* More reader comments on the GroupWise newsletter
More comments on the GroupWise newsletter:
* “We are a large Novell shop. We also are forced to maintain Microsoft’s Active directory as well as Novell’s e-Directory. Archiving is also a challenge, to say the least. Our ‘vision’ people are leaning very heavily toward going to Active Directory, Exchange, etc. to avoid duplication of work, easier integration with applications, etc. We are Microsoft on the desktop (2000 and XP with our own spin on it). Nothing firm yet.”
* “In Novell’s twenty something years, they have never, once, come out with an effective marketing campaign for any of their technically superior products that targeted the right audience. They almost got it right a couple of times, but those efforts soon fizzled and were forgotten. Their…marketing is the sole reason GroupWise is third. It is technologically superior, requires very low maintenance, requires very meager hardware, and has a decent front-end, in addition to several other key factors you mention. Novell’s failure to educate the business decision-makers to these facts (to them it would read ROI and user productivity) has kept GroupWise and most other Novell products on the shelves.”
* “About 20 years ago I was involved in a project that needed a large relational database. We narrowed the vendors to Oracle and Ingress. The Ingress guys came in first and didn’t look comfortable in their suits but were very technical and answered every question posed with detailed understanding of the product. The Oracle guys came in next and were dismayed they were pitching to engineers. We chose Ingress, the market did not. In the value hierarchy, marketing comes first, management next and engineering last.”
* “Absolutely agree with you. Hopefully, Novell VIP’s will read your article and take heed. I do wish you would have written more about those strengths. It wouldn’t hurt if the press helped out a bit on that end, either.”
I want to stress that this column and the last one are not meant to bash Novell or its management. GroupWise is a very good product and has a large and dedicated following for lots of good reasons. My intent was merely to illustrate two things: 1) that technical leadership, as all of the leading messaging system vendors provide, is absolutely critical to success; and 2) that marketing this leadership is extremely important. Stressing one too heavily over the other is not the way to build market share.
