Humans love to share, it is inherently part of our nature. As difficult as this may seem to today’s kids, the Internet – and Facebook! – wasn’t always there for us through the ages. For thousands of years, humans would gather around a warm fire and tell stories. That was the best way of sharing information, morals, histories, etc. In many parts of the world, it is still done that way.
But in our corporate-connected-hectic-instant-always on-dispersed business world, how many of us really have time to gather around a fire to share information? Most of us barely have time to do so with friends and family! Consequently, now more than ever, it is critical that organizations empower their people with collaboration tools that are: 1) easy to use, 2) secure, and 3) accessible from anywhere.
Thinking of SharePoint, right? That’s what comes to mind when most people talk about “collaboration” in the enterprise. Yet many customers have reported to us that SharePoint is an expensive proposition – out of the box, it does indeed provide some basic collaboration tools, but more often than not, the implementation of this solution turns out to be a never-ending, cash-gobbling affair. Worse, users often report that, well…”that’s not really what we needed”.
What they need is a place to converse, to share information, files, calendars, tasks, documentation. A true workspace paradigm that allows all team members to collaborate and contribute from anywhere.
Oh, and to be able to do so easily!
What they need, really, is Novell Vibe.
So far, Europeans have been much more open in adopting this solution:
We have seen much more traction in Europe with our Teaming/Vibe OnPrem product than in North America. It could be due to partner engagement, less Microsoft adoption and/or more openness to Open Source solutions. This is reflected in our public success stories. See http://www.novell.com/products/vibe-onprem/resource-library/success.html. Probably more then 70-80% are from Europe. I would love to see more in North America, and we are seeing the beginnings of that since we released version 3 in Dec.
Tracy Smith
Product Manager, Novell Vibe
Of course, there are always exceptions! The Guarantee Company of North America, based in Toronto, Canada, recently purchased 400 licenses of Novell Vibe. They plan on rolling out the product to a select group of users initially, mainly situated in their Montreal office.
Robert Reid, Network Manager at The Guarantee, was approached by one of the business units back in August 2010 to see if IT could provide a Discussion Board for them. They started looking at different solutions, but couldn’t find anything that really met all of their needs. In November, Reid read about Vibe OnPrem on the Novell web site, and so in early December he downloaded a trial version and quickly built a server to host the application.
“We realized right away that Vibe would meet the needs for our Discussion Board, and so much more!” says Reid. “In just 2 days, we whipped together a Workspace for the IT department, putting into production a Calendar, Task list and Wiki. We made usage of the Workspace mandatory for all of the IT staff.”
At the end of January, the IT group presented Vibe to the other business units at their annual conference.
“The crowd was absolutely Wowed!” says Reid, “So in February, we created a workspace for the first business unit and gave them access. By March, users were regularly contributing to the workspace. They loved it!”
“This is going to revolutionize the way we work,” says Chris Austin, Vice President, Information Technology. “All of our employees will now have the power to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and contribute their skills and knowledge to the rest of the organization, no matter where they are located. Our President has even agreed to write a monthly blog in Vibe which will be seen on the main landing page.”
Adaris has already started working with The Guarantee to help them develop their Vibe skills, bringing not only our knowledge of the product to the table, but our creativity in use cases.
We will be writing more about the Vibe implementation at The Guarantee in the weeks and months to come, explaining how the deployment and – more importantly – the adoption is progressing within the user base.
See how the University of Munich decided on Novell Vibe as well!
Humans love to share, it is inherently part of our nature. As difficult as this may seem to today’s kids, the Internet – and Facebook! – wasn’t always there for us through the ages. For thousands of years, humans would gather around a warm fire and tell stories. That was the best way of sharing information, morals, histories, etc. In many parts of the world, it is still done that way.
But in our corporate-connected-hectic-instant-always on-dispersed business world, how many of us really have time to gather around a fire to share information? Most of us barely have time to do so with friends and family! Consequently, now more than ever, it is critical that organizations empower their people with collaboration tools that are: 1) easy to use, 2) secure, and 3) accessible from anywhere.
Thinking of SharePoint, right? That’s what comes to mind when most people talk about “collaboration” in the enterprise. Yet many customers have reported to us that SharePoint is an expensive proposition – out of the box, it does indeed provide some basic collaboration tools, but more often than not, the implementation of this solution turns out to be a never-ending, cash-gobbling affair. Worse, users often report that, well…”that’s not really what we needed”.
What they need is a place to converse, to share information, files, calendars, tasks, documentation. A true workspace paradigm that allows all team members to collaborate and contribute from anywhere.
Oh, and to be able to do so easily!
What they need, really, is Novell Vibe.
So far, Europeans have been much more open in adopting this solution:
We have seen much more traction in Europe with our Teaming/Vibe OnPrem product than in North America. It could be due to partner engagement, less Microsoft adoption and/or more openness to Open Source solutions. This is reflected in our public success stories. See http://www.novell.com/products/vibe-onprem/resource-library/success.html. Probably more then 70-80% are from Europe. I would love to see more in North America, and we are seeing the beginnings of that since we released version 3 in Dec.
Tracy Smith
Product Manager, Novell Vibe
Of course, there are always exceptions! The Guarantee Company of North America, based in Toronto, Canada, has recently purchased 400 licenses of Novell Vibe. They plan on rolling out the product to a select group of users initially, mainly situated in their Montreal office.
