WALTHAM, Mass., Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Novell today announced continued momentum and delivery of innovation to the collaboration market, with more than 9,500 customers purchasing or renewing Novell collaboration solutions in 2010. This past year, the company released significant new capabilities for Novell® GroupWise®, its flagship e-mail and calendaring product, while shipping new technologies for enterprise social networking, conferencing, mobility, and file management. In 2011, Novell will have key product collaboration releases including the highly-anticipated general availability of Novell Vibe™ Cloud, its next-generation social collaboration product, which has more than 10,000 users in less than two months of beta availability.

"Organizations are increasingly taking more of an integrated approach to their IT investments as they try to make sense of the groundswell of information available in and outside of the enterprise, and as many venture into the cloud," said Michael Fauscette, Group VP, Software Business Solutions, IDC. "Novell has a strong history of solving tough IT problems; they continue this tradition by offering a series of integrated solutions that address multiple facets of the challenges facing the enterprise today - collaboration, intelligent workload management and more, which is why the company has continued to be successful."

Markets Served

According to IDC, the collaboration market was $7.8 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $11.2 billion by 2014. Much of this growth is fueled by the move to the cloud and the need to manage the explosive growth of data. Accordingly, Novell offers a unique 'one-two punch' that helps both business users and IT administrators achieve the benefits of real-time, social and secure collaboration.

With its Personal and Team Productivity solutions, Novell provides a comprehensive set of collaboration tools that enable customers to take advantage of the new interactions required to drive business innovation and growth. With a strong focus on integration between e-mail, teaming, and conferencing capabilities, Novell's tools fit into a customers' existing environment, are easy to deploy, and provide enterprise-class security and manageability.

With its Collaboration Data Management solutions, Novell also provides tools that enable IT to meet the challenge of increasing growth of collaboration data. These solutions help IT customers to effectively manage the lifecycle of files to ensure compliance, synchronize collaborative data across applications, and better leverage valuable information by providing users with their data when and where they need it.

"The face of the collaboration market continues to change at a rapid pace and we have adapted our strategy and approach to meet evolving customer needs," said Colleen O'Keefe, senior vice president and general manager Collaboration Solutions and Global Services for Novell. "Over the last year, we've broken new ground with our powerful 'one-two' combination of personal and team productivity and collaboration data management solutions. As the market shifts towards real-time collaboration and messaging, we remain committed to helping businesses communicate, share information, and connect in new and exciting ways, both inside and outside the organization."

Customer Success

In 2010, more than 9,500 customers purchased and renewed their Novell collaboration solutions. These organizations, which span several geographies and industries, include BJC Healthcare, Colorado Department of Corrections, Court of Claims of Ohio, Kempinski Hotels, LMU Munchen, Long Island Rail Road, RBF Consulting, Richardson International, Save Mart Supermarkets, Texas General Land Office and Synovus Financial, continue to experience tremendous ROI with Novell's Collaboration solutions.

"As a long-time GroupWise customer, we have seen continued innovation and commitment to the GroupWise platform from Novell," said James Sims, CIO of Save Mart Supermarkets, a $5 billion grocery retailer. "With the release of Data Synchronizer, they have added cutting-edge mobile data synchronization that is not only powerful but lean and cost effective, which suits us very well. Furthermore, we have found and maintained an extraordinary partnership with Novell, which doubles the value we receive when compared to companies that merely sell you goods and/or services.  We look forward to continued GroupWise innovation from Novell and a partnership that continues to grow."

"We're operating in a radically diverse business climate. With employees spread throughout the state, our ability to get work done quickly, efficiently and as a team faces new challenges," said Stephen Paxman, Deputy Commissioner for Information Systems for the Texas General Land Office. Cory Wilburn, Director of Business Automation Services at the Texas General Land Office, added, "To ensure we are consistently operating at peak performance, Novell Vibe has allowed users across the agency to share information and collaboratively manage tasks so that we can track the status of projects. In doing this, Novell Vibe has also given us the ability to standardize processes and policies which is extremely important in the public sector."

"We had a huge volume of data to manage, yet only 6 percent of it had been touched in the past year. We had no way of separating the stale data out," said Michael Glenn, senior IT manager at the Court of Claims of Ohio. "Using Novell file management technologies, we were able to reduce hardware storage costs by 60 percent and slash annual tape consumption by more than 90 percent."

Delivering on Product Innovation

Novell is committed to delivering innovative products and solutions in the collaboration space. Over the past year, the company has released several enhanced solutions that answer customer calls for flexibility and productivity without sacrificing security, including:

• Novell GroupWise 8 SP2 – the leading alternative to Microsoft Exchange, is a full-featured collaboration software solution that provides information workers with e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging, task management, and contact and document management functions.
• Novell Vibe Cloud (beta) - a cloud-based, real-time collaboration platform that combines the best of social business and team collaboration solutions.
• Novell Vibe OnPrem  – an on-premise collaboration platform that offers the best of team productivity and project collaboration.
• Novell Data Synchronizer – a synchronization engine that enables Novell GroupWise to integrate with third-party applications, including Microsoft SharePoint, SAP and SugarCRM, as well as the next generation of mobile devices, including Android and iPhone.
• Novell Conferencing – a web conferencing solution that enables anyone to deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet.
• Novell Open Enterprise Server – a secure and reliable suite of proven file, print and management services built on top of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server.
• Novell File Management Suite – an integrated file storage solution that provisions, moves, optimizes and reports on file storage based on user roles and customized business policies.

"For years, Novell collaboration products have had a powerful impact on the way companies do business," said Pierre Chamberland, founder and CEO (chief energizing officer) of Messaging Architects. "Novell shares the same level of trust, commitment and innovation we promise our customers, which is why we have forged such a strong partnership with the company."

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL), a leader in intelligent workload management, through WorkloadIQ™, helps organizations securely deliver and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. We help customers reduce the cost, complexity, and risk associated with their IT systems through our solutions for identity and security, systems management, collaboration and Linux-based operating platforms. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.  

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release is intended to outline Novell's general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Novell's products remains at the sole discretion of Novell.

Copyright © 2011 Novell, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Novell, the Novell logo, the N logo, and GroupWise are registered trademarks and WorkloadIQ is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries.  All third party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Novell, Inc.