Our Part in the First Managed GroupWise Service

HostedEM: A Brief Overview

In 2010, Novell made the decision to go forward with a project that create the first fully managed, cloud-hosted option for its enterprise collaboration platform GroupWise. The venture has resulted in HostedEM - a fully functioning cloud based GroupWise management service.

This was great news for GroupWise users dreaming of the simplicity and reliability of hosted email without the hassle of uprooting their data and moving to another client. After all, these days the argument for the services model for business necessities like email is being made from every corner of the enterprise market, and more and more shops are seeing the benefits. (HostedEM has posted a comparison of advantages to both cloud and on-premises email here.)

The service is a joint venture leveraging the Verizon cloud platform, Kaspersky Security tools and Sonian cloud archiving. What customers of the service get is a working install of GroupWise indistinguishable from the in-house version, in which all upkeep and security is exported to an expert team of GroupWise engineers.

Our Part: Making Migration a Non-Issue

With what sounds like such a big change - moving something as expansive as email into the cloud - the first concern tends to be migration. Email isn’t something you can do without for long.

This is where we came in.

To do away with any migration worries or road blocks, Novacoast (the only services group with ground level involvement in HostedEM), helped write the sync engine that migrates any install of GroupWise into the Verizon cloud employed by HostedEM. Novacoast was able to design a migration that would primarily take place behind the day to day operations of the email system. The idea behind this 'back-end only' synchronization of email info was to entirely do away with worries or hesitations surrounding the mass migration of data and account information for potentially thousands of users from in-house servers into the managed GroupWise environment of HostedEM.

Novacoast’s role in HostedEM was first and foremost ensuring that end-users would be able to continue to use GroupWise during the migration without noticing a change in service. A service model falls flat in its appeal if it requires a new round of training, or a new interface. The aim of cloud services is to make business easier, after all.