By the time it was time for the surprise guest speaker to come on stage and wrap up the day, I was focusing hard on testing how far down my chair I could slide without actually falling off it. All I could hear was a vague buzz buzz... buzz buzz buzz... and then suddenly "Pursuit of Happyness"! That made me sit up rather quick and promptly feather up my layers (for the naive ignorant, that's part of a haircut) because I had these 2 uplifting microseconds of feverish blissful hope that the guest speaker was Will Smith! :D It wasn't though; as Chris Gardner rightly said, Will would probably not fit the budget ; )
Jokes apart, he was brilliant. There were of course the cheesy moments when people actually applauded the worst nightmares this guy's had in his life (doh!), but to hear the story from the man himself was very deeply moving. For those who didn't know, in real life his son was actually only 14 months old when they became homeless, not 5 years old as in the movie. Also, for those who didn't know, some of the audience was not reduced to tears. They fell.
Pleasantly surprising close to the day though. IBM we're told have a history of getting some rather special people to talk at their conferences; apparently they had Neil Armstrong Himself share his experience a few years ago. Anyway, I'm buying the Pursuit of Happyness book as soon as I'm back in the UK. And Brian said he'll be watching the movie, so I'm guessing some of the audience although they'll never admit to it did get a bit touchy feely about things eh? ; )
On this note, more after the breakout sessions tomorrow.
Monday, September 22, 2008
"Peeling back the onion skin..."
... must be a taster of Management Speak 2.0 !
Most of today was indeed around peeling back the onion skin around the strategy of those 5 areas (see Brian's post further down); this time IBM definitely seems to have thought through the next few years thoroughly and the promised suite of products look impressive.
Before getting into the details though, a have-to-mention word about the "decor" of the main conference room. See they have this totally awesome 2-m-in-diameter yellow sphere - not that it could have been any other colour mind you - hanging over the stage, with a couple of projectors projecting these dynamic revolving fractal-like totally cool monochrome shapes and graphics on it. Absolutely mesmerising. So much so it actually managed to keep me quiet for quite a while. That's how cool it is. I want one for christmas.
Other than that, Connections in particular looked appealing, both in terms of functionality & UI, although there seems to be some major overlap between what Connections does and what Bluehouse does. The official IBM line on it is that Connections is focused more on internal company collaboration and Bluehouse on cross-company collaboration. Call it a marketing stunt but it appears that Connections is the fastest growing software in the history of IBM, with 500 new customers every Q.
As far as SaaS is concerned, it seems like IBM have definitely stepped into the space but although BlueHouse is already out there, it feels like it is still early days. In fact this October they are running some POC-type activities on Bluehouse with a number of partners & customers. There was also mention of IBM's new initiative around external hosting of email in multitenant environments. Once again, still early days but a space we will definitely be keeping an eye on.
"Elegant integration" was another theme that was brought up and indeed the suite of products on the table seem to seamlessly blend into each other. Presence is obviously key, but what I thought was "elegant" was how you can Sametime from Connections by clicking on somebody's name, from Sametime hop onto the phone or Lotus Notes and start an email to your favourite person by a single right click, from LN go into QuickR to see what documents your person has posted, from the document onto the Document Management solution etc. Pretty cool stuff. IBM seems to be quite far ahead as far as UC is concerned.
All the sessions today were general ones and very much focused on strategy. Tomorrow we break out into groups and work on the sections in more detail. Should be good.
Most of today was indeed around peeling back the onion skin around the strategy of those 5 areas (see Brian's post further down); this time IBM definitely seems to have thought through the next few years thoroughly and the promised suite of products look impressive.
Before getting into the details though, a have-to-mention word about the "decor" of the main conference room. See they have this totally awesome 2-m-in-diameter yellow sphere - not that it could have been any other colour mind you - hanging over the stage, with a couple of projectors projecting these dynamic revolving fractal-like totally cool monochrome shapes and graphics on it. Absolutely mesmerising. So much so it actually managed to keep me quiet for quite a while. That's how cool it is. I want one for christmas.
Other than that, Connections in particular looked appealing, both in terms of functionality & UI, although there seems to be some major overlap between what Connections does and what Bluehouse does. The official IBM line on it is that Connections is focused more on internal company collaboration and Bluehouse on cross-company collaboration. Call it a marketing stunt but it appears that Connections is the fastest growing software in the history of IBM, with 500 new customers every Q.
As far as SaaS is concerned, it seems like IBM have definitely stepped into the space but although BlueHouse is already out there, it feels like it is still early days. In fact this October they are running some POC-type activities on Bluehouse with a number of partners & customers. There was also mention of IBM's new initiative around external hosting of email in multitenant environments. Once again, still early days but a space we will definitely be keeping an eye on.
"Elegant integration" was another theme that was brought up and indeed the suite of products on the table seem to seamlessly blend into each other. Presence is obviously key, but what I thought was "elegant" was how you can Sametime from Connections by clicking on somebody's name, from Sametime hop onto the phone or Lotus Notes and start an email to your favourite person by a single right click, from LN go into QuickR to see what documents your person has posted, from the document onto the Document Management solution etc. Pretty cool stuff. IBM seems to be quite far ahead as far as UC is concerned.
All the sessions today were general ones and very much focused on strategy. Tomorrow we break out into groups and work on the sections in more detail. Should be good.
I bleed yellow
Believe it or not, some of the guys are wearing canary yellow t-shirts proudly acclaiming the yellow nature of their blood! A bit sad really, and they wonder why they are not people ready ... tut tut...
BlueHouse Jam Session
Yesterday we attended the Bluehouse Jam Session only to discover that it was actually targetted at early adopters of Bluehouse, ie a couple of SMB's & a few IBM partners, and not at all the strategic & visionary type session we had expected. It was therefore not the most relevant session for us and we ended up leaving after about an hour but a couple of points were raised which I thought were interesting insights into BlueHouse. Keeping in mind that Bluehouse is presented as being the Next Big Thing in Collaboration SaaS,
1. Email is not integrated in Bluehouse! Whaaat? will Will say :) According to IBM, BlueHouse is their brave attempt at liberating companies from chronic overdependence on email (sounds familiar?), hence the lack of our favourite tool in Bluehouse. My personal feeling is our users are too used to email for us to offer them this kind of revolution, & not evolution, forgive the pun :D
2. Bluehouse was initially targetted at SMB's but given the demand IBM is now presenting the offering to large businesses as well. On the other hand, SMB's are already experiencing issues around identity management & user access & provisioning which while perhaps workable in SMB's where the number of users is smaller, would be unacceptable for us. More on this once I've found out more about what IBM thinks the challenges are going to be once they go big business on the BlueHouse front and how they are planning to deal with them.
On the other hand, BlueHouse like all the other products we have seen so far are totally slick as far as the UI goes. Absolutely wicked :)
And now I'm running late for dinner so I'd better go! To be continued ...
1. Email is not integrated in Bluehouse! Whaaat? will Will say :) According to IBM, BlueHouse is their brave attempt at liberating companies from chronic overdependence on email (sounds familiar?), hence the lack of our favourite tool in Bluehouse. My personal feeling is our users are too used to email for us to offer them this kind of revolution, & not evolution, forgive the pun :D
2. Bluehouse was initially targetted at SMB's but given the demand IBM is now presenting the offering to large businesses as well. On the other hand, SMB's are already experiencing issues around identity management & user access & provisioning which while perhaps workable in SMB's where the number of users is smaller, would be unacceptable for us. More on this once I've found out more about what IBM thinks the challenges are going to be once they go big business on the BlueHouse front and how they are planning to deal with them.
On the other hand, BlueHouse like all the other products we have seen so far are totally slick as far as the UI goes. Absolutely wicked :)
And now I'm running late for dinner so I'd better go! To be continued ...
Lotus Leadership Alliance 2008
I'm here, and as Karoona already mentioned my Starwood hotel membership thing paid off with a nice room overlooking the ocean. A bit wierd looking down at passing helictopers though!
I've just finished the sessions of the first day, which have been about the Lotus strategy in 5 areas :
In other news, there were some nice tasters on mobile device integration across Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices - it looks like we will finally be able to retire OneBridge!
There is an interesting product called Foundations Start which is an appliance type model for small businesses or branch offices. In theory it covers both Messaging & Collaboration as well as Client Architecture. Possibly a solution for "Office on a Box"
Lots more to say but I will save it for the detailed sessions over the next two days.
The last session of the day was a surprise guest speaker, which turned about to be Chris Gardner who wrote the autobiography "The pursuit of happyness" which you may have read/seen. He is a hugely motivating speaker, although I did notice that some of the audience were reduced to tears ;-) If you get the chance to hear him tell his story then I'd encourage you to take the opportunity!
I've just finished the sessions of the first day, which have been about the Lotus strategy in 5 areas :
- Notes & Domino Roadmap
- Ultimate Web Experience
- Unified Communication & Collaboration
- Social Software
- Online Collaboration
In other news, there were some nice tasters on mobile device integration across Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices - it looks like we will finally be able to retire OneBridge!
There is an interesting product called Foundations Start which is an appliance type model for small businesses or branch offices. In theory it covers both Messaging & Collaboration as well as Client Architecture. Possibly a solution for "Office on a Box"
Lots more to say but I will save it for the detailed sessions over the next two days.
The last session of the day was a surprise guest speaker, which turned about to be Chris Gardner who wrote the autobiography "The pursuit of happyness" which you may have read/seen. He is a hugely motivating speaker, although I did notice that some of the audience were reduced to tears ;-) If you get the chance to hear him tell his story then I'd encourage you to take the opportunity!
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