I am not a technical expert, nor do I claim to be. Hence my annoyingly blunt question.
I am an executive in the IT group who prefers the Outlook interface and the ease of integration with my other tools. Little things like that popup that asks if it is ok to spell check each message when you hit send rather than checking as you type - and then asking if you really want to send - Other little things like the query after you click reply make me crazy. Regardless of where you stand on the Microsoft issue - one must admit they are absoulute geniuses at creating interfaces. The outlook interface is better than the same generation GroupWise interface. I will go to the wall arguing that - though it is not really the point of this request for support.
I am not a technical user, and the speed bumps in the client are really all I will ever see of the product (aside from the downtime reports and support invoices that come across my desk). I stand by my statements about rarity based on available information regarding market share. There is no way you can debate that a college educated and certified Novell Groupwise expert is harder to find and more expensive than the same MS Exchange expert. As for the name calling - I get that from the staff here. My interest in these products is not religious in any way - they are tools. The goal is to implement the most effective set of functionality for the most attractive price. Novells acquisition, marketing and product placement blunders have impared its ability to compete effectively when someone like me looks at the 5 year Cost to Own (CTO) and factors in support, hardware, licensing and staffing. I am interested in that "10s of millions number" though. Does that number include active mailboxes or "tradeshow servers"? Tradeshow servers typically have some outrageous number of minimally active accounts running on big iron in the background. IBM is famous for that with Notes. There is not much GroupWise in Atlanta and that is where crunch these numbers. We are a huge Groupwise implementation here with ~10000 seats. We cannot upgrade due to budget restrictions, but I am working on a grant proposal to the Gates Foundation for Healthcare...
Regards,
graysonwolfe
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by: ShineOnPosted on 2006-03-20 at 11:31:16ID: 16239583
Not very good how, exactly? Maybe there's just a learning curve issue... The feature set of Outlook 2003 is not that far from the GroupWise 6.5 client's. If you want similar look-and-feel to Outlook 2003, you'd have to upgrade to GW7, which has similar color scheme and fischer-price toys to Outlook 2003 - of course, then, you could use the Outlook Connector for GW7 and have almost full Outlook functionality.
Anyway, I don't think there ever was an Outlook Connector for GroupWise 6.5. They kinda phased it out for a while there, between 5.5 and 7. The method for using Outlook with GW6.5 was to use it as a POP or IMAP client. Makes it tough to use any calendaring or other Groupware features.
http://www.novell.com/docu
I don't understand how you can think that GroupWise's security advantage is that it's not as prevalent as Exchange/Outlook. It's the usual "bla-bla" FUD crapola line that 'softies spout whenever a competing product is shown to be more secure than the corresponding M$ product. There are fundamental technological reasons for GroupWise's inherently superior security, not the least of which is "it's not Outlook," meaning it doesn't have the basic security flaws that Microsoft has neglected to fix or even acknowledge until very recently. GroupWise has tens of millions of seats worldwide. It's not a "rarity."