I am intrigued by the announcement by Novell of the Hula Project. I think it is great that they are open-sourcing all this great code, and they have someone enthusiastic to sheperd it through the community-building phase.

My real conundrum is this: What is Novell thinking? Why do they have 3 groupware solutions now? Is this the spray-and-pray marketing style? I would have thought they would be trying to combine the 2 they have, instead of adding a third option to the mix. What the hell am I talking about?, you ask. Let me ’splain it to you:

When you go to the main Novell web site, and you choose the menu at the top entitled Products, and then the subitem collaboration, you are then given 3 choices: GroupWise (the ‘flagship’ product in the category), NetMail (now Hula), and SUSE Linux Openexchange Server. So we now have 2 open source choices and one propietary choice, as opposed to vice-versa.

It seems the marketing engine for NetMail seemed to loose steam about mid-2003, and now the ‘only way out’ seems to be the open source tack. The buzz around Hula seems to be pretty strong, and I think because of this Novell will ultimately cannabalize their Groupwise product because of it. While I applaud the decision to open source, I really wish that Novell could understand that more products does not necessarily mean more opportunities, but definetly means more cost. I want Novell to ’stick around’, but this seems a lot like the marketing missteps of a Borland, than the ownership and vision of a leader.

Thoughts?

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