The upgrades to GroupWise include a new home view that gives users a portal-like interface into a selection of applications and Web 2.0 tools.

Novell has worked this year to make over its GroupWise platform, which for years has been the perennial third-place collaborative platform behind IBM and Microsoft.

Earlier this year the company acquired which develops open source collaboration tools.

The purchase came after a partnership between Novell and SiteScape had produced in October 2007 Novell Teaming + Conferencing, which is based on SiteScape's ICEcore collaboration tools. Those tools form a Web-based team workspace and real-time conferencing platform that includes Web 2.0 and social-networking technologies.

With GroupWise 8, Novell is polishing its core collaboration platform for the future.