Blog View
GroupWise Monitor without Tomcat
Did you use the GroupWise Monitor on a Windows Workstation; do you miss the nice old features (like showing all logged on users)?
The old monitor is still there (http://localhost:8200 but pretty useless without any access control) so what you want to add is SSL and an authentication against your eDirectory. I am using SLES11 in this example.
1. Install the GroupWise Monitor Agent (the Monitor Application is NOT needed)
2. Make sure you have Apache installed.
3. Activate the Apache module “proxy_http“.
As the root user type: "a2enmod proxy_http“
Uncomment the "proxy-http” line in "etc/apache/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf"
I recommend creating a new vhost in "/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/” lets name it "gwm” listening on port 4433. So create a file "/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/gwm.conf” with the following lines:
Some explanations:
ThisNameShouldMatchTheNameInTheCertificate: Replace with the name of your CN found in the certificate
mycert.pem, mykey.pem, mychain.pem: Your certificate, private key and your certificate chain. (this is optional and you could just delete the line)
YourLDAPServer: Hostname of your LDAP Server.
YourSearchBase: Your Searchbase (for example: "o=novell“)
MyLDAPReader, LdapReaderPassword: Username and password of a user object which is allowed to read group membership in your tree.
cn=groupwisemonitor,o=novell: The group which any user accessing the GWMonitor must be in.
4. Open port 4433 in the SuSE Firewall
5. Restart Apache "rcapache2 restart“
The URL of your GroupWise Monitor is now: https://yourhost:4433.
Have fun.
Omni RIVA CRM WebSite
iPad/iPhone integration with everything HelpDesk webinar
GroupLink is proud to announce the latest release of everything HelpDesk, version 9.1, with a new iPad/iPhone specialized interface. To kick-off this latest release we will host a 45 minute webinar to present the latest features of this already powerful solution. The event will be:
Date: Thursday, August 12
Time: 11:00 am Eastern
Link to register: http://www.grouplink.net/redir.asp?id=2010081201
This latest release features some great new benefits including:
- Create the ultimate mobile tech with the new help desk iPad/iPhone specialized interface
- Increase efficiency through the new Ticket Search - report on custom fields!
- Save time through Mass Update of Tickets – change status, priority, estimated completion date, etc. to multiple tickets at once!
- Never miss a report when it is needed through the new Scheduled Reports! Customize and run reports automatically!
- Make the help desk even easier with the ability to Customize the Ticket Screen- any user can customize the ticket screen to their liking.
These features add to the already loved benefits of:
- Keep your end users informed with email updates of ticket submissions or status updates (via GroupWise, Exchange, SMTP)
- Ensure that your end users actually use the help desk with its easy to use end-user submission form.
- Simplify your help desk, by using it across multiple departments, which also decreases overall costs!
- Justify your purchase with the savings that will come by making your technicians more efficient.
- Be informed of the state of your organization through powerful reporting, see what tickets are being worked on, what issues you may have and where you can improve.
- Stay on top of your routine tasks and business processes with Ticket Templates
- Track your essential assets with ZENworks 10 integration or the built in eHD Asset Tracker
We hope to see you there!
Foxit Reader 4.0
Foxit Reader is a free PDF viewer. Foxit Reader 4.0 is designed for a broad spectrum of users including enterprise and government organizations. Foxit Reader is fully customizable to meet any organization's business objective and its small footprint makes it easy to deploy. It is also packed with features not available in competitor's products. Foxit Reader's small footprint makes easy to update and maintain. Finally the Reader adheres to all ISO 32000 standards.
- Small footprint - Easy to deploy and maintain
- Budget friendly - Includes enhanced features and it's still FREE
- Secure - Tri-level security to protect sensitive data and thwart attacks
- Customizable - Create a PDF reading platform to meet your organization's business objective
- Cost saving - Full form filling, saving, printing, emailing offered for free - can cost thousands when using Adobe
MSI's for Foxit Reader 3.x can be downloaded directly from Foxit Software's website. For version 4.0 you have to register first.
Late but Great: Toffa GroupWise Intimi Calendar
The Benefits of Unified Messaging
As part of a recent client interaction and whiteboarding session, I was asked to express my views about the benefits that Unified Messaging might deliver in terms of enhanced collaboration. In my reply, I acknowledged that we are well into the era of Unified Messaging (UM) as close to 1/3 of enterprises are in the process of deploying infrastructure to unite telephone and email systems. This trend started off as a way to lower operational costs and deploy IP telephony, but has now grown far beyond its original scope. The future of Unified Messaging will enable an entirely new class of rich and interactive collaboration as well as much smarter infrastructure management. High definition video is certainly only a few steps behind voice as the next logical media-stream we will add to our networks.
One of the changes we will soon see to workgroup collaboration is what we call “Asymmetrical Messaging” whereby a voicemail may be replied to with an email (and vice-versa), or a message instantly converted to text by speech recognition agents. This text could then be automatically appended to a client’s record for future reference. These new types of interactions will dramatically enhance our collaboration experiences since voice is a much richer communication medium than plain text.
Research (and human experience) clearly demonstrates that it is far easier for us to detect emotions and intent from listening than from reading. However, it is usually much easier and faster to scan through a long text (speed-read) to get a feel for a situation. Trying to “speed-listen” to a lengthy recorded conversation would not be effective and might give most users bad headaches. UM will enable us to choose the media best suited for the task at hand.
The integration of calendaring and voice systems will also enable us to conduct more effective meetings – by simply inviting a conference bridge to a meeting, we can have the bridge agent record the entire meeting and automatically send a link of the conversation to all attendees. Smart voice tags can be used to identify action items, tasks and due dates, and automatically update our calendars or project plans.
The ability to consult our calendars and interactively book meetings while on a phone call will soon be as simple as conferencing in our calendar agent who will be able to reply to spoken commands such as “When am I free next week?” The same will go for address book lookups – “Call John Smith on his mobile” and smart reminders – “SMS me at 4 PM to remind me of my dentist appointment.” All these interactions will be logged in our collaboration systems for consultation and review. It will soon be easy for a user to request a unified composite view of the communications he has had in the last 60 days with an individual, whether via phone, email or other social networks.
Another exciting possibility is Intelligent Attachments & Smart Delivery. Intelligent Attachments are documents that a user can have emailed out by simply requesting them from the phone server. Smart Delivery is the ability to request that an email message be forwarded as a synthetic voice message, or request that a voice message be forwarded to an email account, in effect choosing the way a user wishes to interact with the content.
These applications and more we have not yet imagined will augment our capacity to deal with complex projects, shifting schedules and distributed virtual teams. Our productivity will be enhanced and soon we will not be able to remember how we functioned without these applications at our command. However, they will also need to be well designed against abuse and hacks so that users feel confident using them. The management capabilities will need to be fully integrated with existing directory services and identity management platforms for fast provisioning and de-provisioning. Of course these new capabilities will require copious amounts of additional processing and storage, but this will be a small price to pay for the enhanced collaboration and productivity they will enable.
Cloud Archiving Market Update | July 2010 Issue
With industry noise about email archiving, and hosted archiving in general, getting louder and louder, it can be difficult to find all the information you need to make a decision. To help you easily gather information, Sonian compiles relevant content together for you in the Cloud Archiving Monthly Market Update.
The Sonian Cloud Computing Market Update:- Compliance News: FINRA Fines Doubled in 2009
- Video: Cloud Security: with Steve Riley, Amazon's Cloud Computing Strategist
- Gartner Report: Cloud Computing Key Initiative Overview
- NPR: Agencies Migrating to Email in the Cloud
- NPR: Wilson Rothman, features editor for Gizmodo.com, discusses how the Cloud is changing the modern day workplace.
- Survey conducted by the Pew Research Institute on The Future of Cloud Computing
Enter your appliance in "The Disters" — you could win $10,000!
There's a contest underway to see who can build the coolest appliances using SUSE Studio.
There are 3 easy steps to participate in The Disters, a SUSE Studio contest:
1. Build your appliance using SUSE Studio.
2. Publish your appliance to SUSE Gallery and obtain your URL.
3. Enter your appliance into the contest
You can enter it as a Community Appliance (for stuff you're willing to share freely) or a Commercial Appliance (for stuff you plan to market).
The Disters award contest runs July 27 – September 30, 2010
Email Protection with Reload Pays Dividends for First National Bank
Email is a primary form of communication for First National Bank. Since email interruption can wreak havoc on employee productivity and customer service, they took steps to prepare for an email disaster. And it paid off. When an air conditioning unit stopped working in one of the company’s server rooms, the temperature rose and the servers, including the email server, began to shut down. An employee restarted the email server before it had sufficiently cooled, and the result was a corrupted database. Over the next few hours, the company’s IT personnel tried, unsuccessfully, to repair the database. After that, the decision was made to switch over to the GWAVA Reload server. In 10 minutes, the email service was back up and running. A few days later, they began the pre-migration process. It went so smoothly that switching back to the primary server went undetected.
"Migrating from the backup server is usually the hardest part of the process. But with Reload, it almost seemed too easy,” says Christina Pedas, Sr. Network Engineer.
Email Accessibility is a Big Time Saver
First National Bank’s policy is to store emails for many years for its 2500 employees. And, at least once a week, they need to access an old email. With Reload, it’s easy to do. They just put GroupWise in restore mode, point to the backup and restore the email.
Before First National Bank chose Reload, they were backing up their emails using a tape backup. Initially, they were just looking for a replacement solution—only to be used in an extreme circumstance. But Reload provided much more. Using their old tape backup, it would take several days to recover a single email. Both Legal and Human Resources departments at the bank needed a faster and more frequent response, so the IT department turned to Reload. Now, not only does Reload securely store their email backups, but it lets First National Bank employees access those emails in minutes. They have come to rely on Reload on a day-to-day basis, rather than an emergency backup system only. Reload has significantly eased the burden on the company’s IT personnel, freeing up time for other projects.
Reload is the “security blanket” that First National Bank relies on to make sure their emails are both safe and accessible at a moment’s notice. Because of the ease of their previous Reload migration after the email server failure, First National Bank plans on making Reload a part of their next server migration.
“From a Legal and HR standpoint, Reload gives us great credibility. If someone needs something researched, we can provide the exact information quickly to verify precise dates and times. We can provide everything they ask for.” - Christina Pedas
For more information on Reload, go to www.gwava.com/reload.
Do Personal Email Archives Amount to IT Malpractice?
Personal Email Archives: Do They Amount To IT Malpractice?
With personal archiving, users are allowed to move data off the organization's production servers and storage to a system-defined location that may include the user's local machine. Trying to recover messages as part of an internal audit or litigation rapidly becomes a costly nightmare. All too often data simply cannot be found, or the organization runs the risk of losing critical information when PCs or laptops are refreshed.
Things to think about:
- Can you defend the effectiveness of your legal hold process?
- If personal archives are requested, do you have a process to enable production?
- For every Send, there is a Receive & what might opposing counsel have that you are not aware of?
- Are you capable of determining if you should settle before having invested too much time?
- Does your current setup provide the tools for effective legal strategy planning?
Webinar: Learn about GWAVA 5 in less than 30 minutes
GWAVA 5 now fully supports the Windows platform!
Join us on August 24, 2010 to learn about all of the new and exciting features available in GWAVA 5.
Product Manager, Taylor Cochrane, will present a live demo of the product. Taylor’s presentation will focus on several key features of the new GWAVA version 5:
- Statistics Dashboard – get up-to-date information such as blocked and clean messages as well as current virus threats on the improved dashboard
- TLS support - support for end-to-end encryption of transmitted messages
- LDAP Support - configure GWAVA to leverage your existing LDAP server for authentication services
Date: August 26, 2010
Time: 3pm – 3:30pm EST
Presenter: Taylor Cochrane
Announcing GWAVACon 2011 North America
GWAVACon is moving this year! On January 23-25, 2011, GWAVACon will be held in Torrance, California – close by the Los Angeles international airport and just a short drive to the beach. Make your plans to get some California sunshine next January and soak in the great information you can only get at GWAVACon! . Check www.gwavacon.com for registration and up-to-date information.
Win $10,000 building your software appliances using SUSE Studio
Fame and a modest fortune await! We're looking for inventive minds to build the most innovative software appliances. Publish your unique appliance to the new SUSE® Gallery™ and enter into a contest to win $10,000!
Just like building an appliance with SUSE Studio, entering the competition is easy and free. To get started, visit The Disters homepage.
SUSE Studio is the best way to build Linux-based software appliances. We have over 80,000 users to-date who've collectively built over 400,000 appliances. The competition closes at the end of September – enter and vote today!
The Hybrid Cloud: Hero or half-measure?
Lori MacVittie, blogger for F5 Networks, has written extensively about hybrid clouds. In recent posts such as “The Three Reasons Hybrid Clouds Will Dominate” and “The Other Hybrid Cloud Architecture”, she discusses the risks and benefits from an infrastructure perspective. Clearly there are many unanswered questions about hybrid clouds before they can be considered a mainstream enterprise solution. You can hear Lori and Novell’s Ross Chevalier, explore hybrid clouds in the enterprise on today's cloudchasers at 4:00PM ET.
You can also catch up on old cloudchasers shows on our blog or iTunes.
OT: Help Test the Future of Firefox!
Security and the cloud
Over the last week there's been a lot of media attention paid to the City of Los Angeles and their ongoing struggle to migrate to a cloud-based application and email infrastructure. Novell has appeared in much of this coverage as we've been a longtime supplier and partner to the City, providing a range of solutions including collaboration and email capabilities.
About a year ago, the City of Los Angeles decided to migrate all its staff to a new, cloud-based application and collaboration system provided by Google. As the incumbent supplier for collaboration tools, Novell agreed to provide ongoing support to the City to make sure the transition was smooth and that important services weren't disrupted. Delays in implementing the system, largely because of security concerns, mean that Novell is still providing services and support, notably to the City of Los Angeles Police Department. We'll continue to offer support to our customer at the City for as long as it takes, so together we can ensure ongoing, day-to-day operations for all City employees.
Novell is sympathetic to the security and other challenges the City of LA faces. We have an industry-leading security and identity management business that exists to solve just these kinds of challenges, and have over 56,000 customers around the world. Cloud computing offers the promise of lower costs and greater flexibility, but creates new challenges around access control, governance and data security. In survey after survey, security is the leading concern amongst IT executives exploring cloud adoption, which is why leading cloud providers such as Verizon Business have teamed with Novell to offer identity and security services in their cloud offerings.
To support organizations seeking to leverage the opportunities in cloud computing around Collaboration, Novell delivers a compendium of solutions that fit the specific needs of the customer, minimizing painful transitions. These solutions include Novell GroupWise, Novell Teaming, Novell Conferencing and soon-to-be-released Novell Pulse that provides innovative, real-time collaboration services protected by industry leading security and compliance.
Don't buy the hype
You may have seen a recent article about Linux adoption and market share, claiming SUSE is losing ground to Canonical/Ubuntu. This is nonsense.
The most reliable data source for Linux market share information is IDC, which shows that far from losing share, SUSE is gaining market share across physical, virtual and cloud deployments. Based on IDC's Linux Server Tracker as of April 2010, Ubuntu has less than a 5% unit share of the Linux market, a number that has remained largely unchanged over the last few years. Novell has over 25% market share. The survey highlighted in the TechTarget article asked if a particular OS is being used, not the extent of the use. In other words, a single instance of Ubuntu counted the same as 1,000 instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
The reality is that the Linux market is a two-horse race between Novell and Red Hat, companies that offer very different approaches to the market. There are reasons for Novell's significant share – for example, SUSE Linux Enterprise has over 5,000 certified applications from 1,400 ISVs, while Ubuntu highlights fewer than 30 ISVs on its website (notably absent are mainstays Oracle and SAP) – hardly critical mass.
Canonical has argued that it is leapfrogging established Linux vendors and focusing on the cloud. Nice story. Novell is a leader in cloud computing, thanks to our strong relationships with significant cloud players such as IBM, Fujitsu, Vodacom, Tencent and Verizon. And our landmark agreement with virtualization leader (and future cloud heavyweight) VMware has the potential to change the game.
There are other ways we're changing the game, too. SUSE Studio and our unique SUSE Appliance Program have attracted over 80,000 registered users as well as major-label ISVs like IBM, VMware and SAP. Software appliances make it fast and easy to create and deploy fully-tested, ready-to-run application stacks for both cloud and on-premise deployments. And Novell – unlike Ubuntu – can offer customers added-value capabilities from our broader portfolio such as security and identity management solutions (which, according to the very research cited in the article, is the leading concern of companies that haven't yet considered cloud computing).
While provocative headlines and ambiguous surveys may get attention, the facts tell a different story.
Novell Announces Appointment of Jos Poortvliet as openSUSE Community Manager
The openSUSE Project today announced the appointment of Jos Poortvliet as openSUSE Community Manager starting August 1. Poortvliet commented:
The opportunity to become part of the international openSUSE community is very exciting. There are a great number of interesting developments going on in the free software world, and openSUSE plays a major role in many of them. I look forward to working with the community to help future growth while finding new directions and ways of nurturing and delivering the openSUSE project's innovative technologies to users and developers around the world.
Create an Appliance with SUSE Studio -- you could win $10,000
They're looking for inventive minds to build the most innovative software appliances. Publish your unique appliance to the new SUSE® Gallery™ and enter into a contest to win $10,000!
The contest runs from July 27 - September 30, 2010, so brush off your mad skills and pop on over here for all the details.
It must not be too hard.... in the past year, more than 400,000 Linux appliances were built using SUSE Studio, with nearly 3 million downloads. SUSE Gallery is the place to strut your stuff and show off the appliances you have built with SUSE Studio. It also serves as a centralized online showcase where SUSE Studio users can browse and use both commercial and community-oriented appliances.
Good luck! Make Cool Solutions proud.
Happy Birthday, Dister
Guest Post from Markus Rex, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Open Platform Solutions.
For those of you who don’t know Dister, he is the mascot for SUSE Studio, a free, web-based appliance building tool that is a key technology component of our SUSE Appliance Program.
Today Dister is a year old and he has a great deal to be proud of. One year ago we announced the SUSE Appliance Program – the industry’s first solution for building and deploying fully-supported software appliances. This launch was very well received by ISVs and the marketplace with ZDnet’s Dana Blankhenhorn reporting, “It may be the most important thing Novell has done for software shops in decades.”
Since that launch, we’ve continued to deliver on the strategy we outlined one year ago. Our more than 80,000 registered SUSE Studio users (including 5,000 ISVs) have built more than 415,000 appliances that have been downloaded an astonishing 3 million times. We’ve expanded relationships with leading technology vendors, including IBM, Ingres and VMware and we have added more product innovations to enhance the program. For a one-year-old, Dister certainly has been busy.
Today we mark another milestone in the SUSE Appliance Program with the launch of SUSE Gallery, an online showcase for publishing software appliances and cloud-based applications and services. The concept behind SUSE Gallery is similar to that of the Apple App Store: developers post their appliances in a venue where end users can browse and download. However, unlike the App Store, all appliances published in SUSE Gallery are free for download and cloning. SUSE Gallery thus provides a friction-free forum for the exchange of ideas, innovation and best practices across all sectors of the software industry.
To jumpstart the Gallery, we’re also launching the first annual “Dister” awards! For appliances built in SUSE Studio and published in SUSE Gallery, we will be awarding $20,000 in prizes to the creators of the most inventive software appliances in two categories: “Community Use” and “Commercial Use”. The competition opens today and is free, so get building and remember to vote on your favorite submissions!
Why is Novell investing so heavily in software appliances? Software appliances are a key component of Novell’s strategy to lead in the intelligent workload management market. Software appliances – pre-configured combinations of an application, middleware and operating system integrated into a single image and tailored to run on industry-standard platforms—are changing the way software developers package and deliver software. Novell realized early on that the flexibility and lower cost of Linux made it the ideal platform for software appliances.
Today, I am happy to celebrate with Dister the successes of the SUSE Appliance Program and the launch of the new SUSE Gallery. I encourage you to check out our free, web-based appliance building tool SUSE Studio and either build your own appliance or vote for your favorite one today!
B e s t v i e w e d w i t h    |
