IDC analysis of GroupWise 5
The GW 5.0 launch demonstrates Novell's intent to dispel criticism
that, though GW may have been ahead to the competition in several
ways, its Achilles' heel has been weak passive marketing largely based on the flawed assumption, "If we build it, they will come." Although a truly great product can sell itself to people who seek it out or stumble upon it, effective advertising, sales, and marketing are needed to put a product on the radar screen of prospective customers who are often too overwhelmed by information overload to take time to consider more than a couple products for evaluation. Novell's short sound-bite marketing slogans such as "THERE'S eMAIL. AND NOW THERE'S GMAIL" and "If you can use email, you can use GroupWise" have real potential for catching people's attention long enough to learn about all of the functionality that is available through a familiar e-mail interface. The new Novel wants to be known for its aggressive marketing, and its GW 5.0 launch is a big step on the way to rightfully earning that reputation.
Novell has positioned GW 5.0 to squarely meet the market requirements of groupware users identified in GroupWare: The Buying
Dynamics, an IDC White Paper sponsored by Novell whose contents
will be published by IDC in October (see Figure 1). By focusing attention on GW 5.0's e-mail and foldering paradigms which are already familiar to millions of e-mail and desktop application, Novell is in a great position to bring document management, as well as the rest of its collaborative functionality, to the masses.
Figure 1.
Ranking of Technologies in Importance to Organizations
---------- ----
Document management 3.5
Calendaring & scheduling 3.4
Real-time conferencing 2.3
Source: IDC survey conducted in July 1996 in which 500 users
ranked technologies in importance on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5(critical)
One of GW 5.0's key strengths is that it represents more of an
evolutionary than a revolutionary step forward as a product. As a
true fifth generation product, GW 5.0 improves on an existing interface and functionality that has been in use for several years and adds significant new features that are fully integrated.
The addition of document management is the most significant new
functionality. The proliferation of desktop applications and networks
has driven the imperative for users to be able to find, manage, and
reuse documents on their own systems, across a LAN, and across a
WAN. As the first integrated groupware solution to offer full document management capabilities, GW 5.0 provides the full functionality that savvy electronic document management (EDM) users have come to require: full text retrieval, check-in/check-out, version control, etc.
Completely rewritten and fully integrated now, it leverages the early
leadership SoftSolutions had in the EDM market, and promises to bring
document management to the masses through relatively transparent
access from desktop applications.
Cross-platform support is another key strength of GW 5.0. In
recognition of the growing number of organizations who have or are
considering a network operating system (NOS) other than NetWare 4.1,
Novell is releasing GW 5.0 on several other platforms including NetWare 3.1, Windows NT, and Unix. Novell is allowing users to separate the choice of a messaging and collaborative system from the choice of a NOS.
Recognizing the importance of its directory services to messaging
and groupware users, Novell will provide access to NDS for GW 5.0
users without requiring a NetWare 4.1 network or even a separate
server. Plans to release NDS on Windows NT in 1997 will strengthen
this approach, possibly at the expense of its NetWare business. A key
point of the GW 5 strategy is its targeting to users on the grounds of costs of ownership.
This a powerful message to a huge market, particularly as the Notes
user environments are maturing to better understand its "hidden" costs.
NDS is a focal point of this, coupled with the economies realized from its single point of administration. This will appeal particularly to small to medium size businesses who consider Notes to be too costly to implement and have not embraced Exchange. These organizations are often NetWare users, a vital leverage point for the Novell sales organization.
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.
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 protocols in the GW server to enable users to create and manage 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.
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.
Internet-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 that are not available or cost extra with other products. The price comparison 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." |
