Novell Pulse has Heartbeat Despite Google Wave’s Death

Novell Pulse, an enterprise social media platform, is a close cousin of Google Wave, which Google killed off about a week ago. So will Novell continue the drumbeat for Pulse? In an official blog post, Novell says absolutely yes — despite the failure of Google Wave to attract a user base. Here’s the scoop.

The similarities between Novell Pulse and the canceled Google Wave are undeniable: they both offer a cloud-delivered method for real-time collaboration and messaging in a way that combines e-mail, instant messaging, and document editing into a unified whole.

But where Wave was aimed at consumers, Novell Pulse is designed for enterprise customers, stacking on top of their existing Microsoft Exchange (or GroupWise, or Lotus Notes, or…) deployments, and providing enough security and identity to attain full compliance with corporate policy. And Novell says that’s all the difference they need.

“Novell Pulse is designed ground-up for an entirely different community of users who need a broader collaborative platform than what Wave provided,” says Novell’s blog entry.

For VARs and MSPs, Novell Pulse represents a potential upsell opportunity from traditional email platforms. And Google Wave never made it to the enterprise in any formal capacity, so maybe when Novell Pulse launches later this year, it could fill a need businesses didn’t know they had.

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