Does GroupWise have a future with Novell?

For a year and a half, the Novell GroupWise revenue stream has gone one direction...up! For the past six quarters, GroupWise has continued to defy expectations and has steadily increased their revenue.

There are a lot of pieces to the success, and it is amazing since Bonsai, the next generation of GroupWise has been delayed.

Novell is also growing. It's Linux business jumped 30%. Now, you find people suddenly saying nice things about Novell and its future. Over at the VarGuy, he isn't even shy about admitting that he hasn't been a Novell fan in the past but might be changing his tune.

With Novell's success, the question is asked. Does GroupWise have a future at Novell?

The future of collaboration is no longer focused on Microsoft. Collaboration innovation of the future is being deployed to Linux. Novell has a strong presence in the enterprise space, and especially with those companies looking to drastically reduce their costs and realize the gains from deploying Linux. The market leader in collaboration is all about vendor lock-in and spiraling costs of deployment and maintenance.

Companies are looking for Linux to help drive down costs and then they are looking for applications to run on Linux to continue to drive down costs. Collaboration, namely the email application is the primary target for major cost savings.

If Novell can focus GroupWise on this emerging opportunity then GroupWise has a chance to relaunch itself as the collaboration product of the new linux platform.

The answer is Yes, GroupWise has a strong future with Novell. GroupWise is good for Novell and Novell is good for GroupWise. The future looks brighter for the both of them.