I often get asked by the curious, “What’s the evolution of GroupWise look like?” Of course, there’s the next version of GroupWise that’s on the horizon—and Micro Focus GroupWise 18 will deliver solid value and new benefits. But is GroupWise 18 the “evolution” of GroupWise? Or would a true evolution be something more than the next version?

In my opinion, a true evolution shows more than just the expansion and growth delivered in the next version of a product. A true evolution of GroupWise would show the ability to adapt to changing needs of both the customers and market, while adopting forward thinking communication trends that allows it to thrive in tomorrow’s world. And I’m happy to say—it’s arrived!

Today at Techconnect 2017, Micro Focus unveiled Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging, a comprehensive collaboration product enabling employees to collaborate anytime, anywhere on any device while ensuring total security. To me, this is the “evolution” of GroupWise into a true enterprise messaging platform—not just an email platform. Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging provides a secure, convenient way for employees to be productive, no matter the devices they use. This new solution also gives IT Admins end-to-end visibility into the organization’s collaboration and business communications. By including a complete archiving solution, Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging makes email data more accessible to help simplify laborious compliance requirements often needed in today’s world.

The nature of business communication is constantly changing, with an ever-growing demand for employees to be more mobile, more instant, and more dynamic. However, increased regulatory pressures combined with rapidly growing communication data creates a slow and difficult process to access and search archived information. GroupWise needed to evolve into something more to address these needs. And it has, with Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging. Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging bolsters productivity with unified instant and persistent exchange of messages, incorporating email, instant messaging, and the latest social networking trends for a true messaging platform. It also provides access to relevant files and communication history, and delivers unprecedented security, in-depth forensics, messaging archiving, auditing and collaboration oversight – allowing IT Admins to efficiently manage the collaboration process to meet the organization’s needs.

A typical Micro Focus collaboration customer manages a complex and continually changing IT infrastructure on a global-scale, that needs to address employee requests for access to business communications anywhere at any time on any device, while balancing rigorous compliance demands and the need for security. Enterprise Messaging combines the power of collaboration-rich products with complete messaging archiving, unparalleled security and disaster recovery to create a robust and secure collaboration product that can be deployed on-premises and is also available as a cloud service – to provide flexibility into any IT environment.

Yes—that’s right—I said cloud service. If you want to move to the cloud—Enterprise Messaging allows you do that. You can retain all the functionality you are used to while benefiting from a host of new capabilities like chat-based teamwork, archiving, security, and disaster recovery—all hosted in the cloud, if you want.

Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging features include:

Secure collaboration : Provides secure email, instant messaging, scheduling, contact management, and task management, all with mobile synchronization.

: Provides secure email, instant messaging, scheduling, contact management, and task management, all with mobile synchronization. Complete and compliant archiving : Enables complete oversight and visibility of the messaging system by archiving all messaging data into a single, unified archive. This includes emails, appointments, files, and attachments. Built-in eDiscovery tools allow for access, search, litigation holds, tag, print, forward, save, redact, and export archived data.

Enables complete oversight and visibility of the messaging system by archiving all messaging data into a single, unified archive. This includes emails, appointments, files, and attachments. Built-in eDiscovery tools allow for access, search, litigation holds, tag, print, forward, save, redact, and export archived data. Unparalleled security : Includes functionality for inbound and outbound protection, antivirus, anti-spam, cybercrime protection, DDOS protection, and porn blocking with built-in image analysis. Enterprise Messaging leverages the latest technology to keep messaging systems protected, including protection for the messaging transfer agent (MTA), post office agent (POA), WebAccess, and Mobility.

: Includes functionality for inbound and outbound protection, antivirus, anti-spam, cybercrime protection, DDOS protection, and porn blocking with built-in image analysis. Enterprise Messaging leverages the latest technology to keep messaging systems protected, including protection for the messaging transfer agent (MTA), post office agent (POA), WebAccess, and Mobility. Chat-based teamwork : Employees can easily engage in topic-driven, project-based, or team-oriented discussions with interactive, real-time conversations and dynamic file sharing. Easily collaborate in a new, fun, and social way that’s more dynamic than traditional email.

Employees can easily engage in topic-driven, project-based, or team-oriented discussions with interactive, real-time conversations and dynamic file sharing. Easily collaborate in a new, fun, and social way that’s more dynamic than traditional email. Enterprise Mailbox Management: Enables an administrator to manage mailboxes from a single, intuitive administrative tool, whether there is a need to manage mailbox settings for 10,000 users, or turn off the vacation rule in a single mailbox.

Enables an administrator to manage mailboxes from a single, intuitive administrative tool, whether there is a need to manage mailbox settings for 10,000 users, or turn off the vacation rule in a single mailbox. Disaster Recovery: Delivers quick message restoration as well as hot backups of post offices and domains, ensuring that critical data is always current and available.

This newly created product debuted at Micro Focus Techconnect 2017, the premier technology conference for CIOs, IT Managers, IT Directors, Network Administrators, IT Consultants and Resellers, wanting the latest information on collaboration, information archiving, messaging security, endpoint management, and more. This two-day conference delivers more than 50 sessions ranging from general discussion, “hands-on” sessions, to technical training. As part of the event, the coming availability of Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging was announced—and loyal GroupWise customers everywhere are eager to learn more.

Availability

Enterprise Messaging (on-premises) will be available by available by late November or early December 2017, with the cloud-hosted service coming shortly thereafter.

So if you’ve been wondering what the “evolution” of GroupWise will be—wonder no further. It’s Micro Focus Enterprise Messaging. If you’re not ready to evolve to a true enterprise messaging platform for your organization—rest assured you can still continue to upgrade to GroupWise 18 and get tremendous value and new benefits. However, if you find yourself needing a solid business collaboration platform along with security, disaster recovery, archiving, and want to adopt new communication trends like chat-based teamwork: then Enterprise Messaging is for you!