Mirapoint targets GroupWise channel partners

There are more rumblings of trouble in the GroupWise space. Not surprisingly, these have been promulgated (if not originated) by a GroupWise competitor, Mirapoint.

I mentioned Mirapoint's press release ("Mirapoint launches worldwide trade-in program to stranded Novell Groupwise customers") in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago and I've just read that Mirapoint has launched a two-pronged attack - or maybe it's better to call it a two-front war.

EChannelLine is a publication for the Canadian channel community - the independent vendors that distribute, sell, install, maintain and provide help with computer operating systems, applications and services. It's a shortened form of "distribution channel" to indicate the route from the software creator to the software user.

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There are more rumblings of trouble in the GroupWise space. Not surprisingly, these have been promulgated (if not originated) by a GroupWise competitor, Mirapoint.

I mentioned Mirapoint's press release ("Mirapoint launches worldwide trade-in program to stranded Novell Groupwise customers") in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago and I've just read that Mirapoint has launched a two-pronged attack - or maybe it's better to call it a two-front war.

EChannelLine is a publication for the Canadian channel community - the independent vendors that distribute, sell, install, maintain and provide help with computer operating systems, applications and services. It's a shortened form of "distribution channel" to indicate the route from the software creator to the software user.

In a recent issue, eChannelLine quotes extensively from an interview with Craig Carpenter, Mirapoint's senior director of corporate marketing and global channels. At the same time that Mirapoint launched its trade-in program to GroupWise users it also sent letters to GroupWise channel partners, often called systems integrators (SI).

The article quotes Carpenter as saying: "I don't think we'll have any trouble bringing on 30 or 40 SIs that are disillusioned with Novell within a few months," said Carpenter. He continued: "... clearly there is some concern amongst the Novell channel," which he said was a "concern with Novell's strategy for GroupWise."

Carpenter then went to the nub of his argument: "Once Novell's board fired the CEO and CFO that concern accelerated rapidly. Some partners are fed up with where Novell is headed, and some are opportunistic and bring on Mirapoint because that is the future, but they aren't ready to drop Novell. And a minority sees Mirapoint as a safety net while Novell conjures [sic] to implode. GroupWise is not a focus, and that's where the concern lies. It's a matter of six or 12 months from now, the platform won't be the focus, and worst case it may be end of life or something else they're working on."

Well, we never said that marketing people were comfortable speaking English!

Translated, his points seem to be:

* GroupWise isn't the primary application at Novell (surprise! It never has been).
* GroupWise may be abandoned (which Novell has said many times is simply not in the cards).
* "Novell conjures to implode" (tell me what that means and you have a future as a spokesperson for a prominent politician!).

It's worth noting that, according to the Radicati Group, Mirapoint is fourth in the e-mail space - just behind GroupWise (and both trail Exchange and Lotus). It's also worth noting that Mirapoint's message server is little more than an e-mail system - hardly even in the same category as the collaboration systems offered by Novell (GroupWise), Microsoft (Exchange) and IBM (Lotus). I guess Mirapoint has decided that since it can't compete on features that confusion and FUD will be its weapons of choice. Maybe its time that Mirapoint channel partners and users switched to a company with a bit more integrity.

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