Sneak Peek @ Notes 8.5 client

It (unsurprisingly) looks very much like Notes 8 but the developers have thrown in a couple of extra features. What I really liked was :

o Widgets in the client - Connections, QuickR, Sametime, etc. all accessible via the Notes client (not new, I know) but the way a user can seamlessly slide into the next collaboration tool with a simple click was quite impressive.
o The To Do's - you can in Notes 8.5, when writing up a mail, create a table of tasks allocated to people. When the mail is sent out, those tasks get separately sent as To Do's to the allocated people's mailboxes. I see in my crystal ball major uptake of this functionality in meeting-crazy Mars.
o Also cool is the ability to drag and drop emails from the mailbox to the To Do's list or even funkier, to the Calendar! And that, abracadabra, creates a meeting for you with the subject line <-- subject line of email, invitees <-- To's and cc's of email. Don't you love it.

It's funny though how much similar Notes 8 and Outlook look, and apparently it's not even by design ; )

QuickR Next & Enterprise Content Management

Not much to blog here as Brian's already done it, but some work definitely coming up around Document Collaboration with QuickR hooked to an ECM. At the moment I don't think we have any widely used ECM in Mars (except our very own versions of it, H & S drives, which Mat is busy plotting to get rid of asap), so this will likely be a comprehensive piece of work. Perhaps a Proof of Concept which we can also aim at attempting a change in user behaviour as far as sharing is concerned?

Domino & Notes : Business Benefits

Two of the best sessions I attended was Parts I and II of an IBM marketing stint by the Notes/Domino (Microsoft Inquisition) sales team.

They talked about IBM market shares, industry predictions/stats (interesting to note btw that IBM are nearly suing Gartner because of a couple of "wrong" reports Gartner published quite widely). Some facts :

o Based on industry data, the TCO difference per user between a Domino and an Exchange shop is less than 60 cents (Domino @ $153.16, Exchange $153.70).
o Average cost of migration per user is $300.
o The cost of migration of applications from Domino onto a non-Domino platform, for a 2500 applications environment of average complexity, is about $6 000 000.

IBM are now also doing Notes applications migration cost analyses (the like EMC have recently done for us) with obviously the aim of convincing existing customers of the lack of value there is in the migration.

IBM can also help provide the ammunition required by their "allies" - ie. strategists - in their customer communities to help gain buy-in for Domino at decision-making levels in the company. This is one offer I will be happily taking advantage of over the next 4-6 weeks! If not the content, the approach I'm sure will help : )

Overall, the team seemed geared up to pull off some extreme IBM marketing over the next few months and will be doing anything short of dropping pink flyers from helicopters to make sure the world out there knows that Notes 8 is beautiful, Symphony beyond Office and Sametime Embedded a "first class citizen" :D