Zenworks and the crystal ball

Non-Technical Threads Chatting over the Back Fence
1

Hi, all! I’m sorry to say that I now recognize only one name in recent
posts, that of the estimable Susan R. from WP BBS days. I haven’t been
to Chat but perhaps once since Frank died … we get older, life gets
messy, but I still do Novell here & there.

Anyway, since this is clearly NOT a tech support type of question, I
thought I’d toss it out here and see if anyone actually knows anything
more about the business side than I do (which, well, is pretty darned
easy since I didn’t even notice the Microfocus buy-out until it hit the
support part of the website.)

So … someone I know NOT personally, on the support side of Zenworks,
informed me that they no longer work for Novell after today. Quick
research led me to no concrete info as to whether there had been another
round of layoffs, but plenty of articles suggest that Microfocus intends
to cut massively from “Novell”, particularly on product lines like
Zenworks.

I’d like to know:

  • What is the real market for Zenworks? I mean, dangitall, this product
    is miles ahead of everything competing with it, but nobody ever talks
    about Zenworks when it comes to endpoint management products.

  • Has there indeed been another round of layoffs?

  • Is there any hope that Microfocus can meet their contract commitments
    for 2 hr response times for Zenworks premium support? (Hasn’t been the
    case recently).

  • If YOU (as someone with more than a clue about Zenworks, please) were
    looking at alternatives, what would you be looking at? (We know that
    Gartner puts SCCM far ahead of all the others, though for the life of
    me, I’m not sure why! SCCM seems still very limited as an endpoint tool
    for workstations.)

Thanks. If there’s anyone who does recall me even vaguely, having made
it this far, I just want to say “hey” and the best to you. I’m about 5
yrs from retirement now, and that makes me assume that some of my former
contacts have retired already, at least one has died, and probably quite
a few more have moved on to completely-non-Novell things.

Survival is my baseline, and the story of my life is just trying to not
hate Microsoft.

– DE

P.S. For all you bazillion readers who don’t know me & read through
the web interface, don’t believe that “30 posts” thing. Presumably
that’s 30 via the web interface; I generally still use NNTP, old-lady
that I am.

–
de

de’s Profile: https://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=22320
View this thread: https://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=492423

2

Hey Debra:
[color=blue]

but plenty of articles suggest that Microfocus intends
to cut massively from “Novell”, particularly on product lines like
Zenworks.[/color]

That’s not correct. There were layoffs earlier this year, with most
being in the duplication of services (Human resources, legal, etc).
The rest of the layoffs pretty much across the board in areas that have
been struggling. Saying layoffs were “Particularly on products like
ZENworks” just isn’t true. ZENworks is one of the Novell products
that has been doing fairly well of late.
[color=blue]

  • Is there any hope that Microfocus can meet their contract
    commitments for 2 hr response times for Zenworks premium support?
    (Hasn’t been the case recently).[/color]

If you’re seeing that, send me an email: kgroneman@novell.com with
details (SR numbers) and I’d be happy to look into that for you and/or
see if I can get someone at a director level in the services
organization to contact you about it.

–
Kim - 6/5/2015 9:29:33 AM

3

On 05/06/2015 13:06, de wrote:
[color=blue]

So … someone I know NOT personally, on the support side of Zenworks,
informed me that they no longer work for Novell after today. Quick
research led me to no concrete info as to whether there had been another
round of layoffs, but plenty of articles suggest that Microfocus intends
to cut massively from “Novell”, particularly on product lines like
Zenworks.[/color]

Perhaps when they said they no longer work for Novell they meant that
they will now be working for Micro Focus who took over The Attachmate
Group including Novell, NetIQ, and SUSE? Still employed by/within the
same company just the parent changed their name.

HTH.

Simon
Novell/NetIQ Knowledge Partner

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4

Ha, I"ve seen more LinkedIn updates in the past while for friends than in
a long time:

“Congratulate so-and-so on a new job; [same title as before} for Micrfocus.”

I’m not sure LinkedIn has a way to fix that kind of thing, unless you go
back and change an old job to show the new company name, which may be
confusing to others too. Oh well.

–
Good luck.

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show your appreciation and click on the star below…

5

Hey ab:
[color=blue]

unless you go
back and change an old job to show the new company name,[/color]

That’s confused me too. So far, having the same job, I’ve worked for
Novell, SUSE, NetIQ, and Micro Focus. Currently I work for Micro Focus
and SUSE, which is a subsidiary of Micro Focus. But I haven’t changed
jobs. LinkedIn doesn’t really have a good way to represent that.

–
Kim - 6/5/2015 11:23:58 AM

6

Hi, Debra! Glad to see you’re still around! :slight_smile:

–
Susan
Novell Community Chat Moderator

http://forums.novell.com/faq.php?faq=novfor#faq_rules
http://www.ncci.org NCCIrregulars Web Site
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Please read the following before posting in here:
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7

smflood;2396244 Wrote:[color=blue]

On 05/06/2015 13:06, de wrote:
[color=green]

So … someone I know NOT personally, on the support side of[/color]
Zenworks,[color=green]
informed me that they no longer work for Novell after today.[/color]

Perhaps when they said they no longer work for Novell they meant that
they will now be working for Micro Focus who took over The Attachmate
Group including Novell, NetIQ, and SUSE? Still employed by/within the
same company just the parent changed their name.[/color]

No, they said they no longer work for the company, and that is
confirmed. But what I’m hearing here is that the articles that posit
lots of layoffs, particularly re. products that the writers are
unfamiliar with, are off-target. I’m not exactly surprised; that’s why
I asked here.

But then I look at Zenworks on the Garner report and … well … I know
what the Zenworks capabilities are, so I am trying to discern why it
ranks so low on the “magic quadrant”. And I wonder why it doesn’t have
more market share, in the first place, e.g. why ALL the other products
are ranked higher in almost every way, even the ones that do 1/10th of
what Zenworks does.

I also have to be wondering how to defend continuing to use Zenworks
(mostly instead of SCCM) but that wasn’t what I was asking here.

–
de

de’s Profile: https://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=22320
View this thread: https://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=492423

8

kgroneman;2396238 Wrote:[color=blue]

Hey Debra:
[color=green]

  • Is there any hope that Microfocus can meet their contract
    commitments for 2 hr response times for Zenworks premium support?
    (Hasn’t been the case recently).[/color]

If you’re seeing that, send me an email: kgroneman@novell.com with
details (SR numbers) and I’d be happy to look into that for you and/or
see if I can get someone at a director level in the services
organization to contact you about it.[/color]

Thanks. I frankly get aggravated when 4 hrs have gone by and I call to
find out why I have NO response and am told that all the available
people are on the phone etc. and 2 hrs after that, someone actually
finally calls me. It’s happened on almost every SR in recent months,
and these were almost all opened during regular work hours.

Thankfully it did not happen the one time ~6 mos. ago that a large chunk
of the organization was down. In fact, the person who responded was
right on their game and pinpointed the cause very quickly. Now that
gave me leverage to say “This is why we pay for the 2-hr-response
support” because we had hundreds of people who couldn’t work due to the,
er, “outage”.

–
de

de’s Profile: https://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=22320
View this thread: https://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=492423

9

On 06/10/2015 07:26 AM, de wrote:[color=blue]

But then I look at Zenworks on the Garner report and … well … I know
what the Zenworks capabilities are, so I am trying to discern why it
ranks so low on the “magic quadrant”. And I wonder why it doesn’t have[/color]

Did you know that Gartner has consulting services? They help you with
some product and service-related things, like your “ability to execute”
and the “completeness of vision”. If those terms sound familiar, they
should, as they are the bases for the magic quadrant. How interesting is
it that they both rate companies on these areas, and also provide
consulting to help customers in those areas. If I were a skeptical
person, I’d wonder what kind of correlation there is between those who
used those services, and those who ranked higher in the quadrant. I am
sure that I am merely being paranoid.

–
Good luck.

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