June 1994
So much has happened to WordPerfect and Novell in the last three or four months that it's difficult to even list it all. Ray Norda has been replaced by Bob Frankenberg and Novell has embarked on changing the future direction of the company, starting by acquiring WordPerfect. WordPerfect has not only given up its autonomy in the interest of future growth as part of a larger whole, it has also been rearranging its own product line and announcing new products on a steady basis. We decided to put it all together in one giant, multi-part pile.Building the Greater Novell:
1. The WordPerfect Acquisition
On Monday March 25th, the computer industry had to be rethought, as Novell changed its position and those of other important players, by simultaneously purchasing WordPerfect Corporation and merging it into Novell as a wholly owned subsidiary and a part of its new Applications Software Group and, at the same time, acquiring the QuattroPro product (and about 100 technical staff) from Borland International. This moves Novell from a position of Number 3 in the PC Software business (behind Microsoft and Lotus) to a very clear Number 2.
It also means big changes for both WordPerfect and Novell.
- Ad Rietveld, the President of WordPerfect, will go to Novell to head up the new WordPerfect subsidiary. WordPerfect founders Alan Ashton and Bruce Bastian will probably now pursue other interests, which they have wanted to do for some time.
- Novell got out of the applications software business years ago, after a few flings, in favor of not competing with its application developer partners. It now finds itself the owner, via its acquisitions of WordPerfect and Borland's QuattroPro, of one of the largest applications software companies.
- It's not at all clear: (1) How Novell's partners will react to Novell's re-entry into the applications software market; and (2) how good Novell will be at managing a market area they have long avoided.
The cooperation of Novell's partners is particularly key, since the Applications Software Division (WordPerfect) will be counting on them to provide the distribution and support magic for their complex products -- such as WordPerfect Office -- that was formerly difficult to identify and provide.
Building the Greater Novell:
2. Novell names Frankenberg CEO
With the naming of Robert J. Frankenberg as CEO on April 5th, Novell seems to be moving in the direction of a new strategy. Novell has been looking for a new CEO for some time, and speculation raged as to who might take over the crown. Frankenberg looks like an ideal candidate, with big company experience, broad exposure to multiple technologies and a fine track record for taking than successful product lines and turning them around.
He will have his work cut out for him with all this on his plate:
- Integrating the WordPerfect acquisition (to say nothing of continuing to integrate and refine the multitude of previous acquisitions, including Novell's purchases of UNIX, DR-DOS, and Serius's Object Tools. All of these older acquisitions have terrific prospects, but have yet to contribute strongly to Novell's bottom line.
- Getting the Novell customer set moved over to the 4.x NetWare product offering. Customers have been reluctant to move up from 3.3. There will be a big revenue hit available to Novell once the main market migration begins in force.
- Controlling any mutinies in the Novell partner ranks as a result of Novell's entry into the application software business with its acquisition of WordPerfect. Novell and Frankenberg look on this change as a natural event caused by the dynamics of the business, but the partners feel the pressure of a powerful new competitor.
Frankenberg sees his job as an exciting opportunity to participate in bringing the next generation of applications -- networked applications -- to market. He thinks that while he has a lot to learn, Novell will be able to continue to go with the networking industry to be involved with partners, customers, and competitors, even while they're changing the rules of the game by themselves participating in the applications market.
Frankenberg offered at his inaugural teleconference a kind of Integrating Technologies Roadmap for Novell's Future. We've given it a visual representation.
Novell Roadmap for Integrating Technologies
Networked Applications from Novell and Others Real Groupware WP Engines for Document Processing, WorkFlow, Editors, Email, Information Management Tools for Application Development Unix, WordPerfect Engines, Tools for AppWare (Serius, Others) Platforms, Tools for Applications Development In this view of the world, Novell adds to its ability to offer operating systems and development tools a new class of development tools -- WordPerfect's engines -- that it believes will put it firmly into the Networked Applications business. (This, of course, is in addition to Novell's ongoing NetWare and UnixWare NOS business.)
It's clear that Frankenberg feels Novell's real competitor is Microsoft and that it will be able to compete because Novell has the ability to offer networked applications and to sell and support them -- skills Frankenberg thinks Microsoft will have trouble matching.
Novell's channel is certainly the envy of the industry, and having WordPerfect's Office Suite couldn't hurt that channel, so Frankenberg may be right. We still think he's got a lot of integrating to do and a big, hard job to keep the focus.
If you are a Novell user, we'd appreciate hearing from you about how you feel about:
- Frankenberg as the new CEO; and
- Novell's chances as a networked applications vendor.
From WordPerfect Office to Symmetry to GroupWise
WordPerfect has resolved a troubling semantic problem by renaming its WordPerfect Office groupware product, an amalgam of Email, calendar and scheduling, and form routing for the second time.. The product has done very well in the marketplace, moving from a 7% market share of installed mail boxes in 1992 to a 19.8% share in 1993, tied with Microsoft, and coming up nicely on Lotus' first place position (with cc:Mail) at 27.5%.
In May, WordPerfect chose to pave the way for an office suite product by renaming WordPerfect Office Symmetry, but the name turns out to have been previously used in other contexts. Rather than enter a long battle, WordPerfect and Novell have chosen to rename the product Novell GroupWise 4.l.
We hope you are now all sufficiently confused. That's too bad, because GroupWise /Symmetry/WordPerfect Office -- or whatever it's called - is a very good product.
GroupWise Function Description
Electronic Mail: Cross-platform; gateways to almost every Email system imaginable.
Personal Calendar: Personal and scheduled appointments, meetings, and events. Day and week plus custom views. Personal notes and To Do Lists.
Group Scheduler: Schedules users, groups of users, and resources. Checks calendar conflicts across post offices and platforms (Handles multiple time zones).
Task Management: Delegation of work to others, by placing it on their Calendar Task List, including assigning priorities, completion times, etc.
Rules-Based Message Management: Allows users to manage incoming mail by sorting, filing, delegating, deleting, or rejecting it. Actions are triggered by text in the message header or text.
Status Tracking: GroupWise Out Box shows when messages are delivered, opened, and deleted; where routed messages are; and the status of delegated requests.
Proxy: An agent can be authorized to have read and/or write access to some or all of his GroupWise functions. Others may continue to be held confidential.
But the term "Office" has been preempted in the marketplace by the Office Suites, which are entirely different products, sets of individual personal productivity applications usually including Word Processing, Spread Sheets, Graphics, Personal Information Managers, and Data Bases plus an Email client. The fabulous success of Microsoft in the Office space has caused confusion in the market for the WordPerfect product, leading customers to assume that it would include, for instance, WordPerfect's flagship word processing product.
WordPerfect has participated in the suite business, but until its PC Expo announcement, only by packaging WordPerfect as part of the Borland Office Suite. Now, with the purchase of WordPerfect, Borland's QuattroPro and 1 Million licenses to Borland's Paradox, Novell intends to offer a WordPerfect Office Suite, called PerfectOffice.
Enter Symmetry, a semantic solution to this semantic problem. Obviously, the name was to suggest a balanced approach for WordPerfect's continuing strategy for enterprise messaging, as well as getting them out of the confusion surrounding the Office name.
It also did something else, which the renaming to Novell GroupWise may accomplish even better. It suitably repositions the product as an enterprise product, rather than only a workgroup product. This is important because WordPerfect has a very broad approach to supporting interconnectivity with WordPerfect Office/Symmetry/GroupWise and part of the May 24 announcement included enhancements to the number of servers and clients supported. Significant enhancements were also made to many of the clients, especially to the Windows client.
GroupWise will support 12 client platforms, four remote client platforms, ten server platforms, and 23 gateways. All of these will be available at first ship, which is expected to be in the July time frame. GroupWise 4.1 is completely compatible with WordPerfect Office 4.0a.
GroupWise Clients and Servers
Clients Remote Clients Servers Windows Windows OS/2 Macintosh Macintosh Unix - HP/UX Power Macintosh (Native DOS Mode) Unix - IBM AIX Unix - HP/UX Unix - SCO UNIX Unix - IBM AIX Unix - DG/UX Unix - SCO UNIX Unix - Sun Solaris 2.x Unix - DG/UX Unix - Sun OS 4.1.3 Unix - Sun Solaris 2.x Unix - SVR4 for Intel Unix - Sun OS 4.1.3 Unix - SVR4 for Intel Extensive use of Novel NLM's will be used and the release will support native TCP/IP.
GroupWise also supports other servers including a Telephone Access Server, Pager Gateway, and an Electronic ListServer (permits users on a list to receive any new information sent to members of that list, supporting Internet style forums).
WordPerfect believes that GroupWise offers a balanced approach to the needs of the organization, balancing the interests of business managers and end users, technologists, and MIS departments.
MIS Enhancements for Ease of Installation and Administration, Lower Cost of Ownership, Reliability, Automatic Software Distribution, and Easier Installation and Configuration include:
Installation:
Assisted Install for Novice Users
Simplified Client Install
Directory Synchronization for NetWare Bindery Global MHS, PROFS, cc:Mail, All-In-1
Improved Up-Time Support:
24x7 Message Store Reliability via on-line maintenance and auto-detect and correct
SNMP Support for Statistics and AlertsAdministrative Support:
Scalable enterprise-wide administration, including:
Central and distributed administration
Automation directory synchronization between domains
Electronic software distribution
All GroupWise 4.01 products are fully compatible with WordPerfect Office 4.0a, so users can upgrade one piece at a time, on their own schedule.
Enhancements for Technologists:
Client/Server Architecture:
All 12 desktop platforms and servers, spanning 11 operating systems, are built on the same core-code engine, with identical functionality and feature sets
Enterprise Scalability:
High capacity server support for better performance, high up-time, and increased administration capabilities
Server platforms include NLM'S, OS/2, DOS, and 7 versions of UnixConnectivity and Interoperability:
Better co-existence with other Email systems, including the Internet, X.400, and SNADS
Interoperability and directory synchronization between GroupWise and OfficeVision VM (OV/VM), Lotus cc:Mail and NetWare Global MHSEnhancements for Business Managers
Ease of Use
Single In Box for Mail, Appointments, Tasks, Custom Messages
Perfect Fit Technology - Same interface and dialogues as Suite
List Server - Internet style participation in discussions
Platform Choice and Application Integration with 12 client platforms supported
Supports Mobile clients including Telephone, Wireless (RAM Modem) Pager, Incoming Fax
Applications integration with Simple MAPI, xzAOCE, AppleScriptBy now you will have recognized that WordPerfect's GroupWise is destined to compete with Microsoft's EMS products, just now being introduced to the marketplace as Microsoft Exchange (and which we'll cover next month) and Lotus's LCS enterprise strategy, which is now accreting around the Notes platform. Both of these strategies are also built on the notion of enterprise support and a client/server strategy, but there are clear trade-offs:
- Lotus emphasizes its document- and communications-centric Notes product and its ability to store and retrieve unstructured information and to apply structure to it, as well as the ability to replicate document data bases.
- WordPerfect does not have an information store per se, but can clearly use its OpenDoc strategy to store compound documents and its document management software to retrieve them. There is less granularity. WordPerfect offers the most cross-platform capability, with far more choices for clients and servers.
- Microsoft offers new enterprise messaging choices that will be tightly integrated with their own operating system and application software strategies. They will be less open -- but they don't need to be as "open," since Microsoft, almost by definition, will set the de facto standards which high market share establishes, and that in itself, is an important definition of openness.
We thought it was time for another table.
Office Software Alternatives
Vendor Messaging Strategy Office Suite Other Lotus LCS cc:Mail SmartSuite Notes, SoftSwitch Microsoft EMS MS Mail OfficeSuite Information Exchange Novell/WordPerfect GroupWise GroupWise PerfectOffice Novell MHS Expect all these vendors to offer, over time (some already, some soon, some much later):
An office suite
An enterprise communications strategy
A tight integration between these two strategies
Their own scripting language, permitting this environment to be a "platform" for application development
Some kind of workflow, at least at the forms routing level
Some assurances of commitment to standards and openness, permitting other vendors' applications to be used, "plug and play" with their environment
API's that permit other vendors to make their office applications "look" like the vendor partner of choice (perhaps with a license fee resulting to the look's owner)
Let the games begin.
WordPerfect Announces PerfectOffice 3.0
It was perfectly obvious that WordPerfect cleaned up its act in the Email market by renaming its WordPerfect Office product first Symmetry and now GroupWise (which is really an Email, Calendar and Schedule product) so that it could clear the way to enter the "real" Office market -- the very competitive world of the office suites. PerfectOffice, the Novell/WordPerfect offering is a big, fullfledged office suite, designed to try to make a major dent in the suite market as quickly as possible.
PerfectOffice will come in three flavors:
Feature Standard Professional Select* Word Perfect Word Processing X
X X QuattroPro Spreadsheet X X X WordPerfect Presentations X X X InfoCentral (Personal Information Manager) X X X Envoy (Workgroup Publishing Tool) X X X GroupWise Client (Workgroup Application with email, calendaring, and scheduling) X X X Paradox Relational Database X X Visual AppBuilder (5th Generation Visual Custom Development Tool) X X WordPerfect Workgroup Applications X WordPerfect Consumer Products X Third-Party Applications X *Any product may be swapped for a third party product, provided it is compatible with WordPerfect PerfectOffice interfaces and integration.
WordPerfect Professional is a more robust, high-featured version of WordPerfect's PerfectOffice. WordPerfect Select makes use of WordPerfect's open office architecture to permit the user to select applications on a mix and match basis, including third-party applications which have been integrated by WordPerfect or third-party ISO’s to the WordPerfect PerfectOffice API's.
WordPerfect employs the DAD Interface throughout PerfectOffice, offering a way of accessing all applications through a single, configurable interface. Other applications may be accessed through DAD and DAD may be configured as a palette or tool bar and placed anywhere on the screen.
PerfectOffice also emphasizes task automation through automating tasks via QuickTasks. QuickTasks can create and run macros that include multiple applications and are selectable from DAD. PerfectOffice ships with more than 20 predefined QuickTasks, and users can also build their own, adding them to the DAD.
PerfectSense linguistic technology, used throughout the product, extends the ability to recognize words beyond a word itself, to words with the same meaning. For instance, a search for purchase, would also find "buy".
The Perfect Office suite is also designed as networked software, with network and workgroup services built in including installation, distribution, software administration, access to network services and compatibility with document management solutions. It also includes workgroup publishing support via Envoy and integrated email, calendaring and scheduling via integration with GroupWise.
WordPerfect offers 6 months of toll-free, no charge support for all applications in the suite for new suite buyers, including Paradox purchased as part of the suite. The product will ship this fall; pricing is not yet announced.
The $64,000 question is, of course, can WordPerfect overtake Lotus and gain the Number 2 position, vying with Microsoft for the Number 1 position in the Office Suites market. Whoever ends up in the Number 3 spot in the suites market is definitely going to have a problem. WordPerfect clearly has a much stronger installed base in word processing than Lotus, but suite buyers rate ease of use as Number One in making suite purchases and that may be a hard nut for WordPerfect to crack. They've always been considered great software, but never easy to use. On the other hand, leveraging the WordPerfect and the Novell cards in tandem is going to be hard to beat and Lotus may be hard pressed to stay ahead.
WordPerfect's InfoCentral
WordPerfect has rolled out a number of consumer market products recently, targeting the more budget conscious home market. These products are not only intended to be less expensive software; they are also intended to run well on the less powerful PC's that are often found in home offices.
A number of these products are educational games that seem less suitable for our review (although certainly lots of fun). One product, however, which we have already mentioned here when we first spotted it at Fall COMDEX last November, seems worthy of a second mention at its formal debut. That is InfoCentral, an intelligent information manager which we can't imagine why WordPerfect positioned for the home market. The product is certainly useful to anyone, at home or in a corporate office, but this product is good enough to hold its own anywhere. Its initial home market positioning is sure to make it hard to find in the business software market and its relatively low price may discourage potential buyers from taking it seriously. Don't. This product is worthy of your inspection.
Recently WordPerfect has "corrected" this mistake by including InfoCentral in its new PerfectOffice office suite, but while this makes the product available at no additional cost to anyone who buys the suite, it leaves it in limbo for everyone else. Products hidden in suites don't necessarily have separate markets on their own. That would be too bad and you may want to look this product up.
InfoCentral is a PIM (Personal Information Manager) based on object-oriented technology. This permits user customization, easy linkage of information objects to one another (one of the basic ideas in InfoCentral) and a flexible, highly visual drag-and-drop interface metaphor.
The unique idea behind the product is to intelligently connect information between people, places, things, and events. A user can associate any individual with any places, things, or events (or other people), using any convenient view. That individual will now be available for retrieval through any of those relationships. When a new entry is related to an existing entry, establishing their relationship tells the iBase much additional information about the new entry.
Information stored in InfoCentral may be viewed as an outline, an address book (sortable by various fields), or a calendar (viewable by day, week or year). The calendar view also includes a related To Do list.
Information in InfoCentral is stored in iBases (Information Bases). WordPerfect is shipping several useful information bases with InfoCentral, including a company and product list for computer hardware and software companies and one for the top 500 consumer product companies as well as an international business travel list of hotels, restaurants, rental car agencies and airports plus a wine list. Users can, of course, create their own iBases.
InfoCentral is mail-enabled to work with WordPerfect office as well as any VIM- or MAPI- compatible Email application. InfoCentral users can launch any Windows application from within InfoCentral. Any document created through this integration will automatically be indexed in InfoCentral and accessible from it.
InfoCentral runs on any -836 or higher IBM PC-compatible with 4Mb or more of RAM and Windows 3.x. It requires 4-6 Mb of hard disk space (plus space for your iBases). The product will carry a list price of $149. WordPerfect intends to offer InfoCentral for other operating systems and in a workgroup version, leaving us to believe that it is really a business product for offices of any size.
Don't Forget WordPerfect's Envoy
In the crush of events surrounding WordPerfect's acquisition by Novell, we have all managed to overlook their announcement of Envoy, WordPerfect's March entry into the viewer marketplace. This is a market already filled with products, but not with buyers, as the products struggle to convince organizations that their point of view is the way to go. Interestingly, each product in this market has a different point of view and target customer. so we may be looking at a series of overlapping markets, rather than shares of a single "viewer' market with distinct and unvarying characteristics.
Viewers (in case you never read a computer publication -- but we know that's not true) are designed to let you read complex documents with embedded graphics and format intact (like newsletter pages) without having to own the underlying applications or the formatting environment like the desktop publisher or Lotus Notes). Some viewers assume that everyone will own their own viewer and arriving documents will be able to take advantage of it (Adobe's Acrobat). Others (Interleaf World View and now WordPerfect's Envoy) are designed to be attached to the distributed document and published with it so the recipient doesn't need anything else to open and read the document.
Envoy is designed to be small and unobtrusive so that attaching it to a document which will be electronically transmitted doesn't represent an undue burden.
Viewers are not cheap. Viewers purchased for individual desktops in your organization typically end up costing about $200 each (less in very large quantities). Viewers designed to be purchased by document publishers for attachment to documents have costs relating to the volumes of documents they will be attached to; in large volumes they can be relatively inexpensive -- less than printing an equivalent long document on paper and distributing it.
Your organization will need to support at least one of these models -- and perhaps more than one -- to provide appropriate interactions with itself, with customers, and with suppliers and reference sources. You may want to begin looking at the choices and we'd recommend Envoy as a good place to start.
Comments or Questions: Send Email to opinions@wohl.com
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Entire contents © 1994 by Amy D. Wohl. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden.
