Summary: Pulse/Vibe comes out too quickly (still in beta phase) very shortly before Novell announces a takeover by AttachMSFT [sic]

We have thus far published over a dozen posts about Novell's Pulse. Well, Novell is losing its pulse right now [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and just before selling to AttachMSFT [sic] it was making many quick announcements, one of which was about Pulse, which is now called "Vibe". One of Novell's managers is boosting "Enterprise Social Networking" (putting a "professional" gown on existing software) and the press release from Novell merely speaks about an "Open Beta of Novell Vibe Collaboration Platform".

So it's not even ready yet? Here is a short article which quotes some of the above:

"We've always been contributors to both the Google Wave protocol itself and building gadgets that leverage it. By definition since it was always open source, with respect to the folks at Google, whether they're engaged or not doesn't have a specific impact on tools that leverage the Wave federation protocol."

Ross Chevalier, president of Novell Canada, talking about the release of new Vibe collaboration technology based on Google's Wave protocol. The search giant killed Wave, one time a highly touted collaboration service, earlier this year. (Datamation)

Novell's PR people wrote some more blog posts about it [1, 2] and Novell has uploaded almost 20 "use cases" and explanations such as this one to YouTube. Given that it's just a beta, what's all the hype for? Here they are boasting Microsoft Office integration. Over at IDG there is this promotion which is just one among several from IDG (Novell pays IDG via IDC contracts). The latter one says:

Previously known as Novell Pulse, the enterprise-focused Vibe collaboration platform is available either as a cloud-based service or on-site software.

Novell Vibe includes both enterprise features like real-time document editing, conversation retention and work group creation as well as social networking tools for direct messaging, chats and wikis.

The thing about Vibe is, it is proprietary on the face of it. Here is some more new coverage, for further details:

• Enterprise 2.0: Novell Launches Vibe Platform
• First Look: Novell's Enterprise Social Networking Suite
• e2.0 Conference Fall 2010 – Santa Clara (bottom part)
• Novell Gets the Social Cloud Vibe
• Novell hits the Vibe for enterprise collaboration
• Novell introduces beta version of Vibe collaboration platform

As Sean Michael Kerner put it , "The Novell Vibe beta comes just a few months after Google abandoned Google Wave as an online service." AttachMSFT may abandon Vibe before its final release, just like Google more or less abandoned Wave (they made an appliance from leftovers). ⬆