GroupWise version 6.5, dubbed "Hawthorn," includes updates to the company's calendaring and collaboration solution, but also will ship with Novell's first enterprise IM client that uses technology developed solely by the company. The release is slated for release early next year.

"Instant messaging, while not being the killer app that some said it would be, has threatened to replace telephone conversations in a lot of organizations," said Novell Product Manager Howard Tayler. "You e-mail someone if you don't know if they're at their desk. If you know they're at their desk, you IM them ... We've got a rising generation that expects IM to be a component of the corporate collaboration system, and it's Novell's intent to provide a leading-edge instant messaging component as part of the collaborative offering."

In addition to offering encrypted conversations, archiving, and centrally administered user privileges -- controlling which users or groups of users can trade files, see each other in Buddy Lists, and so on -- the system will offer authentication by way of connectivity with Novell eDirectory.

The GroupWise IM client also will support the proposed Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence (SIMPLE) instant messaging standards.

SIP and SIMPLE, of course, are protocols already fairly entrenched in the enterprise, supported as they are by the leaders in the collaborative software space: IBM's Lotus division, in its Sametime IM product, and Microsoft, through Windows Messenger in Windows XP. Additionally, Microsoft's upcoming "Greenwich" platform and its related release of Exchange also are expected to comply with the proposed standards.

While GroupWise IM is SIP-compliant, Tayler said Novell isn't yet prepared to market the product as being truly interoperable with servers outside the firewall, however.

"Eventually, that's the goal, but right now, it's not the case," he said. "We haven't certified integration with others -- we didn't want to ship the product and then patch it to do what we had advertised.

"We recognize [interoperability] is important, something that our users will want to do," he added. "But right now, the state of the IM market is such that that isn't easy to do. It's very difficult to make that work -- it's not like SMTP, where the standard came first and everyone got on board afterwards. But we know it's important."

Tayler said the company expects to roll greater interoperability into the IM client by its next release, but declined to provide further details on future versions.

"Right out of the gate, folks who also want to talk to grandma and their AIM friends will still probably be running AOL, rather than the GroupWise messenger component," he said.

The GroupWise IM client builds on earlier efforts by Novell to offer a instant messaging solution for enterprise customers. In 1999, Novell teamed with America Online to offer a branded and SSL-based encrypted front-end for AOL Instant Messenger. Authentication for the product, instantme, would be handled via Novell's Passport-like digitalme system, or alternatively, Novell eDirectory.

The project since petered out, however.

"It was kind of ahead of its time, in that we wanted AOL to help us target the enterprise market, and AOL didn't see that as viable," Tayler said. (AOL, of course, has since announced that it would go it more-or-less alone, with an enterprise product of its own.)

Earlier this year, Novell executives began discussing a renewed foray into instant messaging that would begin with "Quasar," a project that ultimately resulted in the GroupWise IM client. Quasar originally had been planned to also ship with Novell Internet Messaging System, or as a standalone product, in addition to GroupWise.

While the instant messaging client that comes with GroupWise still retains the ability to be used as a standalone product, Tayler said that Novell had decided not to productize the client separately due to the relative immaturity of the corporate IM market.

According to a plan outlined at Novell's BrainShare Europe 2002 confab this spring, Quasar will be supplanted in late 2003 by "Tachyon," a new version of the client that will offer interoperability with AIM and MSN Messenger, and potentially, ICQ and Yahoo! Messenger. Tachyon also is intended to be available on multiple platforms -- such as wireless and Web browsers -- and will include client and server APIs.

In any event, Novell's new effort to introduce instant messaging back into its product lineup comes only days after Oracle confirmed that instant messaging would be part of its new collaborative software offering.

Like GroupWise, Oracle's Realtime Collaboration Suite Release 2 aims to challenge the leaders in enterprise groupware -- Microsoft and IBM's Lotus division. Much of Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle's strategy around entering the groupware market centers around value and synergies with its flagship database products.

On the other hand, Novell -- which comes in third behind Microsoft and Lotus in the groupware arena -- is pursuing a strategy centered around hedging its bets. In addition to providing an integrated groupware app combining mail, calendaring and IM, the company also markets components individually, through offerings like NetMail.

While opening Novell to competition with specialty vendors like Gordano, Openwave and Sendmail, the firm sees such a dual offering as advantageous.

"That makes a lot of sense in an environment like a university, where the faculty and staff can run GroupWise, but they're not going to give GroupWise out to 50,000 students," Tayler said. "They'll give out NetMail to students, who will run Eudora or Pine on it. We have a lot of customers who are doing that now."

"The groupware market is not growing as fast as it was," he added. "What seems to be growing today is an alternative space in standards-based e-mail and alternative messaging, with the addition of value-added added services on top of them that provide some of the same functionality as in GroupWise. Five years from now, you'll probably be able to assemble everything you need off-the-shelf."

Some organizations, such as universities, also could be viable market for both GroupWise and NetMail -- for faculty and students, respectively.

According to the plan, having an instant messaging system like GroupWise IM -- which is both affiliated with integrated groupware solutions, and able to operate independently -- could prove a boon in each segment, should such a prediction be borne out by the market.