Despite many attendees acknowledging Novell's local support for the product to be poor, many have stuck by it, and were planning to, or have already migrated to the latest version, GroupWise 7.

In his presentation, Richard Bliss, organizer of GWAVACon, asked his audience to raise their hands if they have been running GroupWise for more than 10 years. He said 80 percent of hands went up.

This is largely due to WordPerfect, he said.

"WordPerfect had an e-mail application called WordPerfect Office that these organizations were loyal to 10 to 15 years ago, and they have stayed with the e-mail platform. Wherever you see that WordPerfect was strong years ago is where you see GroupWise strong today: legal, health, education and government."

This was true for one such user, Sydney-based The King's School.