Choosing a strategic collaborative enterprise solution may well be one of the most decisive as well as one of the most expensive choices an IT administrator will make as we approach the new millennium. Certainly, this decision shouldn’t be made in a vacuum. Today, good executives have the savvy to listen to their managers and technicians, and well they should. It’s essential to have a system of knowledge sharing already in place before purchasing a total enterprise groupware system. It’s also essential that executives of multinational corporations recognize that the meaning of “group” is changing. What was once a local or regional issue has rapidly become global in nature.
In order to make a reasonable decision about purchasing an enterprise groupware solution, an executive must have a complete understanding of what groupware solutions can accomplish. Once upon a time, groupware meant that a software package included messaging, calendaring, and possibly a shared database of some sort. Today, groupware includes many of the same attributes, but these attributes have been energized by sophisticated application support, well-designed workflow management, and a flexibility never envisioned when Lotus released its first version of Notes to usher in the era of groupware 10 short years ago. When first introduced, this new animal dubbed “groupware” was meant to be used by relatively small and localized groups of IT workers. Today, groupware is used by large groups scattered across the planet. The future of groupware, like every aspect of modern business, is global, and those strategists who realize this will be the winners in the race to provide multinational rather than local or regional solutions.
While Microsoft seems to be in its own special twilight zone waiting for Windows 2000 to stabilize—a prerequisite for getting its new Version 5.5 (Platinum) of Exchange Server to the IT community—Lotus is enhancing its recently released Notes/Domino R5 with several new multilingual options and some powerful new applications, including Domino Workflow 2.0. And a surprise contender for the global groupware market has emerged: Novell. While many analysts dismissed Novell’s NetWare/GroupWise solution as the weak sister always trying to catch up to Exchange and Domino, Novell has been just as busy as Lotus has in solidifying and expanding its products, especially in the global arena. While IBM and, by extension, Lotus have always recognized the potential profits of multinational penetration, Novell has recently taken a couple of giant steps toward becoming a source of strategic global groupware to be reckoned with. As Lotus has done
with Notes, Novell has imbued GroupWise with multilingual support and keeps adding new languages to the mix. GroupWise 5 includes integrated workflow and document handling capabilities and remote access to email and other applications over the Internet: Does this sound similar to Lotus Notes R5? And, like Lotus, Novell has embraced the XML revolution with a new solution called DirXML (beta in Q4 1999), which extends the capabilities of Novell Directory Services (NDS) to leverage access to business data for e- business.
Although it seems that Novell may be reluctant to challenge big Lotus accounts, that certainly isn’t the case with Microsoft. The holding pattern Mr. Gates is in concerning Windows 2000 has recently allowed Novell to ink three globally significant deals with previous Microsoft accounts: United Airlines, Wireless One, and Fellon-McCord. Art Martinez, manager of distributed systems at United Airlines, bluntly articulates the turnaround for Novell: “We were a little concerned with Novell a couple of years ago...but our direction now is definitely Novell.... We found NT very tedious.... NDS was more
flexible.”
Most companies jumping on the Novell bandwagon site the stability and cost savings of NDS and GroupWise 5 as a major consideration. Novell is going global in a big way. On June 9, ITT Fluid Technology, the world’s largest pump-producing company, selected GroupWise 5 as its collaborative solution for its 166 sites in 20 different countries. It’s obvious that Novell recognizes the value of the rapidly evolving global economy, but, then again, Lotus has a similar perspective. On July 6, in Staines, England, Lotus announced the creation of InterCommunity, a global, Domino-based hosting strategy intended to address the need for global e-business solutions. Lotus is partnering with four international service providers, British Telecommunications, France Telecom, Interliant, and IBM Global Services, and according to Eileen Rudden, senior VP of Lotus’s communications products division, “InterCommunity is the next logical step in online collaboration solutions, providing a valuable framework from which corporations, governments, and associations can collaborate in a flexible, community-managed, and cost- effective manner.”
This is the kind of thinking that makes history and reaps rewards for those bold enough to embrace it. The world is becoming a community, and collaborative software will enable disparate regions to become vital parts of this community. IBM, Lotus, and Novell are quickly positioning their collaborative solutions to take advantage of the potential inherent in global rather than regional groups. Whether Microsoft can get out of its own way and join the crowd is still a big question. Microsoft undoubtedly owns the desktop right now, but whether the company will ever be able to shed its image of dissention rather than cooperation is a question only Bill Gates can answer.
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