Thank you Costa. I hadn't seen this one, and I must say I now cannot
even take lowball shots at IDC. For once, they wrote a review that even "I" cannot take issue with. I appreciate the post, and the most compelling paragraphs bear repeating, even if bandwidth is taken up,
IMHO. Novell people should read these paragraphs. Really read them.
Oh, and PS: Jack Whitley - GREAT POST! And re: your thoughts on Y2K,
and COBOL going away (LOL!), Yeah, right! I think I'm going to dust off my old books, and probably take a month or so to brush up and I'll
be right back in business (as an old-time COBOL mainframe prog.) and hire myself out as a gunslinger for 6 digi + and perks (laugh!). Client Server ain't gonna do it! Not in our lifetime, and you and I know that. Again, GOOD POST!
Oh yeah, the stuff that Novell folk should read in the IDC report:
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There are, however, a couple of areas where GW 5.0, as it is due to
ship in October, appears to fall short. First, the product is late. Although it has the features promised to users, it is arriving months later than two of its primary competitors, Lotus Notes 4.0 and Microsoft Exchange.
As a result, many of the public discussions about new messaging
and collaboration products during the past year have focused on the
two-horse race between Notes and Exchange, with a serious challenge
by a horse of another color, dedicated Internet/Web solutions.
(SOUND FAMILIAR? LIKE THE POST I SENT TO MARENGI!)
A second area is Internet and Web access. For a product that touts
this as a new feature, GW 5.0 still looks like a proprietary product that is trying to catch up to a market in which open Internet standards reign supreme. WebAccess is impressive but would be more so as a standard part of GW 5.0 rather than as an add-on. GW 5.0's Internet SMTP/MIME support is still handled by an optional gateway that should be free, until it is replaced by a native SMTP message transfer agent (MTA) that should also be free. This impacts the costs of purchasing GW 5.0, as well as the extent to which users will perceive GW 5.0 as an Internet/Web product. Support for POP3 and IMAP4, which are not due in GW 5.0 until next year, may arrive after other top LAN products have it. Novell will address the
Internet/Web shortcomings in early 1997 when it plans to integrate support for Web and Internet proram documents contained in a GW library information and publish them dynamically on the Web and on private intranet sites. By comparison, Lotus Notes offers dynamic
publishing and management of documents in its Domino technology today, but requires documents to be stored in a Notes database and format.
(THIS TOO SOUND FAMILAR NOVELL FOLK? Hurry up!, No time left!, Etc.)
A third area with room for improvement is workflow. The FileNet
Ensemble solution which is offered as a GW 5 option is robust and
complete. However, partnering works best with more adjunct functionality, like imaging. Workflow, on the other hand, is better
accomplished at a lower more fundamental level of integration than a
third party can offer. If possible, Novell would do well to take the FileNet technology and build it into subsequent releases of GW.
A fourth area is pricing. At a list price of $130-$144 per user before the costs of the SMTP and WebAccess add-ons, GW 5.0 appears a bit pricey compared to messaging products like HP OpenMail, Lotus cc:Mail and Notes Mail, and even to integrated messaging and collaborative products like Lotus Notes Desktop and Microsoft Exchange.
Interet-style solutions are also often less expensive. Large site
licensing brings the GW price down (as well as some of the competition's prices) but this does not help small and medium size
businesses who are often NetWare users and, therefore, key
prospects for GW 5.0. Novell's response must be to discount street
prices or continue to convince customers that GW 5.0 is worth paying
more for due to the many collaborative applications which are ready to use right out of the box thatcomparison changes dramatically when it involves other document management products. The low end of the EDM market is comprised of vendors like Saros and PC DOCS which charge around $400 per seat. GW 5.0 has the potential to be the All-in-1 of the `90's and beyond, going far beyond EDM alone for a fraction of the
price of a single standalone EDM application and delivering cross-organizational scalability only dreamt about by EDM vendors. Expect the EDM vendors to be required to respond to downward pricing pressure, a tremendous challenge for many small vendors with delicate financial models."
(NOW THIS ONE EVEN "I" CAN FIGURE OUT A BETTER WAY TO CRACK THIS WALNUT. LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING, HOW COME YOU CAN SELL WORDPERFECT TO COREL, AND COWPLAND CAN TAKE A CHANCE A LOWBALL PRICE THE COREL 7 SUITE TO GIVE MSFT FITS, YOU COULDN'T DO SQUAT WITH IT, AND NOW YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH PRICE POINTS ON YOUR CURRENT LINE? YOU SHOULD BE LOWBALLING AS MUCH AS YOU CAN RIGHT NOW! SEESH, YOU SHOULD BE "GIVING" SOME OF THIS STUFF AWAY, JUST TO GET """MINDSHARE"""")
Oh, why waste my time...
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Thanks, Costa,
Joe.... |
