OpenText GroupWise Reviews

Our email environment is complicated and we use GroupWise as a data sync server. We have around 700 users and approximately 10 terabytes of emails with four servers. We are customers of GroupWise, supporting our clients who need IT assistance. I'm the head of NCIS.

The solution is very flexible and has great storage capacity. If you have, for example, two terabytes of email data in a GroupWise system, it would be equivalent to five or six terabytes in another tool that would likely also require more resources. It's a huge advantage. This is a simple tool and we find it to be more secure than Exchange. 

The web client could be improved. The WebAccess feature is similar to what you would find in an Exchange environment but it's not as good as you'd get with the full client in the caching mode. It would be preferable if the WebAccess were a little more like the full client. That would make things easier. Unfortunately, there are fewer manufacturers that currently support Micro Focus and GroupWise these days.

I've been using this solution for 17 years. 

The solution is definitely scalable up to many thousands of users. 

Customer support did what they could but we had some issues because it required coordination between GroupWise and SUSE Linux or the Micro Focus storage support. It became a ping pong between these two parts of the same company and was unpleasant.

We had a look at Lotus Notes, but it was terrible. And Microsoft was not a choice we could make because our existing license included GroupWise so we could save a lot of money by only having to purchase the server. Netscape was the previous solution we used but it wasn't able to do all the things we needed.

The initial setup is straightforward, requiring a simple rollout of the software. We installed it on all the workstations and then set up the servers. We then did a drop-down of all the emails and that was it. We carried out the main work ourselves but also used a consultant. 

This is a more expensive solution than Microsoft because Microsoft has a few other tools and products in one license. There's probably not a lot of difference at the end of the day because a Microsoft environment requires more servers and more storage, which you don't need in a GroupWise environment. I believe the maintenance of one GroupWise license costs around 30 Euro per year. Aside from the hardware, there are no additional costs. 

We know a lot of organizations that used GroupWise for a long time and then moved to Microsoft Exchange Server or to Office 365. They have a lot more work to do in their new Microsoft environment. I think the security is still much better in GroupWise than in a Microsoft environment.

It's important to take a look at the hardware you are using.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.