Novell prepares Bulletproof groupware

The next release of Novell's Groupwise groupware product will run natively on Solaris and Linux, as well as the company's own Netware platform.

At its annual Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City this week, the networking company also announced a tie-up with telco AT&T to allow US Groupwise users access to their corporate emails through their mobile phone.

Users of the next release of Groupwise, codenamed Bulletproof, will no longer have to buy Novell's Netware operating system to run the application, and will also be able to support it directly from third-party operating systems. But Bulletproof, which is expected at the end of the year, will be tied to eDirectory, the cross platform version of Novell Directory Services.

Terry Ulanch, product manager at Novell, said Bulletproof will boost the overall performance of the current Groupwise 5.5 release by 10-fold, and the engine will be opened up so that third-party developers will be able to create applications for the product.

One example is the availability of Metastorm's Infowise product, which sorts emails into specified lists. A personal version for individual Groupwise users is available now for Groupwise 5.5, and a business version that lets people share their lists with colleagues will be released later this year.

Novell is working with AT&T to allow business users to access their corporate emails using the telco's AT&T Pocketnet ISP service. Users will be able to search address books and documents and send, reply, forward and delete all item types across the internet.