Novell Brings Team Workspace Capabilities to Workgroup Suite by Adding Novell Teaming

Responding to industry needs for cost-effective, next-generation collaboration tools, Novell today announced the worldwide availability of Novell® Open Workgroup Suite with Novell Teaming included. This expanded offering delivers collaboration capabilities – like team workspaces, enterprise social networking, workflow, blogs and wikis – to the proven workforce productivity tools already available in the workgroup suite. Novell Open Workgroup Suite enables organizations to increase employee productivity by adding collaboration tools to their existing IT infrastructure, without the higher costs or vendor lock-in typically associated with proprietary-only software bundles.

"Keeping IT costs low and increasing employee productivity are top business priorities for Metropolitan Bank Group," said Thomas Johnson, director of Information Systems and Technology for Metropolitan Bank Group. "Novell Open Workgroup Suite with Novell Teaming included allows us to leverage Web 2.0 innovations to improve employee communication and productivity, while still keeping software costs low. With Novell, we have a complete infrastructure and software package, including critical next-generation collaboration tools, to help drive employee and business innovation."

With this addition, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite now allows for social networking within the enterprise where subject matter experts are easily identified and new team workspaces can be easily formed. It makes teamwork and knowledge sharing a standard feature for organizations of all sizes. The knowledge capture and sharing capability inherent in personal and joint team spaces ensures nothing is lost when an employee leaves an organization. The work done as part of a larger group or team effort is retained in the workspace and can be accessed by existing and new team members at any time.

The most compelling alternative for organizations looking to introduce team workspace and social networking tools into their IT environment, Novell Open Workgroup Suite offers the distinct advantages of increased workforce productivity, interoperability within the existing infrastructure and the innovation of open source in one bundle. This expanded suite leverages Novell's February acquisition of SiteScape, a leader in open source team collaboration, to bring the best-engineered Web 2.0, team workspace and enterprise social networking tools to Novell Open Workgroup Suite.

Novell Open Workgroup Suite enables organizations to reduce software acquisition costs by as much as 70 percent over competing solutions such as the Microsoft* Professional Desktop Platform, anchored by Windows* and Office SharePoint* servers, while still improving workforce productivity and maintaining needed levels of service and support. The suite works with currently deployed platforms and applications, making it easy to use existing skills and IT investments and take a phased approach to solution deployment.

"Novell is providing enterprises with a low-cost onramp to the benefits of team workspace and enterprise social networking technologies," said Kent Erickson, senior vice president and general manager of Workgroup Solutions for Novell. "By adding next-generation collaboration capabilities to the best-of-breed technologies already available in our Open Workgroup Suite, we are answering customer needs for powerful and flexible productivity tools, allowing them to enhance the effectiveness of teamwork."

Pricing and Availability

Novell Open Workgroup Suite utilizes a flexible buying program to accommodate platform and collaboration tool preferences. With Linux*, NetWare® and Windows server deployment options, the fullest version of Novell Open Workgroup Suite delivers:

• next-generation collaboration with Novell Teaming;
• advanced storage management, user and rights administration, and clustering and failover capabilities with Novell Open Enterprise Server;
• automated IT asset management with Novell ZENworks® Suite;
• e-mail and calendaring with Novell GroupWise®;
• the Novell edition of the popular office productivity suite OpenOffice.org for Windows and Linux;
• and complete desktop productivity with SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop.

Two additional versions of the suite are also available, one with Novell Teaming that allows for alternate messaging platforms, and one without the team workspace and social networking benefits of Novell Teaming. Priority maintenance is also available, with rights to new versions of the products included in the suite along with unlimited, 24x7 product support.

For more information about Novell Open Workgroup Suite, visit www.novell.com/nows.