Novell Inc says the new version of its GroupWise electronic mail and work flow product will prove to be the most sophisticated tool in its field. The company says GroupWise 5.2 will improve efficiency and cut the cost of internet and intranet collaboration. The pre-beta release of the product, which can be found at the company’s web site, supports a broad range of internet email standards including IMAP4, dial-up SMTP/MIME and POP3, as well as LDAP on the client and server. It will include a Java and HTML 3-enabled version of the full-featured Web client, GroupWise WebAccess which apparently makes it as easy to use the product via the internet as it is on the desktop, creating a virtually identical browser interface. The current version, 5.1, supports Windows 3.1 and 95, NetWare and IntranetWare. Novell has said 5.2 will add support for the Macintosh 68000 and PowerMac and Unix platforms from IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Sun Microsystems Inc. GroupWise 5.2 will have the same pricing as 5.1 with a five user Mailbox License starting at around $720, rising to $32,625 for a full package with 250 licenses.
