We want one single MicroFocus team collaboration solution which integrates well with (at least) any other MicroFocus product. This would make integration with 3th party solutions easier also, where applicable. Mentioned products originate all from the same source (Vibe) and instead of competing development-, support- and sales (MF and partners) time we better work together communicating one platform to (potential) customers. Sure any of these products have a certain fit, but at the same time a huge overlap is keeping data silo’s for customers in place, where the idea once was to break these borders. At the same time any of these products has valuable features the other is missing. We feel the market is moving from single purpose products to more integrated, open, cross border, secure, not locking into, team driven solutions. We feel too much time is spend fighting for enhancements in any of these products that would benefit the other products as well. This is mainly [opinion] caused by how these products are traditionally split in product groups (groupware, file). This no longer serves customers in an optimal way and leads to losing customers (opportunity) instead of gaining those as in many cases neither product tends to be a (perfect) fit or is not able to blend into the next step a customer is taking.
Cross posted in GroupWise, Vibe and Filr Idea portal
by: Sebastiaan V. | over a year ago | TeamWorks
Comments
This comment could probably be attached to many of your other ideas Sebastiaan.
What I'd like to see is MF launch their own "Full" equivalent to Gsuite or Office 365 - and this idea would be essential to it.
Enterprise Messaging (awful name) is a start but to be competitive it needs to be the full product and must include Filr and Vibe and these must include collaborative document editing. They must also be integrated with each other far more deeply than they are now.
Right now if you use Gsuite it really feels like one product. Gmail and Drive and Hangouts and Calendar are tightly integrated. The Filr and Vibe integration with Groupwise feels like an after thought right now.
Right now there's a new GroupWise web client, and a new Filr web client being developed. Ideally these two teams would be working closely to ensure that they look and feel like they are two parts of the same product. So that IF you choose to enable integration between them they combine perfectly to provide one seamless solution.
Thx Matt, that is indeed what I have in mind.
Surely there must be people in MF that can see this too? They've got everything they need to make a big push in this space. It just needs tying together and surely that means different product teams - and the marketing team - all working closely together.
This new offering would actually have advantages over Gsuite in that it can tie back in to on-premises file servers and directories.
A frustration with Gsuite is that it is isolated from your current on-premises file storage. That issue wouldn't exist with the MF solution: No rip and replace required. No need to migrate existing files to the cloud. Just plug in the back end to your existing servers and you're done. That's always been the promise of Filr and its a good product but without the other parts - Vibe, GroupWise, Teamworks, Collaborative editing, Video calling - it's not enough.
Sure they are there, but nobody seems to be able (or willing) to act upon this. Someone in the upper management needs to recognise the way these products are organised is not optimal.
I agree but good luck, I have been trying to get this message across to the product managers for years but so far they consider them all separate solutions with separate customer bases and tell me this is not what their customers have been asking for. And yep it kills them resource wise and we get 3 less functional products. Add messenger into the mix as well and its really messy.
Have been pushing this for years myselves too. Done all the talking with PM and I'm aware of their reasoning and opinions. Those do not meet my customers in this case so primary goal of this IDEA is to collect all those supporting the IDEA. If nothing happens the inevitable result will be customers moving away which is fine too. Nothing is perfect, but have moved to Nextcloud which has most whistle and bells found in either solution.
As MF is IMO on the wrong path and not planning to integrate mentioned solutions I created an new Idea "Why it makes sense for GroupWise to integrate with Nextcloud"
https://ideas.microfocus.com/MFI/mf-gw/Idea/Detail/15259
THIS IDEA HAS BEEN MOVED OVER TO THE NEW IDEA PORTAL, PLEASE MAKE YOUR VOTE IN THE NEW SYSTEM TO REFLECT ITS NEED.
https://community.microfocus.com/t5/TeamWorks-Idea-Exchange/Merge-TeamWorks-Vibe-and-Filr-into-a-single-solution/idi-p/2701661