Novell today unveiled the long-term
plans for its flagship collaboration product, Novell(R) GroupWise(R),
including plans for three releases over the next four years. Novell’s
roadmap firmly underscores the status of GroupWise as an integral part
of Novell’s corporate strategy and emphasizes the vital role traditional
Novell products play in the company’s future.

The next release of GroupWise, codenamed “Sequoia,” is due to be
released in the summer of 2005, followed by “Aspen” and “Cedar,”
targeted for fall 2006 and spring 2008, respectively.

Novell GroupWise is a complete collaboration software solution
providing enterprise users with e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging,
task management, document management and data storage functions. The No.
1 alternative to Microsoft Exchange, GroupWise has long been praised by
customers and industry watchers for its security and reliability. The
next releases of GroupWise will build on this foundation with additional
functionality and new ways to collaborate.

“While Novell continues to garner many positive reviews for our Linux
and open source strategies, we also want to be clear that our faithful
GroupWise customers can look forward to a bright future with Novell and
GroupWise on the platform of their choice,” said David Patrick, general
manager of Platforms and Services for Novell. “Novell’s commitment to
GroupWise has never been stronger. Novell has been steadfast in
delivering ongoing value in GroupWise, and customers can be assured they
will continue to see an increase in that value going forward.”

GroupWise Sequoia will provide significant enhancements for end users
with interface improvements and new functionality. Novell is also
improving the application programming and administration interfaces in
GroupWise. Novell will announce details about GroupWise Sequoia at its
annual BrainShare(R) customer conference in March in Salt Lake City.

In GroupWise Aspen, Novell plans to further team collaboration and
provide new data backup capabilities. Novell will also focus on enabling
more partner applications. To date, Novell partners have taken advantage
of trusted application programming interfaces (API) to create more than
150 add-on products that run efficiently with GroupWise.

Charles Taite, president of GWAVA, a developer of software solutions
for GroupWise, said, “Novell’s commitment to GroupWise and the
development of robust APIs has allowed GWAVA and many other partners to
develop sophisticated solutions to meet a wide range of needs. The
future of GroupWise is very bright as Novell continues to respond to the
market and support the Novell GroupWise partner community.”

The focus for GroupWise Cedar is to bring the rich functionality of
GroupWise to users on any platform, anywhere at any time, to improve
user experience, and to increase administrative functionality and grow
scalability. This release will build on Sequoia and Aspen for
team-enabled collaboration and further simplified administration.

More information about Novell GroupWise can be found at
http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise. For information on Novell’s
BrainShare conference, see http://www.novell.com/brainshare. For
information on Novell’s partners, visit http://www.novell.com/partners.