Looking for something to do on Sunday evening before BrainShare begins?
Come join GWAVA and our partners for a free movie at the downtown
MegaPlex at the Gateway Mall, a walkable distance from the Salt Palace
Convention Center. GWAVA is offering free tickets to any BrainShare
attendees who wish to join us to watch the “Bounty Hunter,” starring
Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Seating is limited, so make sure
you register to reserve your spot as soon as possible.
Registration is now open for this year's Open Horizons Hot Labs, to be held at the Horwood House Hotel in Milton Keynes. The price is as low as £695 for a fully inclusive two day package, including all sessions, accommodation and meals. What's more, we even offer a VIP pickup service, should you need it!
Early bird discounts apply until 30th August, and if you're already an Open Horizons UK member, you can apply a further discount to leave the price of the event as £695 per delegate. Full price for the event when the Early Bird expires (and without member discount) is £895.
For further information, a hot lab list and to register, please visit the event page.
Join Our Facebook Group!
Open Horizons UK now has a Facebook page, why not follow us and be kept right up to date with the latest news? Go to our page now for further details and for sign up! We'll post details of upcoming events, offers and partner news right here, so don't wait!
IT in Action Tour Slides Now Available
The slide decks are now available for the IT in Action sessions held in June and July in Edinburgh and Bletchley Park. To download them, click this link
Registration for EMEA Summit is now OPEN!
Today, on April 30, on request of
may people within the communit ("You are late this year?!")
we have opened the registration for the EMEA Summit 2010,
which will run in Vienna (AT) from Sunday November 28
until Wednesday December 1. And within a few minutes the first
registration was already made by Peter Wachs (DE) -
finally after 5 years he has beaten Hans Prim (SE) in being "Number
One"!
BrainShare SLC started yesterday. The opening keynote included a number of
product announcements relating to IDM v4, ZCM as an appliance, Conferencing and
the unveiling of Novell Pulse. Everyone attending BrainShare has received a Pulse
account, and can invite five colleagues to join them! You can stay in touch with what's happening at BrainShare in a number
of ways. This URL summarises them all succinctly:
So
if you didn't manage to get to Salt Lake then why not go to BrainShare Amsterdam
in May? The good news is that the discount code obtained by Open Horizons
currently gives you a full 20% off the early bird price. So act now and get into BrainShare for just 556 Euro (+VAT). As
I said previously this is great value for 3 days training and access to senior Novell management and Product teams. Please contact us at
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if
you wish to register using the discount code.
Thirdly, 2 advance dates
for your diaries. This year Open Horizons is hosting the Novell IT IN Action
tour events, and two of them will be run in the UK. The first event on 30 June
will be held in Edinburgh while the second takes place a week later on 7 July at
Bletchley Park (close to Milton Keynes). While a lot of the planning remains to
be completed both of these events will be packed to the brim with great content,
so start making plans now to attend one or both!
Follow Us On Twitter!
You can now follow Open Horizons UK by going to http://twitter.com/oh_uk - follow us now and keep up to date with all the latest plans, news and events.
Register For BrainShare EMEA With Open Horizons And Get a Free Gift!
If you plan on registering for Novell BrainShare EMEA 2010 , why not register via the Open Horizons EMEA site and get a free gift when you collect your conference pass? What's the catch? There isn't one! It's just our way of saying thank you and it's much better than a discount code! Visit our EMEA site now for further details and registration.
Happy New Year!
All at Open Horizons UK wish our members a happy new year, and we look forward to another year chock full of Open Horizons Events, the return of BrainShare EMEA to Amsterdam and other vendor events, such as the GWAVACon Tour and IT in Action. All in all, there is a lot to get your teeth into!
The board at OH-UK has been working hard over the holidays looking at event dates for the coming year, and also looking at ways to build on the success of such events as the Open Horizons UK Summit event in Oxford, where the delegate numbers continue to increase year on year, and the content just gets better and better!
2009 saw a successful launch of Open Horizons UKin Bracknell, we're pleased to say that several other European NUI and GroupWise groups have now joined the party to create OH chapters in their countries too - we in the UK are just a small part of a big movement. As well as our Birmingham event, we also had a good turnout for our Open Horizons Tour and Summit event in Oxford, and the year closing EMEA Summit in Vienna had over 120 delegates - the biggest yet.
Plans are now afoot for the 2010 kick off meeting, to be held most likely in late February. Stay tuned to the website for more details. We are also looking for members to present success stories on implementing Novell technologies - you may have already seen East Sussex Fire & Rescue services talk about their success with Novell Teaming, why not come along and share your experiences? If you are interested, please drop us a line at
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Open Horizons Tour - Event Slides Available
Thanks to all who attended this year's Open Horizons Tour & Summit event at the Four Pillars Hotel, Oxford. Feedback from delegates has been excellent, and we look forward to providing more of the same next year! Registration numbers for the two day Summit event were more than double last years, and we're already looking at ways of making this growing event even better in 2010! For those who attended the Tour event, slide decks are now available here (those who attended the Summit event can download the lab slides seperately from open-horizons.net)
Planning has already commenced for 2010's event, and with the return of BrainShare to Europe in May, there is a lot to look forward to! Stay tuned to find out details of our next event, most likely in the London area in January.
July Event Slides Now Available
The slides from the July meeting at Austin Court are now available from here. The slide deck includes the following presentations :-
Novell Teaming 2 - Robin Redgrave
SSH - Roger Whittaker
AutoYAST - Adam Spiers
The GroupWise Powerguide - Second Edition - Now Available @ Amazon
The English version of The Groupwise Powerguide- Second Edition became
available early May 2009. This completely new version contains a lot of
tips and tricks about GroupWise covering versions 8.0 as well as 7.0.
This book will take everyone who is already working with GroupWise to
the next level. Now includes Business Scenarios and valuable content in 216 topics, all in more than 300 pages. Great value for money - guaranteed to optimize your investment in GroupWise - this book will make you and your organization more effective and efficient.
Buy this book to Support the Community - Profits will further strengthen Open Horizons.
The next Open Horizons UK Meeting will take place at Austin Court, Birmingham on Wednesday 15th July 2009. On the agenda this time around will be sessions on the following topic areas :-
We are fortunate to have sessions delivered by Brian Green, Adam Spiers and Robin Redgrave from Novell UK, as well as presenters from partners such as Salford Software and Vitell. Also, for the first time, we will be having a "Bring Your Own Laptop" session, installing Linux! There are two half day sessions, running in parallel with the presentation tracks where you can lock yourself in a room and have a play around with Linux at your own pace, in a relaxed and supportive environment with your peers. Whether you are an expert or absolute beginner, these sessions are your ideal chance to get away from phones and e-mails and get back to getting your hands dirty.
Current Event Agenda
9.15 – 10.00
Registration
LAB
SLES Installfest – just
BYOL
10.00 – 10.15
Introduction
10.15 – 11.00
Novell keynote
Brian Green, Novell UK Ltd
11.00 – 11.15
TC&B
11.15 – 12.00
Using Domain Services for Windows – a real example
David Guest, Salford Software Ltd
12.00 – 12.45
SSH – more than just logging in
Roger Whittaker, Novell UK Ltd
12.45 – 13.30
Lunch
LAB
SLES Installfest – just
BYOL
13.30 – 14.15
Autoyast – automated server builds
Adam Spiers, Novell UK Ltd
14.15 – 15.00
Asterisk – open source telephony
Nicholas Barnes - Vitell
15.00 – 15.15
TC&B
15.15 – 16.00
Teaming v2 – new look, new features.
Robin Redgrave, Novell UK Ltd
16.00 – 16.15
Q&A /Prize draw /
Close
Registration for this event is now open, click here for further information. Please note this is a members only event, non-members are subject to a fee of £99 per delegate.
Open Horizons UK Launch Event Slides Available
The presentation slides from the highly successful Open Horizons UK event are now available for download. See below for the sessions and links, and keep a close eye on the site for details on our next event in Birmingham in July!
The launch event of the new UK Open Horizons Group
at Novell UK, Bracknell last week was a big success!
A meeting of over 80 customers, partners and Novell employees saw presentations on GroupWise, Teaming + Conferencing, SLES and more over the day.
As well as many previous Groupware User Group members, the event attracted new organisations from outside the GroupWise market and also partners such as ENGL, who are new to the group.
It was also announced on the day that the membership packages are to change, based on personal or corporate membership and also latterly, on the number of contacts required. Now for the first time, it is possible to join Open Horizons online by clicking the button at the top of the home page.
Our next event will be on Wednesday 8th July, arrangements are now taking place for a suitable venue and also content for the day. For the first time, we are also hoping to hold morning and afternoon BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) sessions away from the main presentation track. This is your big opportunity to lock yourself in a room with others and get your hands dirty with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server 11!
Stay tuned for further news on this event and also the upcoming GWAVACon UK events and the three day Open Horizons UK Summit. Join now to be part of the fun!
Event slides will be available from the day soon.
PlateSpin Forge’s ahead in disaster recovery
PlateSpin
has announced the release of a disaster recovery hardware appliance,
PlateSpin Forge, to protect physical and virtual server workloads. John
Ko, product marketing manager for PlateSpin told CRN that PlateSpin
Forge is the company’s first offering specifically targeting the
disaster recovery market. He added that the purpose-built recovery
solution includes prepackaged and preconfigured hardware, software and
virtual infrastructure, addressing issues faced by both SMBs and
enterprise.
US Supreme Court Won't Hear Microsoft's Novell Appeal
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear Microsoft's appeal of Novell's multibillion-dollar antitrust suit against it. The news hit just as Novell's annual BrainShare user conference was
getting starting. Basically a private replay of the Justice
Department's suit against Microsoft, the case involves Novell's claims
that Microsoft targeted WordPerfect and QuattroPro to protect its
operating system monopoly.
Novell - strong results as the company finally sees its efforts rewarded
Last
week Novell unveiled its result for the first quarter of fiscal 2008.
Net revenue was $231m (including $7m positive impact from currency
exchange rates). Income from operations was $8m ($24m non-GAAP or 10%
of revenue, up from a negative 1% a year ago). Non-GAAP net income was
$29m. Comment: Novell has spent the last few years pulling itself up
and improving execution but had, until recently, very little to show
for it. This is no longer the case. The last few quarters have been
increasingly impressive with Novell starting to exceed consensus
estimates, leading to a strong first quarter of fiscal 2008, with total
revenue up 6% and product revenue up 9%.
Novell
announced Feb. 25 that it will acquire Toronto-based virtualization
management software and services provider PlateSpin Ltd. for $205
million in cash. It was the second acquisition Novell has revealed in
12 days. The Waltham, Mass.-based enterprise software maker bought
open-source team collaboration software provider SiteScape -- founder
of the ICEcore open-source collaboration project -- on Feb. 13.
Novell has acquired SiteScape, a provider of collaboration
solutions and the founder of the ICEcore open source collaboration
project. The merger between the two companies will create
interoperable, open source and open standards-based workspaces to help
with team productivity. Financial terms of the deal were not released
but SiteScape would become a fully owned subsidiary of Novell and all
the employees will fold into Novell's ranks. Also, the SiteScape brand
will no longer exist as part of the acquisition.
vCard automates the exchange of personal information typically found on a traditional business card. vCard is used in applications such as Internet mail, voice mail, Web browsers, telephony applications, call centers, video conferencing, PIMs (Personal Information Managers), PDAs (Personal Data Assistants), pagers, fax, office equipment, and smart cards. vCard information goes way beyond simple text, and includes elements like pictures, company logos, live Web addresses, and so on.
vCalendar defines a transport and platform-independent format for exchanging calendaring and scheduling information in an easy, automated, and consistent manner. It captures information about event and "to-do" items that are normally used by applications such as a personal information managers (PIMs) and group schedulers. Programs that use vCalendar can exchange important data about events so that you can schedule meetings with anyone who has a vCalendar-aware program.
BES 5.0.1 Public Beta - Announced by Alex Evans (Novell)
Great news to share this week. I (Alex Evans, Novell) got a call from my counterpart at RIM
and they are releasing a public beta of their BES 5.0.1 for GroupWise.
We have been running 5.0.1 in house for a number of months as part of
the early adopter program, so we have been validating it against the
latest GroupWise agents.
Novell Conferencing—a cost-effective, easy-to-use web conferencing solution—is now available.
Novell Conferencing helps organizations reduce travel costs by
instantly sharing documents, web pages, whiteboards, audio and
video—even recording meetings—without any participant software to
install. Novell Conferencing is also the only solution that integrates
with Novell GroupWise. While users are in their GroupWise mailbox, they
can simply click on a Novell Messenger (formerly GroupWise Messenger)
icon to schedule or instantly launch a web conference.
The open technology preview Novell announced
at BrainShare U.S. has been extremely successful. As of April 19, Novell
had 1,522
downloads and very productive discussion taking place in the Novell
forums. As a
reminder, the technology preview--as well as available supporting
resources--can
be found at http://www.novell.com/mobilitypreview.
Properly register & update OES2 Server via Novell Customer Care Center
Do
you
have machines in your Novell Customer Care Center that come up as
unknown or
just do not look right? Have a look at this tip from Norm O'Neal, as he
describes a quick way to fix this situation. By the way, Norm is the
president of Open Horizons - US Midwest, a NUI chapter which recently
decided to "convert" to Open Horizons - congratulations to Norm and his
crew - keep up the good work!
BrainShare is back in Europe - Join us in Amsterdam & Receive a Bonus Gift
Novell BrainShare is back and not just once, but twice. Novell surprised
many of us when announcing that in 2010 their great BrainShare event
will not only run in Salt Lake City (US) in March, but also in Europe.
And more precisely, in wonderful Amsterdam (NL), a city full of surprising views,
museums, music and much more. Of course the Open Horizons community
will be very involved with this event and together with Novell we are
planning quite a few surprising activities before and during this event.
Register via Open Horizons for BrainShare at this page - Receive a cool Bonus Gift Package!
Get Open Horizons Books for FREE @ BrainShare Amsterdam
Yes, that is right! Novell has bought a large number of Open
Horizons books and these will be offered as FREE
gift to participants at BrainShare - for as long as stock will least. Early Bird Discount of 200 Euro is available until April 16, so hurry and register NOW for BrainShare Amsterdam to
receive one of these cool books for FREE!
Introducing the Novell Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack Technology Preview
Be among the first to get your hands on this highly anticipated
product! Novell is pleased to announce an open technology preview of
the Novell Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack, scheduled for availability
mid-year. This product will synchronize GroupWise e-mail, calendar data
and contacts with all ActiveSync-enabled devices—including the Apple
iPhone. It will also serve as a replacement for GroupWise Mobile
Server. To download the technology preview today, visit http://www.novell.com/mobilitypreview.
Spring Clean on Novell File Management Suite
Clean up your file storage and reduce costs.
Reduce complexity and costs. With Novell File Management Suite you can
turn your file storage chaos into organized efficiency. Order by 30
April next and receive a 15% discount.
Documents, presentations and spreadsheets, represent an organization’s
precious intellectual capital, but they are also the fastest-growing data type
within organizations, consuming storage space at faster rates for longer periods
of time. The proliferation of this data creates storage management challenges
that increase your administrative and infrastructure costs.
I want to share with you an important announcement that Novell made today.
As you may know, on March 2nd, Elliott Associates, L.P. announced
an unsolicited, conditional proposal to acquire Novell. Today we issued
a press release announcing that our Board of Directors has concluded,
after careful consideration, including a review of the proposal with
its independent financial and legal advisors, that Elliott's proposal
is inadequate and that it undervalues the Company's franchise and
growth prospects.
Novell released the latest and final support pack today for Novell
GroupWise 7. It is Novell GroupWise 7.0.4 and it is available for
immediate download.
GroupWise 7.0.4 is a compilation of all Hot Patches and Field Test
Files since Novell released GroupWise 7.0.3. GroupWise 7.0.3 was
released in early 2008 and since then customers have been able to
download Hot Patches, updates and changes through regular support
channels and their Novell Technical Services representative.
Novell Releases Hosted Conferencing to Complete Collaboration Portfolio
Novell
today announced the availability of a hosted version of Novell
Conferencing. This new conferencing solution enables users to conduct
virtual meetings, demos and Webinars using a Web browser. With this Web
conferencing technology, organizations can significantly reduce the
cost and time required for face-to-face travel by instantly sharing
documents, desktops, applications, Web pages, whiteboards, audio, video
- even record meeting - without installing any software.
Bill Pray on Elliott/Novell – What Might Happen to GroupWise
Check out this blog by Bill Pray, previous GroupWise Product Manager, on the future of GroupWise. What-if...
The bid by Elliott for Novell has lead to speculation on what may
happen should the buyout be successful. Blogs from Drue Reeves (Novell Going Private?) and Richard Jones (Elliott/Novell: Implications on SUSE)
have highlighted their observations. Having been a former Novell
employee and product manager for GroupWise, I want to take the
opportunity to add my observations on what might happen to Novell’s
communications and collaboration technologies should the buyout occur.
GroupWise has been a solid, mature, feature rich, enterprise solution for many years.
Today Novell´s CEO Ron Hovsepian did send an email-invitation to all Novell customers for BrainShare EMEA 2010 in Amsterdam:
To Our Customers,
We heard you loud and clear at the Customer Advisory Board last
year that BrainShare is a critical component of your overall education
and training on all things Novell. Based on your feedback, we've
streamlined BrainShare this year to make it a leaner, more focused, and
more relevant technical conference.
I wanted to contact you personally to address recent news about Novell.
Late Tuesday, March 2, Novell received an unsolicited, conditional
proposal from Elliott Associates, L.P. to acquire Novell for $5.75 per
share in cash. Elliott is an investment firm that holds shares of
Novell stock. As you will see in our news release,
we anticipate Novell's Board of Directors will review Elliott's
proposal in consultation with Novell's financial and legal advisors.
Beyond that, it is business as usual for us at Novell.
Announcing general availability of Novell Teaming 2.1. You can now
download, upgrade and roll out the very latest version of Novell
Teaming. Since Teaming 2.0 released last July, the engineering team has
put together an exciting update to this piece of our collaboration
portfolio.
Novell have announced the availability of ZENworks Configuration Management 10 Support Pack 2. As well as many bug fixes, there are numerous enhancements new to this release. To find out more, visit the Cool Blogs entry on this.
GWAVACon US, January 2009 presentations.
If you didn't get to this key conference then you can still view the presentations. Lots of new information on ZENworks, OES and of course GroupWise.
The entire crowd at the conference was not at all surprised at this
"techical snafu" As seasoned and experienced Network Administrators,
consultants, resellers and support engineers - they know how mission
critical email is in their organizations and have come to rely on the
stability of GroupWise.
a well established and highly popular enterprise
communication and collaboration system that provides organisations with
e-mail, calendaring and scheduling, Instant Messaging, task management,
contact management, and document management features. Desktop GroupWise
clients are available for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating
systems and a sophisticated thin client is compatible with all modern
Web browsers.
South African Dept. of Home Affairs Taps Novell for Worldwide Collaboration on Linux
WALTHAM, Mass. -- April 3, 2006 -- Novell and the South African
Department of Home Affairs have announced the launch of a global
project to deploy the Novell(R) GroupWise(R) collaboration solution
running on SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server at each of the department's
635 foreign missions, border posts, and local offices. The
project represents one of the biggest Linux-based solutions in the
South African national government. As a result, South Africa's
Home Affairs Department gains a reliable, secure collaboration platform
that leverages the low cost and flexibility of open source.
"We need follow-the-sun technology, since wherever the sun goes, a Home
Affairs official wakes up with the intent of rendering a service" said
Kgabo Hlahla, Deputy Director General of Information Systems at the
Department of Home Affairs. "Our officials need access to
information and communications capabilities at their fingertips. Since
we are also dealing with confidential and private information, security
is a key priority."
Looking for something to do on Sunday evening before BrainShare begins?
Come join GWAVA and our partners for a free movie at the downtown
MegaPlex at the Gateway Mall, a walkable distance from the Salt Palace
Convention Center. GWAVA is offering free tickets to any BrainShare
attendees who wish to join us to watch the “Bounty Hunter,” starring
Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Seating is limited, so make sure
you register to reserve your spot as soon as possible. 
en Horizons UK now has a Facebook page, why not follow us and be kept right up to date with the latest news? Go to 
You can now follow Open Horizons UK by going to
If you plan on registering for 
The next Open Horizons UK Meeting will take place at 
PlateSpin
has announced the release of a disaster recovery hardware appliance,
PlateSpin Forge, to protect physical and virtual server workloads. John
Ko, product marketing manager for PlateSpin told CRN that PlateSpin
Forge is the company’s first offering specifically targeting the
disaster recovery market. He added that the purpose-built recovery
solution includes prepackaged and preconfigured hardware, software and
virtual infrastructure, addressing issues faced by both SMBs and
enterprise. 
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear Microsoft's appeal of Novell's multibillion-dollar antitrust suit against it. The news hit just as Novell's annual BrainShare user conference was
getting starting. Basically a private replay of the Justice
Department's suit against Microsoft, the case involves Novell's claims
that Microsoft targeted WordPerfect and QuattroPro to protect its
operating system monopoly. 
Novell
announced Feb. 25 that it will acquire Toronto-based virtualization
management software and services provider PlateSpin Ltd. for $205
million in cash. It was the second acquisition Novell has revealed in
12 days. The Waltham, Mass.-based enterprise software maker bought
open-source team collaboration software provider SiteScape -- founder
of the ICEcore open-source collaboration project -- on Feb. 13. 
Novell Conferencing—a cost-effective, easy-to-use web conferencing solution—is 
technology preview Novell announced
at BrainShare U.S. has been extremely successful. As of April 19, Novell
had 1,522
downloads and very productive discussion taking place in the Novell
forums. As a
reminder, the technology preview--as well as available supporting
resources--can
be found at http://www.novell.com/mobilitypreview. 
Do
you
have machines in your Novell Customer Care Center that come up as
unknown or
just do not look right? Have a look at this tip from Norm O'Neal, as he
describes a quick way to fix this situation. By the way, Norm is the
president of Open Horizons - US Midwest, a NUI chapter which recently
decided to "convert" to Open Horizons - congratulations to Norm and his
crew - keep up the good work!
Be among the first to get your hands on this highly anticipated
product! Novell is pleased to announce an open technology preview of
the Novell Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack, scheduled for availability
mid-year. This product will synchronize GroupWise e-mail, calendar data
and contacts with all ActiveSync-enabled devices—including the Apple
iPhone. It will also serve as a replacement for GroupWise Mobile
Server. To download the technology preview today, visit 
Dear Customer:
Novell released the latest and final support pack today for Novell
GroupWise 7. It is Novell GroupWise 7.0.4 and it is available for
immediate download.
Check out 
Announcing general availability of Novell Teaming 2.1. You can now
download, upgrade and roll out the very latest version of Novell
Teaming. Since Teaming 2.0 released last July, the engineering team has
put together an exciting update to this piece of our collaboration
portfolio. 
I was at GWAVACon Las Vegas this week when this article hit the news wire. Check out this link 