Does VMWare Zimbra really have to stoop to this?
Last week, Zimbra sent out an email trying to entice GroupWise customers to move to Zimbra using information that a company the size of VMWare Zimbra should KNOW was incorrect (I’m sure they have a few fact checkers in their organization). Here’s a copy of last week’s email:
From: VMware Zimbra Team
Subject: Live Webinar – VMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise
Date: October 12, 2011 9:47:00 AM MDT
To: <recipient>
Reply-To: noreply@info.zimbra.comVMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise
Live WebinarVMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise Live Webinar
With Novell’s acquisition by Attachment and rumors of demise surrounding GroupWise, organizations have been forced to seek viable alternatives. In this webinar you will see why so many organizations have happily and successfully migrated from GroupWise to VMware Zimbra.
According to Novell’s website, general support for GroupWise 8.0 will end in five weeks (November 17, 2011) without a new release. Have you considered your future plans for a cutting-edge email/collaboration platform?
Invest 45 minutes and learn how next-generation products like VMware Zimbra meets the needs of a demanding IT environment. See why Zimbra is used by over 70 million users, including Texas A&M, H&R Block, Bechtel, City of Ventura and Mountain Medical.
Topics covered will include:
Feature & benefits of VMware Zimbra
Customer references
Zimbra Demo and FAQ
SpeakersJing To,
Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, VMware
“Novell’s website” as they listed, was this page – http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/GroupWise_Release_History – feel free to browse the history to see what changes were made later that day.
A number of people, including our buddy Joe Doupnik, alerted me to this email very soon after it was sent out. I worked with some Novell employees including Kim Groneman and Pam Robello to correct this page, and believe it was corrected within an hour of the original email.
It’s interesting to note that this is a WIKI page, created by a GroupWise enthusiast, not Novell, and indeed, when the page was created in 2009, it was expected that 2011 would be the end of GroupWise 8 support. However, Novell does keep it’s own page at http://support.novell.com/lifecycle which is the official Novell statement of support.
Obviously, Zimbra noticed that this information had been corrected, because TODAY another email was issued as follows:
From: VMware Zimbra Team
Subject: LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER – VMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise LIVE WEBINAR
To: <recipient>
Reply-To: noreply@info.zimbra.comVMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise
LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER FOR LIVE WEBINARVMware Zimbra vs. Novell GroupWise Live Webinar
With Novell’s acquisition by Attachmate and rumors of demise surrounding GroupWise, organizations have been forced to seek viable alternatives. In this webinar you will see why so many organizations have happily and successfully migrated from GroupWise to VMware Zimbra.
Novell’s website recently showed that general support for GroupWise 8.0 will end in five weeks (November 17, 2011) without a new release on the horizon. Have you considered your future plans for a cutting-edge email/collaboration platform?
Invest 45 minutes and learn how next-generation products like VMware Zimbra meets the needs of a demanding IT environment. See why Zimbra is used by over 70 million users, including Texas A&M, H&R Block, Bechtel, City of Ventura and Mountain Medical.
Topics covered will include:
Feature & benefits of VMware Zimbra
Customer references
Zimbra Demo and FAQ
Speakers
Jing To,
Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, VMware
Notice that this time their “Novell’s website” link points to a jpg of the wiki page as it existed on the 12th of October, without the disclaimer link at the bottom which states that the CoolSolutions Wiki is not official Novell information. This very act is proof positive that Zimbra knows full well that their statements are not only misleading, but the information contained therein is clearly untrue.
Anyone who was at BrainShare last week has no question as to The Attachmate Group’s commitment to not only GroupWise, but all of Novell’s product line. And it was very clear that Attachmate especially sees GroupWise as a vital and vibrant part of the Novell product line. GroupWise 2012 is in public beta right now (beta.novell.com) and should ship by the end of the year. GroupWise “Cardiff” is due out sometime next year, with GroupWise “Windermere” due in 2013.
If this makes you as angry as it does me, contact anyone you know at VMWare to complain (press@zimbra.com, or even Mr. To, who is the speaker for this webinar – VMWare addresses are FLast@VMWare.com by the way – hmmmm).
If you wish to complain to VMWare Zimbra, you can cc Kim Groneman (kgroneman at novell.com of course) so that your comments can also be passed on to the proper people at Novell. Remember that VMWare is a “Novell Partner” and as such should be expected to at LEAST use verifiable and truthful statements in trying to lure customers away from Novell.
Of course, if you look at http://pm.zimbra.com/#Releases you’ll note that they have no upcoming releases announced. Perhaps their future is shaky! Just sayin’!
Happy GroupWising
Danita
It really irks me that the wiki page they point to as proof GroupWise was old, unofficial (there is a disclaimer at the bottom of every wiki page), and they KNOW that the official Novell product lifecycle page at http://support.novell.com/lifecycle contained the correct data which contradicts their claim. The wiki page they refer to is about GroupWise *HISTORY*, not future, and it was not authored by Novell, but by some of our customers wanting to record and track GroupWise history.
Oh – I’ve also heard that a Mike Kim (mkim at that vmware.com place) might also be a good person to let know if you are concerned about their marketing practices.
If you really think that Zimbra is the way forward, take a look at:
https://pm.vorari.net/
“PostMaster Incident Support:
The PostMaster service had several impending disk failures. This caused the slow speeds, gateway timeouts and access problems. Over the last few days we have done a ground up rebuild of the service.
The new system is now live and new mail is flowing. We are backfilling old emails into the system over the next few days.
The server disk and san systems have been replaced outright, and the software has also been upgraded.
Logging In / Passwords:
You will need to use the web client first at postmaster.zos.vorari.net.
Username = (your email address) Example: john.smith@postmaster.co.uk
If you know your “secret question and answer”, you can reset your password at console.vorari.net.
If you do not know these details, call support on +44 203 002 3761 to activate your account.
You will then be prompted to change your password to one of your choice.
Old Email:
Your old email and folders will be backfilled over the next few days.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and hope the new system will live up to the standard of service you expect and deserve.”
Tom, thanks for posting. As we all know, probably any system can have problems, but in this context it’s nice to have some more ammo 🙂
Ok, so take Danita’s advice and let’s write some mails and complaints about business fairness (if there is fairness in this area).
Maybe the Zimbra server will be overloaded by our mail flood. But we know this will not happen with GroupWise because GroupWise is stable, secure and future-proof.
Cheap products need cheap advertising!