Six months ago in this post, I outlined Novell’s plans to demonstrate renewed focus and commitment to our customers. As you can see from this video from BrainShare 2011, our future is about getting back to basics. We’re refocused on our innovative and battle-tested technology. We’re rekindling relationships by listening to the needs of our long-time, loyal customers. And, we’ve returned to the innovation and engineering excellence that put Novell on the map.

Novell’s future is tied to how we deliver on our solutions and our word. So how have we delivered since July 2011?

Re: focus:

At BrainShare, we showcased detailed product roadmaps for how Novell plans to deliver more frequent releases of our core products.  You can get the roadmaps here. And mark your calendar for the next BrainShare, February 3-7, 2013 and join us in Salt Lake City.

In 2011 we committed to helping you optimize the value you derive from your current investments by enabling customers to upgrade to latest versions at their own pace.

We’ve lengthened Extended Support for NetWare 6.5 and Novell ZENworks 7 Suite by a year, and extended General Support for Novell GroupWise 8 and Novell BorderManager for the same time period. You can get more details on our Product Support Lifecycle portal here.

Also, we’re packing more value into the products you may already have: we added Novell Vibe and ZENworks Endpoint Security Management to the Novell Open Workgroup Suite and now offer a free Mac client to Novell Open Enterprise Server customers.

Re: turn:

Last year Novell invested in its engineering resources through hiring for its Provo, Utah headquarters. For example, since August 2011, Novell’s GroupWise engineering team grew by 33%. The result of our commitment to engineering excellence is reflected in the major product announcements we’ve made recently, including Open Enterprise Server 11, Novell Vibe 3.2, ZENworks Application Virtualization 9 and Novell GroupWise 2012.

Re: kindle:

We're re-energizing our customer relationships. Last year, for example, our collaborative DNA led to a new way to develop our solutions that put listening at the forefront. The GroupWise Roadmap Project—a global customer outreach program where we ask customers what innovations are most important to them—is helping us build and prioritize our collaboration roadmap. The results of this outreach program assure we’re developing our solutions based on what our customers need most to run their business.

And to keep our customers up-to-date and the conversation flowing, we’ve launched a dynamic and interactive roadmap application to illustrate the features and benefits of each released and planned version of GroupWise and collect input from you. Customers can select which version of GroupWise they currently have so they can instantly determine where they are on the roadmap and see what they’ll get by upgrading accordingly. They can also give us feedback and requests, which go directly to the product management team.

We have a bright and exciting future ahead in 2012. Our focus is first and foremost on customers. I’m looking forward to reporting to you regularly on what we’re doing to continue to earn your trust.

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.”