FROM THE NEWS DESK Novell's a dark horse in messaging race
BY MICHAEL VIZARD
Publication Date: February 10, 1997 (Vol. 19, Issue 6)
Novell may look like a long shot these days, but it's definitely not out of the race. And if the big three in the messaging circuit
don't watch out, Novell may just catch up and pass them with GroupWise. The strength of Novell's messaging bid isn't
necessarily in its technology. Like Lotus and Microsoft, Novell is struggling to quickly implement Internet protocols to counter
the challenge posed by Netscape's push for open Internet protocols.
Rather than competing with the big three over Fortune 1000-class accounts, Novell has focused GroupWise on small- to
medium-size companies that don't want to spend a lot of time building applications. So Novell has bundled applications, such
as calendaring, scheduling, and workflow, directly in the product.
As noted in Amy Doan's Page One article, that strategy is similar to one being employed by Microsoft but with one big
difference. Novell intends to make GroupWise a cross-platform product, and Exchange requires you to sell your soul to the
company store in Redmond.
Lotus, meanwhile, requires you to invest in a fair amount of internal IS development work to leverage Notes, and Netscape is
still trying to figure out which end is up in the messaging space.
To get back in the race, Novell needs full Internet support by the end of this year. This is the key reason Novell has taken such
a pounding. Without Internet support, GroupWise can't be considered an easily scalable product. But because Microsoft,
Lotus, and Netscape have problems of their own with timely delivery of products, it's conceivable that Novell could deliver
GroupWise with full Internet support at about the same time these vendors deliver their rival offerings.
And should this horse race turn out to be a tie, Novell then gets to leverage its legion of resellers to push GroupWise. This
would mean that outside the Fortune 1000 field, GroupWise could become a standard. Once that's established, the folks at
Novell can start working on the Fortune 1000.
So will customers give Novell the time it needs to win, place, or show in this race?
Write to me at michael_vizard@infoworld.com.
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