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Unified messaging and communications analysis by consultant Michael Osterman.
Novell has certainly had its problems with GroupWise in terms of losing market share to rivals like Microsoft and IBM. Whatever has caused those problems, however, is due far less to the company's technology than to other factors. The company has developed some very interesting technology, has an impressive track record in terms of the efficiency of administration for the system, and is working on some interesting new user interface developments in the new Bonsai release of GroupWise schedule for general availability later this year.
One of the more compelling features of Bonsai is the use of panels that can display different data (Home) views, effectively turning GroupWise into a sort of personal portal. While GroupWise 7+ has allowed users to create up to two columns with multiple panels in each column, showing things like e-mail, an e-mail preview panel, a contact list, etc., the new version allows much more versatility. For example, panels can show different parts of the e-mail client as in previous versions. However, Bonsai now supports more columns and more panels, and can display Web pages in panels, plus it supports multiple monitors. For example, you can have a panel displaying a contact list, another panel with a news-oriented Web site, another panel with e-mail from your boss, another panel with e-mail from everyone else, another panel for your Gmail, etc. While Bonsai will not support the provisioning of standard panel views by administrators, it does allow individuals to send their personal Home views to others in a single file that a user can click on to open.
Another very nice feature of Bonsai is that it will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, albeit in various stages of development – the Windows version will be the most advanced.
Bonsai deserves a serious look for its Home view features, its multi-platform support and a host of other new features that are planned for incorporation into the offering. (Compare Unified Communications products)
Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.
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Comments (5)
BonsaiBy Anonymous on March 27, 2008, 1:24 pmAgreed. Bonsai and Teaming+Conferencing are an excellent suite that can compete with anything out there. It's too bad it will be Q4 08 before we'll see the gold...
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Will be nice....if it's ever finished.By Anonymous on April 19, 2008, 3:15 pmSeeing as the other big two collaboration environments are out with advanced features it would be nice to see Novell release this product before they get left behind....again. I...
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GroupWise will always be behind!By Anonymous on June 6, 2008, 2:01 pmGroupWise will always be behind.
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Groupwise always behind?, don't think so. Groupwise has been a By Anonymous on September 19, 2008, 6:15 amGroupwise Webaccess compared to Exchange/Outlook Webaccess: -Groupwise was first to have full support for calendering and tasks. -Groupwise is better in standards...
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Groupwise always behind?????By Anon on February 25, 2009, 10:46 amAre you kidding me? O.K. - There is bleeding edge and cutting edge. I wanna do the cutting, not the bleeding. Give me Groupwise any day over the other options. Hacker...
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