In a bid to reassure customers over its ongoing commitment to GroupWise, Novell today unveiled long-term plans for its enterprise collaboration product, including three releases scheduled over the next four years.

The company stressed that GroupWise, which has seen its once substantial market share steadily eaten away by IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Exchange, remains an integral part of its product strategy and plays a "vital role" in future plans.

The next release of GroupWise, codenamed Sequoia, is due this summer, followed by Aspen and Cedar targeted for autumn 2006 and spring 2008.

"While Novell continues to garner many positive reviews for our Linux and open source strategies, we also want to be clear that our 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 at Novell.

The company promised that Sequoia will provide "significant enhancements" for end users with enhanced application programming and administration interfaces.

For the Aspen release, Novell said it would deliver better team collaboration functionality and improved data back-up capabilities.