Novell will release a new capability and replacement technology that facilitates GroupWise and Exchange coexisting in the same organization. This capability will be part of GroupWise 2012 SP2, which is currently undergoing Lighthouse deployments and scheduled to ship in early 2013.

Coexistence replaces the Exchange gateway technology that was released several years ago and may still be in use by a few current GroupWise customers. Coexistence will only be available in GroupWise 2012 SP2 and beyond…including Windermere. Therefore, coexistence requires Exchange 2010 and GroupWise 2012 SP2. Previous releases of either product are not supported.

Existing Capability

Coexistence is specifically targeted to organizations that have both GroupWise and Exchange as part of their data center. This is generally due to acquisition or merger. While easy interchange of email and appointments is already supported with current versions of GroupWise and Exchange, this new capability will provide two additional and significant pieces of functionality for your users and communities. As stated, a user can already send and receive email and appointments between GroupWise and Exchange seamlessly, whether those two systems are internal to an organization or more commonly - external. This is facilitated by both products’ improved support for SMTP and iCalendar standards. Almost all of this existing functionality is part of the GroupWise Internet Agent service (GWIA) and your organization is, mostly likely, already utlizing the latest GWIA. Besides running the latest version of GroupWise, your organization does not have to do anything extra to provide this level of interoperability. For best results, the Exchange system you are communicating with should also be running the latest versions and support packs.

New capability

With GroupWise 2012 SP2, companies can purchase and configure the following additional coexistence functionality. System Address Book synchronization between your GroupWise and Exchange systems and Free/Busy Search between systems. While this new coexistence functionality must be enabled and configured, it is built right into existing GroupWise agents and components. So deployment is simple…just upgrade your GroupWise system to 2012 SP2. The address book synchronization code is part of the familiar Message Transfer Agent (MTA). Free/busy capability is also built into the GroupWise Windows Client and WebAccess Client. The end-user experience is identical whether you are busy searching a GroupWise user or busy searching an Exchange user. In fact, most users will be completely unaware of which system the address book contact originated. The end-user simply name completes or selects a contact from their address book and then performs a Busy Search….the rest is magic!

Deploying this capability on the GroupWise side is easy…just upgrade. Deployment for the Exchange system is equally painless. Administrators will simply install a small service for their Exchange/IIS system to facilitate Outlook users being able to free/busy search GroupWise users. No additional installation or configuration is required for the address book synchronization. That is all handled by the GroupWise MTA.

So – coexistence requires no additional servers, no additional agents and no changes to your data center network topology. Slick and elegant!

Just a support pack!

GroupWise 2012 SP2 will simply be a support pack for most of our GroupWise customers. Organizations will upgrade to it the same as always. There is no additional cost or procedural changes in order for an organization to download, deploy and utilize this support pack for the additional stability or specific bug fix your organization needs. Customers simply need to be current on their GroupWise maintenance.

For those customers who do need coexistence, simply download and deploy GroupWise 2012 SP2 when it becomes available and then contact your Novell Sales representative for pricing and configuration assistance.

Dean