GroupWise and the word Free

Novell GroupWise just had its 20 year anniversary. I have worked with and supported the product for nearly all of those 20 years.

Back in the early days, when the Internet was beginning to emerge, GroupWise sold its SMTP Gateway for $2,500 extra. You could run GroupWise normally but to connect to the Internet you had to pay for the SMTP Gateway seperately.

That didn't go over well with the user base and the decision was made to bundle the gateway with the product.

Since then, the sense of entitlement and the expectation that everything should be included for free has been the dominant philosophy.

A philosophy that has nearly killed the product.

GroupWise has document management built in for free. Only a fraction of the install base uses it but everyone has to pay for it. And because only a fraction use it, it is hard for Novell, during tough economic times, to justify putting resources into something that doesn't generate a hard return on the investment.

Oh, sure, some will argue that Novell should have invested more into Document Management and then people would have bought the product. That is what I mean by a hard return. It is nearly impossible for Novell to know who is buying the product for which features.

Free is still bad

Today we are seeing ain increasing pressure from the Novell install base to keep putting more things into the product for free.

GMS, the Novell GroupWise Mobile Server, has been added. But it doesn't support the iPhone because Nokia, which bought Intellisync, doesn't want to have their product support a competing mobile device.

Don't argue with me that Novell should have bought the technology rather than partner for it. We would be right back where we are with Document Management. Increasing costs without any hard returns.

I wish everything was free as well. Then I wouldn't have to pay my mortgage, but things aren't free, there is ALWAYS a cost.

The sooner the GroupWise market can focus on how much GroupWise is saving because things are not free but stronger GroupWise will be as a viable low cost alternative to the monolithic Exchange approach which is draining IT budgets with bloated features that are free but unwanted.