of the work from the Social Getworking campaign that was recognized including the Dream Team Predict-a-ma-jig and the Lord of the Files video series.

After nearly 2,740 days at this great company, it’s time to say goodbye.  I knew little of Novell’s storied history when I joined the company in October of 2003, beyond a well-deserved reputation for leadership in network operating systems.  And while Novell’s technology continues to be best in class, I've come to realize that it’s Novell’s people that are the real treasure that sets this company apart.  Who ever said that in business it’s “First  who, then what” knew what they were talking about.  This is the lesson I will take with me wherever life’s journey heads next.

I find it odd that business relationships are sometimes classified as “Business-to-Business”.  Not in my world.  Companies – more specifically people within those companies, do business with people in other companies.  It should be called “People-to-People”.   Everywhere I go I hear customers, partners and colleagues praise the “great people” we have at Novell. I agree. The integrity and passion of every Novell employee and our focus on doing what’s right for our customers is at the center of who we are and what we are about.  We don’t always get it right the first time but there’s a commitment to do the right thing and live by a set of values that customers and partners would be proud to associate with.

Novell has had many chapters in its 28-year history and today marks the start of a new, exciting chapter. Change brings new opportunities, new adventures, and new teammates. As Novell joins forces with The Attachmate Group, the result will be a powerful portfolio of companies united by a common purpose and dedicated team.  I’m confident existing Novell and SUSE customers will continue to enjoy the great relationships and products that they’ve come to expect from Novell.  I’m also confident that the spirit, attitude and optimism that are the hallmark of every Novell employee will continue on.

It’s been a privilege to be part of Novell’s history.  To our customers, partners and employees – a sincere “Thank you.”

John

"To find a more comprehensive solution, we consulted the Forrester Wave report on collaboration platforms, and looked at the three leading candidates: IBM Lotus Notes, Microsoft SharePoint, and Novell Vibe OnPrem," said Dr. Werner Degenhardt, Head of IT at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. "We like to stay independent of individual vendors as far as possible. Novell Vibe OnPrem is based on an open source project, and although many of its advanced functionalities are proprietary Novell technologies, the rest of the source code is openly available. Novell Vibe OnPrem is extremely open and extensible, it integrates very well with everything that is already in place. For this reason, it was the most viable option for us."

With thousands of students and faculty currently using Novell Vibe OnPrem, it is proving to be a highly flexible and value-added solution to LMU München’s academic environment. Learn more about how Vibe OnPrem is helping LMU München here.

Dan sat down with Mike to discuss how the CIS team has been working with customers to tackle critical endpoint management and network security challenges faced by IT departments. In their discussion, Mike and Dan cover everything from automating the Windows 7 migration process to addressing security and compliance requirements with identity management technology.

Utilizing both ZENworks and Novell Identity and Access management solutions, CIS has helped businesses approach IT management and security in new and innovative ways.

To listen to the full PartnerPod, listen here.

Novell is honored to be recognized by this prestigious awards program. The CODiE Awards represents excellence and rewards innovation in the business software, digital content and education technology industries. The CODi Awards hold the distinction of being the industry's only peer‐reviewed awards program.

The next round of judging begins now. Check out who else has been nominated here and stay tuned — the winners will be announced May 25 in San Francisco.

We don't have all the answers, but the bottom line is: MDM is coming. Are you curious? Nervous? An expert? If so, check out this recent blog series  from ZENworks product marketing manager, Justin Strong, which address what is MDM in  Part 1 , accessing your MDM landscape in Part 2, where are the service gaps and threats Part 3 and a little history and what it means for the future in Part 4.

What do you think about MDM and where it is going? There's more to come on MDM, but in the meantime we'd love to hear from you.