* Some thoughts on Novell BrainShare 2007
I spent a couple of days at Novell’s big annual conference last week and came away with some thoughts on the future of GroupWise, my main area of interest given Osterman Research’s focus on messaging and collaboration:
* Clearly, Novell’s primary interest appears to be SUSE Linux and a variety of other products and technologies, not GroupWise. While GroupWise continues to be a significant and profitable contributor to Novell’s bottom line and still is an important offering for the company, there are many who believe that GroupWise’s contribution to Novell’s annual revenue doesn’t give GroupWise the visibility it needs within the company. For example, scanning the Novell announcements section of the BrainShare Web site reveals that the word ‘GroupWise’ is not mentioned anywhere on the page, although it is referenced in the body of at least one announcement.
* Interestingly, while Novell doesn’t give GroupWise as much attention as some of its other offerings, two of the largest exhibitors at BrainShare were Messaging Architects and GWAVA, companies both focused heavily on GroupWise. Many believe that if it were not for these two companies marketing GroupWise as heavily as they do and providing new products for the platform on a regular basis, GroupWise wouldn’t have nearly as many users as it does today.
* Microsoft had a prominent booth at the front of the exhibit hall with a huge ‘Microsoft’ banner directly above it, reflecting the growing importance of the alliance between Microsoft and Novell. However, the alliance is unlikely to have much, if any, positive impact on GroupWise.
I’m wondering if GroupWise will be sold at some point during the next year or two. In some ways, it would make sense for Novell to do so given that the brand still has substantial value and could be sold at a reasonable price. It would make sense for the still large base of mostly loyal users of the system that could use the product development attention of a company focused more heavily on developing the platform.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this – if you’re using GroupWise, would you prefer that Novell keep GroupWise or sell it to someone else that will continue to develop it aggressively? Please let me know.
