Back in April 2011, Novell launched Vibe Cloud, a SaaS version of its enterprise-grade social network. But now, as part of a larger corporate refocusing effort, come Sept. 30 Vibe Cloud will be decommissioned — though Vibe OnPrem will live on, said Novell president and GM Bob Flynn.

In a corporate blog entry, Flynn explained what he sees as Novell’s core strengths:

To that end, Novell Vibe functionality will be integrated into Novell GroupWise, bridging what it sees as a gap between traditional e-mail and the social network. And the company is finally integrating Vibe OnPrem with Vibe Cloud, bringing the best of both to customers.

But that also means that Vibe Cloud will be taken down entirely, with Novell gently nudging customers toward an on-premises deployment. Presumably, some of that promised combined Vibe functionality will also be integrated into partner-hosted Novell GroupWise clouds, but there’s no official word yet.

When Novell Vibe Cloud was first unveiled, I went on the record as saying that its success or failure would be the bellwether of social networking’s prospects in the cloud services market. I stand by that — but it’s also worth noting there have been additional social service provider opportunities since April.