Novell Vibe – Collaboration Coming to The Guarantee

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.