Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Outlook for everything
Back when I worked in a GroupWise shop, we'd get the occasional request from end users to see if Outlook could be used against the GroupWise back-end. Back in those days there was a MAPI plug-in for Outlook that allowed it to talk natively to GroupWise and it went rather well. Then Microsoft made some changes, Novell made some changes, and the plug-in broke. GW Admins still remember the plug-in, because it allowed a GroupWise back end to look exactly like and Exchange back end to the end users.
Through the grapevine I've heard tales of Exchange to GroupWise migrations almost coming to a halt when it came time to pry Outlook out of the hands of certain highly placed noisy executives. The MAPI plugin was very useful in quieting them down. Also, some PDA sync software (this WAS a while ago) only worked with Outlook, and using the MAPI plugin was a way to allow a sync between your PDA and GroupWise. I haven't checked if there is something equivalent in the modern GW8 era.
It seems like Google has figured this out. A plugin for Outlook that'll talk to Google Apps directly. It'll allow the die-hard Outlook users to still keep using the product they love.
Through the grapevine I've heard tales of Exchange to GroupWise migrations almost coming to a halt when it came time to pry Outlook out of the hands of certain highly placed noisy executives. The MAPI plugin was very useful in quieting them down. Also, some PDA sync software (this WAS a while ago) only worked with Outlook, and using the MAPI plugin was a way to allow a sync between your PDA and GroupWise. I haven't checked if there is something equivalent in the modern GW8 era.
It seems like Google has figured this out. A plugin for Outlook that'll talk to Google Apps directly. It'll allow the die-hard Outlook users to still keep using the product they love.
<permalink> posted by riedesg : 6/10/2009 09:09:00 AM
