CONSIDERING PURCHASING GROUPWISE

[CST]

I am currently investigating what the best mail server software would be for our company.

So far I have looked at Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Groupwise and I am struggling to get an unbiased opinion.

I would very much appreciate any comments. [sig][/sig]

 

[lexus]

We migrated to GroupWise a bit over a year ago. We had a comittee gathered from several departments to invetigate the 3 you mentioned. After several months of testing and input from users, we decided to go with GroupWise for several reasons.

Among them:
1) we have had, installed and supported Novell networks formany years so our techs were not stepping into something totally foreign.

2) Pricewise, the hardware and software for GroupWise was more reasonable than the Microsoft counterpart..

3) Also, our trainers felt more at ease with GroupWise.

4) It could do everything we needed, including calendaring, viewing other user's calendars, email, scheduling resources such as cars, labs and conference centers, document support and discussion threads.

5) The support from Novell has been better than support for our Microsoft products.

We have about 200 users on the GW system now and all seem to be very pleased with it. It is very easy for the novice email user but sports some very interesting and useful additions.

[sig][/sig]

 

[velma]

I was feeling the same about Groupwise as the other guy. However, we are running into a few issues.

1) No way to limit attachment size incoming and outgoing from poa's only GWIA which we dont control. This is bad for us. Most router lines are only 56k and this boggs us down.

2) Cant limit user mail space. mail and attachment are owned by the groupwise system. There are somethings you can do (get reports on mail size) but you have to go back to users and request they clean up.

3) Retrieving lost mail is a real pain. Our css has to restore the POA to another server from backup because it is so large. Not an easy task.

Good luck making a choice. [sig][/sig]

 

[lexus]

Our GW admin isn't here today or I would get him in on this discussion!

To help with the space issue, we have instituted a policy that all email and phone messages are deleted after 180 days. We have had a slew of archiving classes to help users deal with this issue and all felt very comfortable with the idea of archiving their email.

We are on T-1's here since we are also a private ISP so file size has not been a problem.

We also love the ability to get our email from the web using GW web server. It sure helps when we are on the road or even at home and don't have GW installed on our home computers.

 

[velma]

They are great policies to implement. Unfortunately I work in a government office and we are limited as to our ability to time limit users mail storage. All documents are considered government documents and cant be destroyed as such for a number of years.

So I guess it largely depends on your environment and what your needs are. Above were just some points to keep in mind when chosing. Different restrictions for different environments.

 

[lexus]

Velma:
We are also a govt. entity but we can archive our email to get around the records management issue.

We really are quite happy with GroupWise. The crew here did a lot of digging, testing, experimenting, etc., before recommending it to our agency. I can't help from the tech end but we only have one GW Admin and he seems quite happy with it as well from his viewpoint.

Good luck in whatever program you eventually decide on!

 

[CST]

Thank you both for your help. You've both raised some very interesting issues.

 

[BruceClasing]

We upgraded from Exchange 5.5 to GroupWise 6 about 6 months ago, and have found it to be excellent. The limitations that were suggested earlier (attachment size, mailbox size, and restore) are not really issues. Attachment size can be set in the GWIA, mailbox size can be set in GW6 (not in 5.x, they only allowed size by days), and the restore is ok if you use ArcServe on a NON-NSS volume with the GroupWise agent. If you don't want to go for the agent, you can restore easily by restoring just the user.db file, the msgxx.db and a pointer to Offiles directory (a little tricky, but only necessary if you need attachments).

Anyway, good solid package. Great wireless features in WebAccess. WebAccess in general is the best of the three big products (GW, EX, Notes).

One big reason we went to GW was cost and it doesn't seem to get nailed with viruses.

Not completely unbiased, but we have used several different packages in the last few years, and I think this one will stick.

 

[Guest_imported]

Okay, you must be kidding. I have had 4 years experience administering Groupwise 5.x and now 2 years administering Exchange 5.5. There is no comparason, Groupwise is stuck in the dark ages of LAN based email. Don't be a fool, the support is terrible for Groupwise. I work for a large law firm and all the other firms we are in contact with are considering swapping or already have. Groupwise days are numbered and as less installations are there the more expensive and cumbersome the support becomes.

Please don't even consider it!

 

[lexus]

Our GW Admins are extremely happy with the support and ease of administration for GW. We also support it in several school districts and they, too, have gotten great user response. Their techs are also pleased with the support and admin end.

Sorry, dklassen, that you haven't had the same experience with it as our Admins and other companies that we train in use of it.

We also send our Admins to Novell training. Too many places just hand over the software and expect folks to learn it on their own.

We are in the midst of switching over to 6.x from 5.x and I will be doing lots of training on it. Again, our GW Admins are finding it very well-done.

We also run Guinevere for our virus scanner with GW and have found that it works extremely well in stopping incoming email attachments with viruses. Of course, we alwyas recommend the use (and updating) of a desktop virus scanner such as MacAfee or Norton.

 

[dzintvk]

Sorry, dklassen, but I do not understand You! I have experience of both systems administration too (and Exch2K too)and I can say it is directly opposite. Even Exchange 2000 not only Exchange 5.5 is far from GroupWise. With GroupWise we can be at least safe from all these every week anounced holes and administration was quite easy even with GW5.5, but with GW6 it is really nice. Of course administrator should have some experience of Novell before to understand this approach better.
And again GroupWise has real Document management system for same price. Even Microsoft SharePoint Portal server do not has all these possibilities. So excuse me guys, that I add my opinion so late, but when I read this, I felt that I must say at least some words.

All the best!
Dz. V.

 

[lexus]

The Document Management feature in GroupWise is superb! I agree with dzintvk totally!

 

[dzintvk]

Lotus Notes vs. GroupWise - it is competition on base of possibilities. You should think what You want because these two systems have very different logic. LN as document databases development environment + GroupWare media and GroupWise as Document management system + GroupWare media, here is main difference I think. But GroupWise is very effective from point of view of resources.

When we speak about Microsoft GroupWare solutions we should see that MSExchange2K is completely different system in comparision with MSExchange5.5. This is process of attempting to find architecture which could be enough good for process of further development. And in same time seems that this is not the long living architecture now in MSExchange2K too.

 

[LolaRed]

I like GroupWise, especially GW6. If you set up your mailbox limits initially, users don't even think about being limited. They just think it's the order of the universe. With limits set, I do almost no maintenance tasks. They take care of themselves. All I have to do is check the logs & chase the rare odd message that usually turns out to be normal.

I'm getting ready to add GWIA and WebAccess. You can bet limits will be imposed on mailbox size and attachment size for internet e-mail as well.