Novell Debuts GroupWise 6.5 At CeBIT

GroupWise 6.5, which was officially launched here at the world's largest IT show, features secure instant messaging features behind the corporate firewall, spam filters, improved support for antivirus products and an enhanced user interface with contact management capabilities, executives said at the show.

The enhanced e-mail server also features support for a wide range of mobile devices, including cell phones and handheld computers running the Palm OS or Windows CE/Pocket PC, executives said.

At the show, Novell's European IT partners and solution providers, including Lufthansa Systems, a full-service IT provider and subsidiary of German giant Deutsche Lufthansa AG, and Maintainet AG, were on hand to demonstrate GroupWise communications and collaboration solutions.

GroupWise, which competes with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino and is favored among loyal Novell customers, currently features e-mail, enterprise calendaring and document management features.

The push for instant messaging and realtime communications (RTC) to be integrated with server software such as GroupWise is heating up with the expected debut of Microsoft's Greenwich RTC for Windows Server 2003 in mid-2003. IBM/Lotus is the leading corporate instant messaging server provider and sells a solution known as SameTime.