Have You Hugged Your NetWare Server Today?
As most of you know, the purchase of Novell by Attachmate was finalized this week. This of course has prompted a lot of speculation about how this affects ongoing development of things like GroupWise. In an interview with Attachmate’s CEO Jeff Hawn, some very interesting comments were made (read the entire article here).
For legacy Novell Netware customers, Attachmate expects to restore commitments to support Netware versions in which support was due to be discontinued. “Our philosophy is not to force customers to move from anything,” Hawn said. Netware, he said, has “still got a very large, a very loyal installed base and we intend to continue to focus on meeting their needs whether that’s in additional offerings on the road map, additional support offerings and the like.”
“We are not discontinuing any products,” Hawn said. Existing Novell road maps remain intact, he said.
I for one see this as very positive news. Not so much that I believe people should stubbornly stick to NetWare when other options might be better, but because I do believe that the attitude of doing “what’s best for the customer” is a return to some “legacy” values of the Novell we all fell in love with 20+ years ago.
And of course, the news that no products are being discontinued is good news. We all know that GroupWise Ascot will be going into private beta this summer, and the news that Attachmate intends to continue to support and enhance the Novell/Suse line is very encouraging.
This coupled with the return of Novell’s headquarters to Provo makes me smile!
Happy GroupWising
Danita
I have to admit I am still very skeptical, but I will at least now take time to see things unfold instead of abandoning them all together. I am not sure how things are going to shake out with the sale of a bunch of patents to companies like Microsoft. I trust Microsoft to try and screw as many competitors as it possibly can as soon as it possibly can to continue to prop up their 3rd rate OS and applications.
Novell wasted so much energy and money moving the HQ to Boston, all this god forsaken Java cruft that got built ( yes I AM talking about Console One ) not to mention this bastardization of NCP into Linux ( it was done in the most wrong way possible ).
Hopefully this “New” Novell will see the light, get things on track and stop wasting time and Money and go back and do it right and make the next version of OES with NSS as a native file system and NDS and NCP integrated deeply into the Linux kernel instead of hanging off the side like it is now.
The next thing is to build the GroupWise client using a truly x-latorm UI library like QT and something similar. The client should be the same on a Windows, Mac or Linux box and java just don’t cut the mustard.
Too little, too late. Most GW users have moved, or are moving away. Lack of 3rd party vendor support means we have to move to continue to provide our users with the solutions they need.
Paul, as a GroupWise consultant who works with the product every day, I think the “most GW users have moved” statement is not accurate. Definitely, those who HAVE moved like to believe that everyone has done the same, but I sure do keep busy with what is out there!
I have to agree with Paul. Over the past year we have agonized over this decision and GroupWise doesn’t appear anywhere on the Gartner magic quadrant. The inquiries indicated that market share of companies remaining on GW is so small that the number isn’t worth reporting. We have 10,000 users migrating by June 2011. Healthcare and Universities have been hold outs, but the writing on the wall inidicated get off Novell GroupWise while you still can. We are running GW 8 on Suse and we could barely find a qualified GW to Exchange Migrator that could support the version we were on. We are past all that now and it’s just a matter of flipping the switch with all the training and communication in our final stages.
I just got tired of the false promise to deliver ActiveSync and Iphone and lack of integration.
It’s too late for us! We are gone.
As a Novell consultant who still supports several NetWare (and GroupWise) customers, this is all good news to my ears (surely better than the double-speak with which became all too accustomed to hearing from the “old” guard).
I’ll have to keep my candle in the window for a while longer to see NetWare 7 or a 64-bit kernel(!), but for now, the best part of all of this is that we didn’t get *bad* news.
As for the gross generalization that “most GW users have moved,” I can’t say, nor am I “moved” in any way regarding Gartner’s inclusion (or lack thereof) in some list of theirs. I only see clients (customers) with problems and solutions. They are either happy with their mail apps or they are unhappy with them (usually the case, no matter what they run, and this is typically due to a lack of understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in exchanging email in the first place). The question about being unhappy is a matter of degree. Whether a client is so dissatisfied with an installed solution that he is willing to go through the (usual) agony of migrating to something else (usually to find that he is replacing one set of issues with another) is the real question.
I have yet to lose a GW client because of lack of third party applications, though it is surely possible (there was talk at one of my clients concerning HP’s lack of support for GW with WebOS devices…until I reminded him that HP doesn’t truly support *any* enterprise email or OTA solution, and that Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack *should* handle those devices). Blackberry Enterprise Server comes in a GW flavor (and with it, all of the other issues inherent in BES in all of its other incarnations).
That’s not to say that all of my GW clients have stuck with GW. I lost a major client a year ago to an outfit which insisted on all-MS solutions, so they ripped out eDirectory entirely (installed for 14 years?) and replaced GW with Exchange. Whatever…as long as *I* on’t have to work on Exchange.
Lewis, I don’t know that we’ll ever see either a NetWare 7 or 64 bit version. I guess that depends on how the news that there might be longer “support” will be taken by the masses. I can tell you that I get calls every day for GroupWise support, and the vast majority are still on NetWare. The ones that are on Linux are either extremely happy, or continually worried that they don’t know what they’re doing 🙂
As I mentioned in another forum, my real joy in this announcement was the “We are not discontinuing any products,” and “existing Novell road maps remain intact.”
As for the NetWare statement, my hope is that what this means is akin to a “commitment to the customer”. I.e., don’t just move to Linux right now because we give you no choices. Rather, see us as a partner in your success, and we’ll help you get there with the resources you need to keep things running properly on NetWare until you are comfortable with the move. If that is ALL this is, it is a welcome change, and I will celebrate it!
I fully agree with the idea that the commitment to the Novell/SuSe product range is very good news and that with the ongoing support for NetWare has taken the pressure off some of my Clients to move in the next 3 – 6 months, as this will allow for a more consided move onwards and not rash decisions made on the fly by people shooting from the hip.
just a further comment to all, that if possible We should all try and get to Brainshare this year as this will send a great message to Attachmate.
Stuart, I’m absolutely with you there! BrainShare is very important this year!