This article is based on Notes form a Novell Web Cast that was presented by:
Jay Wood, GroupWise Product Marketing Manager and Sean Kirby, President of Concentrico, Inc.

Within this article I have provided some additional comments and information which can prove useful for those organizations considering a switch to Exchange from GroupWise, organizations that are considering switching from Exchange to GroupWise or those organizations that may be considering a changing in messaging platforms. Organizations who are considering a transition from Microsoft Exchange to another email platform are probably already aware of potential drawbacks of the Exchange environment.

Exchange is highly susceptible to viruses.


Exchange has known security issues.


Changes in Microsoft's licensing policies have made upgrades costly to their existing customers. This includes Exchange 5.5. to 2000 upgrades.

The question for CXO's and IT management is not "Should we be using GroupWise in the future?" but rather, "Why aren't we using GroupWise now?"
InfoWorld Magazine

Similarities between Exchange and GroupWise are prevalent making the transition relatively easy. This is mainly because both user interfaces are intuitive to the end users. Along with an intuitive interface come the similarities in features. These features include:

Email
Calendaring
Busy Searching
Contact Management
Secure Instant Messaging
Shared folders

Something worth noting as an important difference is that GroupWise includes Document Management capabilities.Although Novell seems to have temporarily neglected this capability it appears that Novell now views this as a clear benefit when selling to Exchange customers.Novell has recently announced a scheduled overhaul of Document Management to increase its capabilities within GroupWise and the Novell product environment within the next release of GroupWise.

Benefits to migrating to from MS Exchange to Novell GroupWise:

GroupWise Agents can be run on Windows NT and 2000.This can make the transition for organizations that have a significant presence of Microsoft servers much easier as administrators do not have to learn the Novell's native NetWare server operating system or NetWare for Linux.Of course GroupWise can also run on existing Novell Operating systems such as NetWare 5x, 6x and 6.5.

Another benefit is that the transition is very easy.This is based on the Formativ applet (discussed later) and the fact that Outlook client access the GroupWise system via POP3/IMAP4/SMTP protocols.Another facet that organizations find comforting during such a s transition is that the GroupWise client application can be run on multiple desktop operating systems including Microsoft Windows NT, 2000 and XP along with the Novell Cross platform client based on JVM 1.4.1 which can be used on MAC OS x.It is also important to note that recently Novell has made huge strides in bridging the gap of "open source computing" and their products by the purchase an integration of Linux solutions.

For organizations with remote access concerns, GroupWise comes with WebAccess as an out of the box solution for mobile users.Once installed and configured users from anywhere in the world can access their GroupWise account over the Internet.

The Benefits of GroupWise:

Novell has only released one security patch since 1998 for GroupWise.Novell published this release, prior to any exploitations of the security risk.Novell worked to resolve the issue and communicate to their customers without disclosing the vulnerability.This security update process was published, and Novell set a deadline for organizations to patch their systems before ever disclosing the information concerning the risk.

Those organizations running Exchange may be familiar with Microsoft's Security patch process for Exchange and IIS.This typically involves exploitation by a malicious coder, then Microsoft working to rectify the issue and communicate the patch availability to the industry. Over the past few years, between Exchange and IIS combined, Microsoft has released well over 80 different patches for such exploitations. Another noteworthy comparison between GroupWise and Exchange is that within the Exchange environment in the event of a new malicious attack or virus, it may be normal to have significant impact to the email system. This impact may cause either an outage ranging anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

Comparatively GroupWise has no reported cases of it going down during any of the major releases that have been tracked over the past 4 years.

Security is one of the many benefits that are an "out of the box" benefit of GroupWise that makes it an attractive addition to an organization. Aside from the security benefits and the core features of GroupWise organizations typically find the "peripheral" features of GroupWise extremely valuable. These features include WebAccess integration, the Outlook Plug-in for GroupWise, The GroupWise Cross-Platform client, Linux support and client functionality along with the many third-party solutions that integrate with GroupWise. These third party solutions vary widely, if you wish to learn more about them see Extending GroupWise for the first article in a series regarding these types of integrations.

Cost Benefits of GroupWise:

There are a few ways that GroupWise provides cost benefits. One of the most significant ways is not the upfront cost (which may be surprising to many people) but rather based on efficiencies within Information Technology areas following the installation. Aside from the proven uptime and reduced number of patch deployments, it takes far fewer resources to manage a GroupWise environment. Examples of this are seen on Novell's Success Stories web site (http://www.novell.com/success/). These stories highlight the ability for a single administrator to manage a GroupWise environment ranging from a few users up to 40,000 users. Other benefits that help drive the cost down for GroupWise is its Caching-Mode client access method. This method allows users to make fewer requests from a GroupWise server allowing for more users per server (Novell documents this up to 10,000 users).

When considering an upgrade within a Microsoft Exchange environment, the upgrade costs to stay with Exchange can actually exceed the costs of switching to GroupWise. Costs for upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 can range anywhere from $200 - $400 per seat. Comparing this to the same upgrade, but switching to GroupWise the costs are more in the $140 per seat area.

ROI Facts by Ferris Research:

A one year ROI for GroupWise over 500%
A three year ROI around 300%
Payback in 2.4 months (same quarter as investment)

Another noteworthy statistic typically asked in regards to ROI is the install base for an application in the industry. This is because organizations considering a change of this nature when reviewing the ROI also are concerned about the application's position in the industry. GroupWise currently has over 34 Million users. This has prompted Gartner to upgrade its rating of GroupWise. I believe this is because industry analysts tend to look at larger companies to determine an application’s position in the industry, viewing smaller organizations as having less of an impact when determining this. The oversight with this philosophy is that GroupWise typically occupies a marketplace of 3,500 users per organization, leaving GroupWise to appear as an insignificant product. However GroupWise does have many more locations in the past few years that are ranging over 5,000 users making it the fast growing email platform in the industry.

Formativ Personal Outlook Migration Pack 1.0 for importing Outlook files into GroupWise:

http://www.advansyscorp.com/formativ_solution_packs.htm

This is FREE!
Migrates Outlook 2000 accessible data to GroupWise 6.02 or better.
Migrates: Email, Appointments, Tasks, Notes, Contacts and Journal items
Local PST files and files from the Exchange backend.
This is leveraged through the MS outlook APIs
Requires the Outlook client

This applet is an end-user driven process that is installed on the user's PC which already has Outlook 2000 installed. The process is then initiated by the user on their PC as the Applet will use local authentication to access the local user PST files and the client will also have the authentication to acquire data from the Exchange server. This also provides the user with the ability to manage their migration from Exchange over to GroupWise. Within the GroupWise account, and Outlook Migration folder is created at the root of the GroupWise account during this process, where all of the Outlook folders and items will migrated. As mentioned, the user will manage their own migration in whatever manner they wish through specifying things such as which items types and date ranges per migration session should be brought over to GroupWise and which address book within GroupWise the Outlook contacts will be moved to. There are some small idiosyncrasies that should be noted, some of which are built-in purposely as benefits to the administrator and the user:

The data does not leave from the Exchange/Outlook side, so the user can access the data during the transition period.

Deleted messages won't be brought over.

If mistakes are made, there is an undo for the GroupWise side.

Outlook Distribution lists and GroupWise are not supported.

Appointment alarms are limited to 23 hours.

Outlook automatically created appointments are brought over as individual appointments.

Outlook Journal items don't map to GroupWise so they are brought over as an email item with the journal items summary is held in the message body.

Folder names with special characters won't be migrated properly, they will be renamed slightly.

Of course there are a few prerequisites such as the GroupWise client application 6.02 or higher be installed on the PC, the GroupWise account for the user must be created and accessible form the PC, the Formativ Runtime and Personal Outlook Migration Pack 1.0 must be installed on the PC. This last component will create a new button appears on the toolbar in the GroupWise client (the button looks like the Outlook icon) which initiates the migration progress. The process is fairly simple for the end users to initiate, here are the steps broken down in the most simplified form:

1. Login to the GroupWise account.

2. Click on the Outlook icon within the GroupWise toolbar.

3. When the outlook applet migration begins it prompts for your Outlook profile, select the profile for the user being migrated.

4. The next screen prompts for which items to be brought over to GroupWise including the date range. Select the items that are to be migrated and click the Migrate button.

5. At the next screen a verification question will appear, by clicking on the "yes' button the migration process will begin.   The user may also be prompted for access to Outlook depending on the security configured. The process will then run on the PC until it completes migrating the items that were selected.

This process can be done over a wide area network although it will obviously run slower than on a local area network. Keeping in mind that this process is handled by the workstation it may be best to initiate the process at an idle time. Advansys states this migration process should be adequate for almost any mailbox size, even when user accounts are large. However, it has been recommended that if there are thousands of items in a single folder the process should be broken down into smaller groups erring on the side of caution.

Summary:

As you can see this is a relatively easy process that can be used to convert an organization from Exchange to GroupWise. With the proper planning and GroupWise environment in place, end users will be more than equipped to manage the process, allowing for the administrators time to monitor the servers and transition the remaining infrastructure over to a more stable platform.

I’ll provide the same advice to you as I do my wife before she heads out to the local shopping mall:

“Why ask for an Exchange.
Get a refund!”