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If you are an employee, an IT administrator or a CIO, you are probably either using social media tools, are looking to get control of their use or are worried about their impact. So, you are probably wondering what a perfect world would look like when it comes to your enterprise social environment.

Join Wendy Steinle, Novell Director of Solutions and Product Marketing for End-User Computing, in this next video installment to learn more about how users, enterprise IT admins and CIOs can all find happiness in the continually evolving world of social collaboration tools.

Osterman Research has just published a major study of messaging in the small- and mid-sized business (SMB) market in North America. Here’s some of what was found: * Interestingly, despite the fact that SaaS can reduce the cost of providing email, particularly for smaller organizations, many decision makers are absolutely against the [...]

Today Novell´s CEO Ron Hovsepian did send an email-invitation to all Novell customers for BrainShare EMEA 2010 in Amsterdam: To Our Customers, We heard you loud and clear at the Customer Advisory Board last year that BrainShare is a critical component of your overall education and training on all things Novell. Based on your feedback, we've streamlined BrainShare this year to make it a leaner, more focused, and more relevant technical conference.

Our sponsor GWAVA did set the final date for their GWAVACon EMEA conference. It is going to be held from the 23rd to the 26th of October in Berlin. More information to follow soon. Open Horizons will of course be present again at this event as well. So you might already put this event into your calendar.

Curious about details? Follow the SCO v. Novell trial on Groklaw _

SEP is pleased to announce back up support for Novell Teaming. SEP Sesam is a complete backup solution for any computing environment. The new product can be installed as a stand-alone solution for Teaming users or it can be integrated into a complete backup, recovery and disaster recovery solution using any of SEP's Novell certified backup products.

SEP sesam now provides for complete online backup and recovery for:

• NSS Volumes
• eDirectory
• Teaming
• Cluster Support with node failover and completion of task from interruption
• iFolder
• GroupWise
• Disaster Recovery down to bare metal

Discover how to do a Teaming backup here:

• Teaming Video 1
• Teaming Video 2

SEP sesam also delivers a complete suite of backup modules for almost every operating system, database and groupware solution.

SEP has been working with Novell SUSE since 1997 and was the first software solution certified to run with SUSE 7.0. Their long standing relationship assures the most technologically advanced backup and recovery solution for your Novell and/or heterogeneous computing environment.

http://sepusa.com/en/node/1207

• Collaboration Cool Solutions

Here are some (more) great articles on how GroupWise Instant Messenger is used and can be used. Check ‘m out! Using GroupWise Corporate Instant Messenger to improve Collaboration and Productivity By Rajesh Battala. GroupWise Messenger has a lot of features which help increase productivity and collaboration in the workplace. This article explains how to get maximum work [...]

We have just published a major study of messaging in the small- and mid-sized business (SMB) market in North America. Here’s some of what we found:

• Interestingly, despite the fact that SaaS can reduce the cost of providing email, particularly for smaller organizations, many decision makers are absolutely against the use of this delivery model for email. Most SMB decision makers believe that in-house infrastructure managed by internal IT staff is the most desirable approach for managing email capabilities. Not surprisingly, appliances are preferred by a large proportion of SMBs – even more than SaaS services. However, many SMBs would likely or definitely deploy – or seriously consider deploying – an email system using more than one delivery model.
• The top four problems in managing SMB email systems are storage related: increase backup/restore times, growing sizes of messages, users sending large attachments, and overall growth in email storage requirements.
• Some of the more popular social networking tools are generally not perceived by IT decision makers to be legitimate. For example, Twitter is viewed by fewer than one in three decision makers to be legitimate and Facebook fares only slightly better. Even LinkedIn, a clearly business-focused social networking site, is viewed as non-legitimate by two out of five decision makers.
• Mobile platforms in the SMB space are led by RIM BlackBerry devices, accounting for a substantial proportion of end users’ mobile devices. This penetration is expected to remain steady into 2010. However, the penetration of the iPhone will increase substantially during the forecast period. Similarly, mobile phones that use the Google Android operating system are expected to approximately double in use between 2009 and 2010.
• Green computing, while certainly not dead as an issue in server, data center and other IT infrastructure planning, is probably not going to be a major factor for purchasing decisions among SMBs over the next few years. While SMBs will want to reap the benefits of green computing, such as hardware cost savings and reduced power consumption, the economics of these decisions will likely play a much greater role than the PR value of “going green”.

Customer: EFiS EDI Finance Service AG
Headquarters: Dreieich, Germany
Business: Outsourced application provider for banking, financial institutions and corporations
Challenge: Reducing costs, providing better security, increasing computing performance, improving disaster recovery and keeping green
Solution: Consolidating other Linux OS-based servers to a faster IBM Enterprise Linux Server and using its existing IBM System z9 Business Class machine as a disaster-recovery box
Hardware: IBM System z10 Enterprise Linux Server and a System z9 Business Class server
Software: Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z

Read the article at: http://bit.ly/bu9nZI

• Data Center

To find out you’re just going to have to come to Novell BrainShare in Salt Lake City on March 22 – 25. In the meantime, you can watch this video montage of some behind the scenes footage being compiled for the big event to get a sense of the fun to come.

By Aaron Madeley

In our environment, user calls go to the front line Help Desk. Backend engineers, such as myself, will get assigned those incoming calls as necessary. Conversely, some things we have to do to the servers in order to preserve overall system well-being will generate calls to the Help Desk. This creates a strong need to communicate between us.

That's So 1998

The "old" system of notification went like this. When we would have to do work on the backend that would impact users, we had a designated "tech line" to call. We would call the number and tell the answering tech what we were up to and who would be impacted by it. On many occasions, the answering tech would not communicate this to the others on the Help Desk. As a result, unnecessary ticket generation and frantic calls to the backend engineers would follow. We might get four or five calls about the issue we had called the "tech line" about while we were actually working on the problem.

For the Help Desk, when a server issue was impacting users, they would call the designated "on call" engineer to report critical issues.

It was a flawed system but, at the time, it was the best that could be mustered.

Along Came Messenger

After putting GroupWise Messenger in our environment, things have changed for the better. The Help Desk can send instant messages to the engineer, who may or may not be on site, to report critical issues to us.

For the backend engineers, reporting issues to the Help Desk has become much more efficient. Rather than relying on voice reporting and hoping that the information would make its way to all front line techs, we are able to send broadcasts directly to them all.

We considered email for this solution but it was a bad fit. Certainly, email outages could not be reported in this way. Some techs did not run Notify and/or their email client all the time. As a result, not all techs would not see new emails immediately which made this an ineffective solution.

With Messenger, we have a contact folder that contains all Help Desk personnel. When a critical issue comes up and they all need to be notified, we simply highlight all online techs, right-click them, and select Send Broadcast. Broadcasts in Messenger are preferable because they do not send conversation invitations to the recipients, unlike standard messages. They are one-way and will pop immediately on their desktop without necessary interaction and with all of the pertinent information.

As simple as it sounds, Messenger has been a wonderful utility in maintaining communication with our Help Desk. Some departments in our organization have made use of GroupWise Messenger. Others have not. For us in IT, it has become an invaluable communication tool and helps everyone stay updated on changes in the status of our systems.

Note: GroupWise Instant Messenger is a feature of GroupWise<, and is not sold separately. GroupWise Instant Messenger comes with the WebAccess version of GroupWise – which is a less-expensive alternative to the full GroupWise Client for Linux, Mac, and Windows. You can buy the WebAccess version from here.

• GroupWise Cool Solutions

At GWAVA, we’re getting excited about BrainShare and are preparing for all of you to come and visit us at our booth or one of the events we have planned. Join GWAVA at one or more of these events and you’ll have a good chance to win some fabulous prizes. Follow us at BrainShare with our Twitter feed BrainShareSLC to get up-to-date information on GWAVA activities and other exciting events. You can also follow us anytime on our GWAVA Twitter account.

BrainShare Movie - Sunday March 21, 5:00PM

Looking for something to do on Sunday evening before BrainShare begins? Come join GWAVA and our partners for a free movie at the downtown MegaPlex at the Gateway Mall, a walkable distance from the Salt Palace Convention Center. GWAVA is offering free tickets to any BrainShare attendees who wish to join us to watch the "The Bounty Hunter," starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Seating is limited, so make sure you register to reserve your spot as soon as possible.

Click HERE to sign up..

VIP Welcome Reception - Sunday March 21, 6:00PM

GWAVA will be hosting an invitation-only dinner at the Marriott Downtown. This reception will feature food, drinks and access to other VIPs.

Community Forum Keynote - Tuesday March 23, 1:00 – 2:15 PM

Join GWAVA at our open Community Forum Keynote to hear the latest announcements from GWAVA and our partners. At this session, not only will you get the scoop, but you will also have a good chance to win a prize. Lots of prizes will be given away, including 2 iPod Nanos, a GPS navigation system, and the grand prize of a $300 BestBuy gift certificate.

Party with the Partners - Tuesday March 23, 6:30 – 7:45 PM

At 6:30 on Tuesday night, the show floor opens for "Party with the Partners." This is your time to check out partner booths and get chances to win one of a bundle of great prizes. At the keynote earlier on Tuesday, you will have received your "party with the partners card" which you can take to any participating partner booth. At each booth, you will hear some brief information about each company’s products. A partner representative will then stamp your card. You must visit the booth of each partner on the card to qualify for prizes. If you want, you can even get a jump-start and visit the partner booths during lunch.

Once you’ve visited all of the partner booths on the card, drop it off at the GWAVA booth and hang around to see if you’ve won a prize. GWAVA and participating partners will be drawing from the party with the partner cards and giving way fabulous prizes such as a BluRay player, Flip video camera, iPod Touch and more.

While you’re at the GWAVA booth, be sure to get photos with our two exciting guests – GWAVAMan and Elmo!

For more information, go to http://www.gwava.com/brainshare

• Collaboration Cool Solutions

By Rajesh Battala

GroupWise Messenger has a lot of features which help increase productivity and collaboration in the workplace. This article explains how to get maximum work productivity from GroupWise Messenger. I have shared some tips which show how to quickly send messages or join chat rooms where you can discuss the most sensitive corporate topics without fear of hackers listening in.

Adding users

To start a conversation with a user, you need to add them to your buddy list. GroupWise Messenger provides different ways of adding an user to the list.

1. Actions -> Add Contact
   If the user id is known, then directly provide it. Otherwise, use "Search for a user" and add.
   <

   Click to view<.

2. You can also add a user via commands. This method will help developers and web pages to add the user to the list.

Examples

NOTE: Execute all the "nim" commands from start > run dialog.

• nim:addContact?username=brajesh@novell.com
  When this command is executed, if the user is valid GroupWise will add the user to the main list.
• nim:addContact?username=brajesh@novell.com&foldername=myteam
  This command will add the user to the "myteam" list in the client. ( The myteam list should be created before trying this command.)
• A user can specify in his web-profile or any webpage to add his contact to the list with the following snippet ( will work in IE):
  <html><body> <a href="nim:addContact?username=support@novell.com&foldername=helpdesk"> Contact Support </a> </body></html> <

  If the user clicks on "Contact Support" then the user support@novell.com< will get added to the client and the user can start a conversation.

  The above feature helps a lot in adding the users easily.

  If a group of users want to share their GroupWise Messenger lists, the Import and Export feature will let users import a person's contact list.

Managing users with logical folders

GroupWise provides a "folder" feature where users can manage their lists in a neat way, like adding all the team members to a list called "My Team."

Use Actions -> Add Folder to create new List or Folder.

To add users to the list you can either Drag and Drop existing users to the list, or right-click and select "Add Contact".

Advantages with Folder/lists:

1. Send E-mail to all the users in a list. Just right-click and click e-mail, then GroupWise Client will start and opens a new mail-compose window with "To" field filled with all the visible-users in that list.
2. Send a BroadCast message to all the users in that particular list at one time.
3. GroupWise Conference can be easily managed with these lists. Right-click and click "send message" -- a Conference request will be sent automatically to all the visible users in the list and collaboration will be achieved perfectly.
4. Viewing the History chat with the users in the particular list.

All these folder/list features help to manage the conversations and work together well.

Chat Room

GroupWise Instant Messenger provides a "Chat Room" feature which helps groups hold a quick meeting. To find and join the available chat rooms, go to Tools > Chat Rooms.

<

Click to view<.

The Chat Rooms dialog will appear, populating the available chat room and the number of people in the chat room. Select a relevant chat room and click Join. Then you will be joined in the chat room and can participate in the discussion.

Adding, deleting, and managing the access rights of the Chat Rooms is done by the GroupWise administrator.

Working with Status Messages

The Status Message of a user helps others who want to have a conversation with them. GroupWise provides three kinds of Status : Online (Available), Busy, and Away. Users can add special custom messages as well -- like Busy (In Conference Meeting).

Integration of GWIM status with GroupWise Mail Client

When a user is logged into GWIM, if someone opens the GW Client, then the person's status will be shown next to his name, showing whether he is idle, online, or busy. This is one of the good integrations that help people know who is available for instant collaboration.

Advance Startup Options

GroupWise Messenger can be started on Windows start-up by checking the option:
"Run GroupWise Messenger When Windows Starts"

<

Click to view<.

Offline Contacts

This feature helps a user in many ways.

When a conversation is going on, if a user suddenly goes offline, then the Messenger will send the message as a mail to the user which will keep the user aware of the conversation. This will help the users to keep track of the entire conversation.

To enable this feature:

1. Go to Tools -> options -> Messages
2. Select the option "Send e-mail when I start a message to an offline contact"

<

Click to view<.

Privacy

If a user wants to hide the status messages or if you don't want to hear from some people when you are busy, there are some privacy settings that are very helpful. You can block the users you are not interested in communicating with.

To enable this privacy feature:

Go to Tools -> Options -> privacy.

In this dialog, contacts added in the "BLOCK" side won't be able to see your status and they won't be able to send you an instant message.

<

Click to view<.

Storing the Logs/History Locally

GroupWise supports saving conversations automatically on the client machine by enabling the option:

Tools -> Options -> History. (Store Conversations locally).
The messages are stored in well-formatted manner. You can decide where the logs will be stored. This will help you save the logs in remote network drives by mounting them as network drives.
The Messenger will get auto-connect from the network disconnect.

Using the Messenger as an Advanced User (using commands )

1. To launch the Messenger with a username(battala) and with ip(164.102.10.1)
   nim:launchNM /u-battala /ipa-164.102.10.1
2. To launch the Messenger
   nim:launchNM
3. To send instant message to a particular user
   nim:startim?username=brajesh&message=hi Good Morning.How are you
4. To set any preferences of the Messenger
   nim:preferences
5. To join the chat room (meeting1) directly.
   nim:joinChat?roomname=meeting1
6. GroupWise Messenger supports multi-session clients.
   To start another GroupWise Client session the command is
   nim:launchNM /multi
7. Command to exit from the session
   nim:exit

Conclusion:

These features and tips reveal the richness and friendliness of GroupWise Messenger, which will helps the corporate user to collaborate well with their colleagues, and stay connected.

Note: GroupWise Instant Messenger is a feature of GroupWise, and is not sold separately. If the full GroupWise client for Window, Mac, and Linux isn’t in your budget, there’s another option. GroupWise Instant Messenger comes with the WebAccess version of GroupWise – which is a less-expensive alternative to the full GroupWise Client. You can buy the WebAccess version from here. <

• Collaboration Cool Solutions

Please stop by the GWAVA booth at this year's TAGITM Conference for a first-hand look at the latest GWAVA messaging security solutions. TAGITM, the Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers Annual Education Conference, will be held April 11-14, 2010 at The Sheraton Austin Hotel.

At this year's conference, we will demonstrate how public service organizations can leverage and interact with new Web 2.0 applications and social media websites while retaining communications for public record with ease and transparency.

GWAVA technology solutions let you to retain and monitor all email messages, mobile messages, and instant messages for public record and review.

Novell will be joining GWAVA in its booth so you can get all of your GroupWise and other Novell and GWAVA information in one place. For more information on this conference and to register, click HERE.

• GroupWise Cool Solutions

From the moment we introduced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for the mainframe more than ten years ago, our commitment to helping you optimize on IBM System z has never wavered. Together, with our valued partner IBM, we’ve developed more Linux-for-mainframe innovations than any other provider, delivering the simplest, most cost-effective alternative server consolidation platform to x86 platforms available today. So, as the only distributor that’s been delivering an enterprise-class and fully supported Linux operating system since the very start of Linux on the mainframe, we can safely say that if history often repeats itself, the future looks even brighter.

View the timeline today at: http://bit.ly/a8dW44

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z

Brewfest Registration is now Open!

Don't miss out on your chance to join BrainShare enthusiasts and experts, your peers, as well as the friendly folks at Messaging Architects, Consensus, Trivir, Novacoast, Novell and the TTP for an evening of Beer, Food and FUN!

Date: Monday March 22nd, 2010
Time: 5:00 PM- 7:00 PM
Cost: Nada; it won't cost you a thing!

Where: Squatters Pub Brewery, 147 West Broadway, Salt Lake City

Register for your VIP pass before they run out!<

• Teaming Cool Solutions

Riva Integration Server is brilliant! It has allowed our students' calendars to be synchronized from SCT PowerCAMPUS to their GroupWise accounts. The information is now available in a single location. Riva is considered an essential service by staff, faculty and students.

Highlighted in this success story:
Riva Integration Server SDK<

Overview

Student management systems are the lifeblood of education systems. Similar to ERPs and CRMs in the corporate world, they are used by faculty and staff to manage and track course and exam schedules, admissions, academic plans, student records, grades and other information. And just like ERPs and CRMs, integrating information and workflow processes between systems is critical. For today's "connected" student, having access to their GroupWise calendar information on their mobile devices is quickly becoming an expectation.

Landmark College< is a fully accredited liberal arts college in Putney, Vermont, designed exclusively for students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and other learning disabilities. To help enhance student success, advisors needed a simple way to confirm students' availability for appointments. Students wanted their course and exam schedule in GroupWise and they wanted their calendars synchronized to their mobile devices.

The Challenge

"Our advising department needed a simpler way to confirm students' availability for meetings," said Kirt Sorensen, Manager of Network Services at Landmark College. "Prior to implementing Riva Integration Server from Omni< last semester, advising needed to conduct manual busy searches by checking three different calendars. When advisors needed to add more than one student to a meeting, scheduling appointments became very difficult. Scheduling required that calendars always reflect any class changes and be up-to-date in terms of scheduling information, without assuming that all students immediately make changes to their GroupWise calendars.

"There was no native calendar synchronization available between GroupWise and SCT PowerCAMPUS," continued Sorensen. "We considered the costs and benefits of developing our own custom-built integration solution or seeking a quicker and more cost-effective integration solution from the GroupWise partner community."

"As a long-time Omni customer, we inquired about whether Riva Integration Server< could be used to integrate the two systems," continued Sorensen. "We have been very pleased with the results."

The Solution

Riva Integration Server is a server-side collaboration integration platform that enables organizations to automatically push information< from one system to another based on pre-defined policies; for example, in this case, to automatically synchronize students' and staff's class schedules and appointments to GroupWise. Riva's integration framework for GroupWise and Exchange supports SAP, CRM, HR and student information systems. Administrators can leverage the Riva SDK< to build custom connectors for SQL-based applications.

"While we had the technical expertise in-house to develop the SIS integration," said Sorensen, "we considered it more advantageous to implement Riva Integration Server to save on time and reduce the initial and long-term costs of developing and maintaining such a solution."

"Riva satisfied our immediate calendaring and scheduling integration needs for GroupWise," said Jarrett Hood, Database Applications Specialist at Landmark College, "and it also provides great flexibility for integration requirements we may have in future such as pushing out holiday schedules<, populating GroupWise calendars based on custom databases, integrating with ERP and financial systems, and scheduling actions such as mail send-outs in SCT PowerCAMPUS."

"At Landmark College, we use NotifyLink< to synchronize GroupWise information to mobile devices. A nice value-add of having Riva and NotifyLink is the ability for student information system information to be synchronized down to GroupWise and to users' mobile devices."

The Results

"The calendar and appointment integration Riva delivers between our student information system and GroupWise is now considered a must-have service," said Sorensen. "Riva Integration Server is brilliant! It has allowed our students' calendars to be synchronized from SCT PowerCAMPUS to their GroupWise accounts. The information is now available in a single location."

"The advisor who initially requested the integration is absolutely thrilled. Once the advising department started to reap the benefits of the integration, Student Affairs also got excited about the opportunity to quickly and easily schedule meetings with staff, faculty and students using the integrated solution."

"Omni's technical and support team have been great to work with," said Sorensen. "We highly recommend Riva Integration Server to other universities and colleges that need to integrate GroupWise or Exchange calendar information with their student management system."

More Information

• Riva Integration Server for GroupWise<
• Riva Integration Server SDK<
• Contact Omni<

• Cool Solutions

Rumour: Pulse BETA in Three Weeks (Tweet by Ken Muir) Check out this Novell Media Presentation on Novell Pulse: Should Enterprise IT Worry about Social Tools? _

As I and many others have discussed before, data leaks are a fact of life when employees are allowed to use communication tools of any kind, including email, instant messaging or even the telephone. Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter have become a key and growing area of concern for many decision makers because these tools are typically used independently of IT management or oversight.
An interesting example of such a data leak - albeit not a corporate one - is an Israeli soldier's post to Facebook about an upcoming raid by Israel's Defense Forces in the West Bank. The soldier's post, which included both the time and location of the operation, prompted the IDF to call it off. More information about the incident is available here.
This should serve as a good lesson for senior business managers, IT management and others in organizations that allow the use of social networking tools: while these tools can be incredibly useful in a business context and their use should be encouraged, unmanaged posting to these sites can result in the revelation of information you might not want the outside world to know.
Osterman Research will be publishing a white paper in March on why organizations need to focus on managing the content that leaves their organization through email, instant messaging systems, social networking tools and other systems.

Dear Customer: I wanted to contact you personally to address recent news about Novell. Late Tuesday, March 2, Novell received an unsolicited, conditional proposal from Elliott Associates, L.P. to acquire Novell for $5.75 per share in cash. Elliott is an investment firm that holds shares of Novell stock. As you will see in our news release (http://app.mktg.novell.com/e/er.aspx?s=1163 lid=2073 elq=558094b7e90547828736abeb2e2d9b30), we anticipate Novell's Board of Directors will review Elliott's proposal in consultation with Novell's financial and legal advisors. Beyond that, it is business as usual for us at Novell.