Mary's been slacking!

I've been ignoring my blogs for far too long.  So much has happened out there in the world of Novell that I haven't updated you all on, that you probably already know all the stuff I'll be posting here today.  Been too busy in ZCM-land and not busy enough in GroupWise-land.

Today I'll catch you up with two posts of Dean's that you should be aware of, one of which was just posted today, so I'm kind of on top of it.

A new version of Data Synchronizer is out - 1.2.4 is officially Released!  Several new enhancements like support for Android Jelly Bean (yay!) and improved log management. Expect to see iOS 6 support soon too.  Here's the link to Dean's post:

Data Synchronizer 1.24 Released

Another really good post on Dean's blog comes from Kari Wolff who I had much fun working with a few months back.  Discussing the true cost of migration, she pretty much nails it.

Don't shake your head just yet; while I am admittedly a devout GroupWise user, that doesn't mean I can't see the value in other solutions or that I haven't used other solutions.  (Remember I'm a cranky-old-broad I've used LOTS of other email solutions). Anytime you are migrating from one email system to another, regardless of vendor, it will cost a pretty penny - above and beyond licensing costs.  Kari has some really good points here, you should take a peek at it.

GroupWise Migration: Ready, Set - Wait, it costs how much?

If you haven't seen GroupWise 2012 yet, you should go take a peek at it, it's pretty sweet.  Also, you might want to take check out GWAVA since they now support both GroupWise and Exchange and can help you with a migration in either direction.  (No, I don't get paid to promote GWAVA, I just really like their products).  I haven't seen a date for GWAVACon 2013 in America yet, but chances are it will be in Torrance in January.

I must admit though, Microsoft's best kept secret seems to be their pricing. They even have a certification for Microsoft licensing, which caused me a major headache recently as I was trying to work on a CBA and ROI for a dummy project and was wanting only MSRP prices for all the vendors involved. Even the MS partners came back with differing numbers, what the heck? I finally did get it done, but with the way MS pricing is setup, they were at the bottom of the pack for both CBA and ROI numbers. I wasn't looking for any clear winners, I was just trying to get an idea of how much a certain type of project would cost in terms of licensing across several vendors...I vaguely remember this being a whole lot easier when I was in charge 3rd Party products for a proprietary medical system many, many moons ago.

Major pouting over non-technical stuff

Last night I was having a major pity party, throwing a bit of a tantrum and in tears. I received devastating (well, for me it was devastating) news yesterday afternoon that the axle that we had a line on for my old Bubba truck wasn't the correct one. At best, we can hope for an axle rebuild, should we be able to find the parts.

Thank to the efforts of my state's idiot Senators (yes, Debbie Stabenow you are one of the guilty!) push to pass "Cash for Clunkers" in an effort to boost auto sales, there are far fewer replacement parts for vehicles of all ages.  Even more so for a 22 year old pickup.  My beloved Bubba truck isa victim of that *oh-so-brilliant-move* (can you hear the sarcasm dripping here?).

Fast forward to this morning, when I did just what the idioticlegislation wanted me to do all along, and I "replaced" Bubba with a new vehicle. But not quite in the way they'd hoped for. My new vehicle is a new Ford F-150.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I may have bowed to buying a new vehicle, but no I did not spend the extra $3K to get the new Eco-boost V6 Ford is so proud of. Nope. I got me a big honking V8 that gets an estimated 14mpg and 19mpg. Which is far less than Bubba's 22 and 24.  Bwahahaha!!!

Fortunately for my old beloved Bubba truck, it's not completely falling victim to the evil plans of DC.  Instead, it's becoming my project truck. My poor hubby bowed to my pouting and shouts of "I don't want to get rid of Bubba truck!" and we will slowly get it restored as funds and parts cooperate.

If you happen to live in the Greater Grand Rapids Michigan area, I highly recommend Tony Betten & Sons Ford. They let me take off with the keys and drive the new beastie around sans sales guy, got it all washed and shiny, gassed it up, and dug for every rebate and discount possible for me. Had Bubba been 5 years newer, I would have gotten another rebate, but alas, no go.  As it was he found us over $4K in discounts to go with our X-plan discounts.

Novell North America Tour 2012

Novell is running their re-connect tour and is coming to - of all places - Grand Rapids.  Why did no one at Novell let me know!?

Anyway, they're coming - woo-hoo!  Way better than hitting Detroit.

For those in Grand Rapids, here's the link to the tour page, just look for Grand Rapids on the right and click to register.  It's being held at the JW Marriott in downtown, quite a lovely place, once you find parking and which floor the party's on.  :)

http://www.novell.com/events/tour2012.html


BTW - Novell, have you contacted your few partners in town? Have you contact your customers? Please do!

ZCM and new phone keeping me busy

My new gig is in health care, where we are pushing ZCM to it's limits, working closely with Novell to resolve a bundle of issues related to how we are specifically using ZCM.  That along with learning all the ins-and-outs of a big project that I was hired into the middle of has kept me very busy and off the GroupWise administrative side of things.

What I can tell you about ZCM at this point is - patch to the latest version before calling Novell. Chances are we've run into the problem and Novell's already fixed it with a patch or FTF. It might save you a headache, and a wasted SR.

Now on the totally unrelated topic of cell phones. I absolutely love, love, love my Nextel Blackberry Curve. But after nearly 5 years of abuse - including drops down stairs, drops in parking lots where it's skittered under more than one car, getting chewed and slobbered on by big puppies, and drops on concrete - the jack for a wired headset is broken, making it hard on my work from home days to handle conference calls and still get other stuff done easily.

I caved, gave in and picked up the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G (or whatever order those words go in) running the Gingerbread version of Android.  I'm liking it "ok". I still despise the touch keyboards as I have fingers that are apparently "too fat" for touchscreens. I'm constantly having to correct and I hate not being able to simply tap on a space between 2 letters to correct a word, rather than having to backspace over everything else that was spelled correctly and reenter it all. That's where the Blackberry kicks butt over everything else for me.

We don't have 4G at my house, and the Sprint coverage is worse than I had on my Nextel Blackberry, but it seems to work okay at this point. I'm giving it 2 weeks to decided if I'm staying with Sprint or dumping it all and moving to Verizon - which does have 4G at my house but not unlimited data and will cost me $30/month more than my current Sprint contract discounts. I'm okay without 4G at home as I can just jump on our wireless and I do have 4G at work.

For those that may ask why I didn't go with iPhone? Well, to be blunt, it cost a hell of a lot more to get the equivalent "power" in the iPhone over the Samsung. $150 more to be exact. (And it's not 4G ready.) That's because the local Sprint store was having an in-store special making the Samsung drop to $49.95 if you bought an accessorie (which I needed anyway). Walking out the door with a new bluetooth headset and a case, I was still $30 under the cost of the Samsung if there wasn't a special.

I do still have my Blackberry - I love the password manager on it and have so many on there it'll be a pain to transfer, so it's staying until I've completely decided which way I'm going yet. We'll see, two weeks to go. If I haven't thrown the phone across the room by then, I guess I'll keep it.

Call for Conferences

If you'd like your upcoming conference listed on my blog, please let me know, I'm happy to help spread the word.

Mind you, I will give preferential treatment to user group organized events and things that include Novell products.  :)

Heads-up MidWesterners!

Sorry for being so absent here, but wanted to make sure this gets posted.

IVNUA's Spring Conference is being sponsored by Novell this year. This annual Training Conference is being held on May 3 & 4 in Utica, Il.

They have big names coming! Laura Chappell, Doc Hodges, Loyal Moses, and Jeremy Moskowitz are a few of the presenters.

Check out www.ivnua.org for more info, and let Bill know I sent you.  ;)

GroupWise 2012

Well, GroupWise 2012 is here - yay! - and reports are that it's a smooth upgrade. Better yet, after "chatting" with Dean Lythgoe, the apparent client push woes with ZCM have been resolved.

The team put in a lot of work during the beta phase of GW 2012 and - if you're using the latest ZCM - the push issues appear to have been resolved.  There is also the GWTuner which can be used to modify the .msi file.

I haven't had my hands on it yet, I'm hoping to build a sandbox with GW installed this weekend - given I can find enough hours in the day - so I can post what I find here.

Also, new job has me in the ZCM realm so expect to see more about ZCM in future posts.