Giving Customers A Voice In The Future Of GroupWise · Giving Customers A Voice In The Future Of GroupWise by Dean Lythgoe When The Attachmate Group acquired Novell last year, ...

16 Issue 17, Q1 2012 OPEN HORIZONS MAGAZINE

Giving Customers A Voice In The Future Of GroupWise

by Dean Lythgoe

When The Attachmate Group acquired Novell last year, they expressed great interest in the GroupWise product line. They recognized that in recent years the collaboration solution and its customer base had not been given the attention it was due. In an effort to remedy that situation, Novell mobilized a re-engagement team to refocus the commitment to GroupWise and rekindle relationships with GroupWise customers.

The first major task for this re-engagement team has been to reach out to a broad base of GroupWise customers through one-on-one, face-to-face visits between Novell top management and GroupWise customers all over the world. Targeting more than 200 organisations representing multiple industries, diverse locations and various degrees of history with Novell, the GroupWise re-engagement team is nearly three quarters to its goal, at the time of writing.

A key objective of these face-to-face visits is to re-energise relationships with GroupWise customers by listening to what they like, what they don’t like, and what they want—and then addressing that feedback in future releases of GroupWise. Based on what Novell has already learned from initial customer visits, it has started to sift and classify the feedback into actionable data that is already impacting GroupWise plans.

Customer feedback thus far in the process can be grouped into fifteen categories, listed in their order of importance to customers below (See Figure 1.):

3rd-Party IntegrationsActive Directory Support / AdministrationMobilityWindows Client FeaturesWebAccess Features QualityStaying Current (latest platforms, fresh look, latest architecture)Cloud/HostedInstant Messaging/ConferencingOutlookUnified CommunicationsCo-Existence of GroupWise and ExchangeMac ClientDocumentation / SupportLinux Client

While the customer feedback resulting from this effort

will directly impact the prioritisation of features and enhancements in upcoming GroupWise releases, some of it validates existing areas of emphasis. For example, major enhancements have already been made to WebAccess in the recently released GroupWise 2012, making it an even more viable alternative to the standard platform clients. Novell has also placed significant emphasis on delivering greater mobility to GroupWise through a variety of deliverables, including the WebAccess enhancements, new capabilities for the Novell Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack, direct browser based access from iPads to GroupWise post offices, and other offerings.

The high ranking that customers give mobility has also had a direct impact on future plans for other Novell collaboration offerings. One example is the Android and Playbook support slated for the GroupWise Windermere release in early 2013. This support—similar to the iPad support in GroupWise 2012—will provide direct WebAccess to GroupWise post offices from Android devices. Other customer-driven mobility features added to the collaboration roadmap include WebAccess for Novell Messenger as well as iPhone and Android apps in the 2012 Dillon release of that product.

From the customers visited so far, the highest requested items have been third party integration and GroupWise support for Active Directory. As a result, AD support

Figure 1: This graph represents the number of customers requesting features in each category

DEAN LYTHGOE is the Director of Engineering for Collaboration products at Novell responsible for the development of all future versions as well as maintenance of current releases. He has been writing and managing enterprise software for almost 20 years and in previous roles has been the direct manager for all the Groupwise clients including Windows, Linux and Mac. He has also managed the Administration team which produces the ConsoleOne plug-ins for GroupWise..

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Figure 2: These product roadmaps are subject to change as Novell continues to collect input about customer needs

has become the highest priority for the GroupWise Windermere release. The customer feedback already received—and the feedback yet to come—will continue to influence the priorities and features for Windermere and beyond, as well as future releases of Novell Messenger, Novell Data Synchronizer, and Novell Vibe.

Ongoing Customer Interaction

Although Novell expects to complete its face-to-face worldwide visits before the end of the first quarter of 2012, its GroupWise re-engagement activities will continue through a variety of other means. As part of the GroupWise re-engagement effort, Novell has reached out to hundreds of other customers through a call-out campaign also aimed at improving relationships and listening to customer feedback. As with the face-to-face visits, feedback received from these virtual discussions will impact the product roadmaps for GroupWise and the other Novell collaboration offerings. In fact, these discussions include a roadmap review that provides details about Novell’s collaboration plans and invites customers to share features and enhancements they would like to see in future releases.

Novell has also hosted—and will continue to host—GroupWise community events where it presents its collaboration plans to customers and then asks those customers for input on those plans. These community events include live, interactive surveys that allow you to vote on the features you want and immediately see how your votes compare to those of your peers. Novell is analysing the data from these events as well and feeding it into the broader product planning process.

Another significant step that Novell has taken to show its commitment to GroupWise and rekindle its relationships with GroupWise customers is an entirely restructured sales coverage model. This restructuring includes the creation of a dedicated Novell sales force with considerable emphasis on GroupWise, as well as beneficial changes to the sales compensation model and rules of engagement. These changes have been designed to enhance and

increase the personal attention you receive from your sales rep or account manager. Whether it’s through new interaction with dedicated Novell account mangers or improved re-engagement from existing sales reps, you will have a more personalised channel through which to voice your GroupWise-related concerns and desires.

From the face-to-face visits and call-out campaigns to community events and a dedicated and highly motivated sales force, Novell aims to provide ongoing interaction with customers to better meet their needs from both a technical and business perspective.

Roadmap Transparency

While the efforts of the re-engagement team demonstrate Novell’s commitment to GroupWise and its customers, Novell has also implemented some internal philosophy changes that underscore its desire to meet customer needs. One of these changes is greater transparency with regard to product roadmaps, including the timing and planned features of upcoming releases. During its face-to-face visits, at BrainShare and during different community events, Novell has been very open about sharing—and collecting input to improve—its roadmap for Novell GroupWise, Novell Messenger, and Novell Data Synchronizer. (See Figure 2.)

In fact, Novell has launched a dynamic roadmap application that lets you view the latest roadmap details for its collaboration products at any time (http://novell.com/gwroadmap). This roadmap app also provides a release history of GroupWise and related products so you can readily see how upgrading to the latest version or an upcoming release might benefit you and your organisation. As mentioned already, ongoing customer feedback will have a direct impact on feature priorities and product roadmaps. As changes occur to the roadmap, they will be reflected in the application so you’ll be able to stay up-to-date on the product plans. (See Figure 3.)

Another aspect of roadmap transparency is that you have the opportunity to schedule an over-the-phone roadmap

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Change Or Be Changed

by Michele Hudnall

It’s that time of year when the press is filled with the latest IT predictions for the coming year. A couple of articles and surveys caught my attention as they relate to the unspoken imperative of connecting to the business to drive the business for competitive advantage versus just operate the business. This practice, while not called out, is Business Service Management and is the heart and soul of success for many of these initiatives.In the Gartner Forbes 2011 Survey of Board of Directors, “65% hold ‘high to very high’ expectations for IT strategic contribution to the business in 2012” and “52% rate ‘maintaining competitive advantage’ of ‘extremely high importance’…”. It is no longer IT and the business, IT enables and drives the business. The key question is, “does your IT operate or power your organisation?”

As part of its look to the future, CIOInsight highlights the Top 3 initiatives keeping CIOs up at night (1): cutting costs, operational efficiencies and delivering consistent and stable IT performance to the business. These initiatives are neck and neck with the number of organisations that see IT as their competitive edge in the market. Most IT organisations still spend ~85% of their IT budget “just keeping the lights on”, with minimal focus on supporting and delivering upon stable and consistently performing innovative services aligned with business objectives. This percentage of spend is generally ~1-2 % of revenue spent annually operating rather than driving.

There is also an equal amount of press on new technologies and how to convince your CEO of a new technology. Shouldn’t we be driving solutions leveraging the right deployment technology to drive competitive edge into the organisation? Technology for the sake of a technology has no real value. While I agree with many of the points in this particular article on 10 Ways to Sell your CEO on Cloud Computing (2), it is still selling technology versus a business driving solution. We, as IT, have to change our thinking to that of the service providers that are popping up daily in selling our CEOs solutions leveraging technologies that drive agility and quality performance into the business. It just so happens they use things like virtualisation and cloud computing.

I’ve been working with many service providers as of late and it is reminiscent of the dot com era. Those that will survive and thrive are not just chasing the latest technology trend for the short term, but are baking in the practice that will sustain them for the long term. What business is asking of its own IT organisations, is the ability to answer the questions:

review with Novell to learn more about how planned releases might impact your business. These roadmap reviews give you an opportunity to provide your own feedback on Novell’s plans, further influencing future product direction based on your unique needs. You can schedule a roadmap review from within the roadmap application or by visiting http://www.novell.com/promo/roadmap-review.html. We encourage you to bookmark this site and visit often to see how our plans develop and our commitments are kept.

Committed to Your GroupWise Needs

In addition to these more visible demonstrations of Novell’s enhanced commitment to GroupWise, Novell has invested more engineering resources in GroupWise. This augmented resource investment will not only ensure that Novell can deliver on the top-requested product features and functionality, but it will enable Novell to deliver on other important commitments, including engineering and testing products at higher quality levels and releasing more frequent product updates.

In terms of Novell GroupWise and its associated collaboration offerings, Novell has shown that it’s serious about its dedication and commitment to the collaboration space. Novell has given you and its other customers a voice in the direction and future of Novell GroupWise. It’s investing resources to rekindle customer relationships and refocus its business and engineering efforts on GroupWise. Novell is ready to listen to your needs, hear your ideas and create a partnership that can help you and Novell succeed in the future. To learn more about how you can re-engage with GroupWise, visit http://www.novell.com/promo/roadmap-review.html.

Figure 3: The GroupWise roadmap app helps you stay up-to-date on planned features and functionality on Novell collaboration solutions.

New Releases: A Year Of Expectation

Issue 17, Q1 2012

ZENworks Application Virtualization I Mobile Device Management I GroupWise 2012 I Bundle Commander I Success Story I MS-Office Add-In for Novell Vibe I Introducing OES11 I Service

Management I ZCM 11 SP2 I Giving Customers A Voice I Ask the Experts

4 Issue 17, Q1 2012 OPEN HORIZONS MAGAZINE

Open Horizons Magazine

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Production Control & Layout John Ellis | [email protected]

Contents

Editorial Team Open Horizons Magazine is distributed free of charge to members. For further information on how to become a member of Open Horizons go to www.open-horizons.net.

3 Editorial: Re:Launch

5 ZENworks Application Virtualization

9 Mobile Device Management: Is ActiveSync The Complete Solution

13 Groupwise 2012: Roam Productively

16 Giving Customers A Voice In The Future Of Groupwise

18 ITs Perfect Storm - Time For Change Or Be Changed

20 Introducing OES11

24 Tune Your ZCM Bundles With Bundle Commander

28 Success Story: Kent And Medway Health Informatics Service

30 First Look: The Microsoft Office Add-In for Novell Vibe

34 Ask The Experts: ZENworks 11.2 Is Coming

36 Ask The Experts: GroupWise

37 Ask The Experts: Vibe

39 Community News: Bringing Novell Collaboration To A Language Near You!

Cover image: Copyright istockphoto/teekid

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