The ketnote started with a general overview of the thinking behind Windows 7. Specifically mentioned was the user backlash against Vista, and a general feeling that there wasn't much end user or OEM consultation prior to it's release, and it significant performance problems.
Windows 7 was tuned to reduce a lot of the performance bottlenecks and provide a faster user experience. For high end, multi-core CPU systems the scheduling algorithms have been updated to give better performance on those systems too.
Two new tools were specifically demonstrated.
Resource Monitor is a souped-up tool from Task Manager, which can also show more details about running processes, and show which files are open on the file system and how much readings and writing is happening. It can also show what directories are locked (this is searchable too), so you can find out why you can't delete or modify a file.
Memory usage graphic is also a bit more intuitive, showing clearly how much ram is in use for apps, standby caching and spare.
Likewise, Network usage is effectively the TCPView package from SysInternals with a graphical interface, but linked to the process list so you can see which processes have network sessions open, and to where, and what ports are exposed on the machine.
As a side note, Mark Russinovich's machine he was demonstrating did show "Google Updater" as a running program. Make of that what you will. "Apple Mobile Device" was also running, so presumably he's not using a Zune.
The second tool was Problem Steps Recorder, which is designed as a troubleshooting tool for remote helpdesks (ie. you spouse rings you up and says "It's not working!"). If the problem is reproducible, the user can run PSR and reproduce the problem. PSR will capture the screen on every click and keypress, and store the information in a ZIP file which can be e-mailed through to the helpdesk person.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
ILM "2" by the Oxford Computer Group at Microsoft, London.
There are many notable players in the Identity Management Arena notably Sun, IBM, Novell, Oracle (now Sun) and.. well.. not really Microsoft. So I relished the opportunity to spend a day, at Microsoft's Customer Centre in London to hear and see everything there is about IDM.
Shame about the blunt and somewhat impolite staff running their venue but these people need jobs and Microsoft's "Customer" centre , 10 mins from the Houses of Parliament is as good a place to work as anywhere, I guess. Needless to say the coffee wasn't flowing (no mid morning break) and the slightly dry sandwiches were at best unimpressive which kind of set the tone although I didn't realise it at the time.
Anyway, enough of all that, it was the product and it's capabilities I went to see.
So imagine, to make a written point more graphic, a model preparing to hit the catwalk and show off a 'nearly ready' new outfit. The clothes designers have done their bit, they've designed, styled, restyled and redesigned the outfit. The model is ready, the catwalk awaits but neither the make-up artist nor the hair stylist have turned up and to make things even worse, the wrong model is wearing the outfit. The lights are wrong, the set design is wrong and the audience is... wrong. That's how I see Microsoft's latest and greatest Identity Management solution... it's VERY unfinished.
Several years ago MS acknowledged the need to connect directories, provision stuff, do ID management stuff and so on and acquired a product Zoomit VIA which became known as MMS 2.x which then became MIIS 2003 which then became ILM 2007, the abbreviations are irrelevant because ILM "2" isn't ILM! ILM stands for Identity Lifecycle Manager and (unfortunately in my view) the Marketing department has decided to include this future release with their security product set and therefore call it Forefront Identity Manager 2010. So FIM 2010 (two thousand and ten) it will be. Unofficial though the leaked name is [update: click here], like its predecessors it is largely irrelevant - but confusing all the same.
Microsoft's approach in this space has been slow and reminds me of the age when it took them 18 months to support their own new Client Operating Systems in SMS, (now SCCM). The difference here is that I know more and they appear cautious, very cautious... So what goodies do we get in the new product and why the slow delivery?
Forgotten Password - at last I cry, but my tears of joy soon fade and the cold, deflated drops of enthusiasm dry as my mind wonders to patchy, sceptical and meandering thoughts. I saw the first RC (Release Candidate) today and whilst I appreciate the extension of the much expected final product release from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010 at the earliest if I were a product manager owning this thing I'd be thinking long and hard about whether or not it's the right way to go.
So a good strategist needs to read between the lines, to see the outfit without the hair or the make-up or the model. So what is it that MS are offering in a new product that drives forward identity management in a way that others will follow, what ground breaking concepts are being introduced that CTO's will fight for and businesses will invest in? What functions and features will users love and enjoy, what processes and automation will reduce incidents whilst maximising user effectiveness? What one nugget of WOW! can I tell my team and peers about when I return, and what would I tell my industry colleagues with whom I mutually share best practice, insights and learning's.
Well, in this case, absolutely nothing.
It's a sad fact that FIM2010 is narrow in functional capability, does far less than the competition and in an enterprise, will require constant and consistent investment to maintain. YES, they do offer "codeless" policies where a web gui lets you do the basics (although its very laborious), yes, you can do forgotten password albeit with a complex process to manage languages and no option of user defined questions and yes, it will talk to SAP and - at least - some of your connected systems. The very basic foundations are there but without a dark room, lots of sandals and some hairy coders it's never going to do what I want for Mars. (no offence meant to the developer community!)
It is a simple tool, for simple organisations - that is organisations with simple needs - and for those, if it's cheap (read cheap as "Free" or "Almost Free") yeah, it'll do 80% OK. For Universities and public sector organisations functional breadth or depth is not key and where living with the knowledge that we could do more if we had the money this product will be good enough I'm sure, but given the widely accepted view that identity lies at the heart of every system nowadays I expected more from Microsoft.
Oxford Computer Group were good hosts, Microsoft were silent during the briefing but the material - and the (3 or so) other customers that were there had some interesting points, but nothing for me that couldn't be done in an hour, on webex. There was way too much technical detail and for a technologist that's hard for me to say, but if you have to start messing around in SQL databases and digging deep into batch processes to show off ILM I was either at the wrong "Introduction" to ILM"2" or there is something seriously amiss.
If you'd like the hardcore details of what I learned, let me know and I'll gladly bore you with my endless notes and scribbles. Take away from this the fact that Microsoft are great at some things - I'm the worlds biggest advocate of MS Office - but at others they just arn't even close. Next step for us is to get a view of the FIM roadmap, from Microsoft and in detail. We'll stay up to date with the product and confirm that we are NOT (as my Vision presumes) a 'simple' organisation, because if we are, this might just about do (as long as someone else implements it!), but it's a very long way down the catwalk before we show off our new identity if it's to have a Microsoft badge on it.
ILM"2" Workshop by the Oxford Computer Group in conjunction with Microsoft and Gemalto
21st April 2009 at Cardinal Place, London.
Presentor Good - I think he did what he was there to do
Content Poor - Too technical for me, or even you - unless you are an SQL Programmer
Relavance Good - Based on the agenda, Poor - based on what actually happened
Materials Poor - Poor handouts, narrow customer mix, presenter used someone else's slides
Venue Poor - Unhelpful and moody staff, no coffee.
Overall Good - Why? Because I saw what I think (hope) is the worst of the product, not the best.
Doug.
Shame about the blunt and somewhat impolite staff running their venue but these people need jobs and Microsoft's "Customer" centre , 10 mins from the Houses of Parliament is as good a place to work as anywhere, I guess. Needless to say the coffee wasn't flowing (no mid morning break) and the slightly dry sandwiches were at best unimpressive which kind of set the tone although I didn't realise it at the time.
Anyway, enough of all that, it was the product and it's capabilities I went to see.
So imagine, to make a written point more graphic, a model preparing to hit the catwalk and show off a 'nearly ready' new outfit. The clothes designers have done their bit, they've designed, styled, restyled and redesigned the outfit. The model is ready, the catwalk awaits but neither the make-up artist nor the hair stylist have turned up and to make things even worse, the wrong model is wearing the outfit. The lights are wrong, the set design is wrong and the audience is... wrong. That's how I see Microsoft's latest and greatest Identity Management solution... it's VERY unfinished.
Several years ago MS acknowledged the need to connect directories, provision stuff, do ID management stuff and so on and acquired a product Zoomit VIA which became known as MMS 2.x which then became MIIS 2003 which then became ILM 2007, the abbreviations are irrelevant because ILM "2" isn't ILM! ILM stands for Identity Lifecycle Manager and (unfortunately in my view) the Marketing department has decided to include this future release with their security product set and therefore call it Forefront Identity Manager 2010. So FIM 2010 (two thousand and ten) it will be. Unofficial though the leaked name is [update: click here], like its predecessors it is largely irrelevant - but confusing all the same.
Microsoft's approach in this space has been slow and reminds me of the age when it took them 18 months to support their own new Client Operating Systems in SMS, (now SCCM). The difference here is that I know more and they appear cautious, very cautious... So what goodies do we get in the new product and why the slow delivery?
Forgotten Password - at last I cry, but my tears of joy soon fade and the cold, deflated drops of enthusiasm dry as my mind wonders to patchy, sceptical and meandering thoughts. I saw the first RC (Release Candidate) today and whilst I appreciate the extension of the much expected final product release from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010 at the earliest if I were a product manager owning this thing I'd be thinking long and hard about whether or not it's the right way to go.
So a good strategist needs to read between the lines, to see the outfit without the hair or the make-up or the model. So what is it that MS are offering in a new product that drives forward identity management in a way that others will follow, what ground breaking concepts are being introduced that CTO's will fight for and businesses will invest in? What functions and features will users love and enjoy, what processes and automation will reduce incidents whilst maximising user effectiveness? What one nugget of WOW! can I tell my team and peers about when I return, and what would I tell my industry colleagues with whom I mutually share best practice, insights and learning's.
Well, in this case, absolutely nothing.
It's a sad fact that FIM2010 is narrow in functional capability, does far less than the competition and in an enterprise, will require constant and consistent investment to maintain. YES, they do offer "codeless" policies where a web gui lets you do the basics (although its very laborious), yes, you can do forgotten password albeit with a complex process to manage languages and no option of user defined questions and yes, it will talk to SAP and - at least - some of your connected systems. The very basic foundations are there but without a dark room, lots of sandals and some hairy coders it's never going to do what I want for Mars. (no offence meant to the developer community!)
It is a simple tool, for simple organisations - that is organisations with simple needs - and for those, if it's cheap (read cheap as "Free" or "Almost Free") yeah, it'll do 80% OK. For Universities and public sector organisations functional breadth or depth is not key and where living with the knowledge that we could do more if we had the money this product will be good enough I'm sure, but given the widely accepted view that identity lies at the heart of every system nowadays I expected more from Microsoft.
Oxford Computer Group were good hosts, Microsoft were silent during the briefing but the material - and the (3 or so) other customers that were there had some interesting points, but nothing for me that couldn't be done in an hour, on webex. There was way too much technical detail and for a technologist that's hard for me to say, but if you have to start messing around in SQL databases and digging deep into batch processes to show off ILM I was either at the wrong "Introduction" to ILM"2" or there is something seriously amiss.
If you'd like the hardcore details of what I learned, let me know and I'll gladly bore you with my endless notes and scribbles. Take away from this the fact that Microsoft are great at some things - I'm the worlds biggest advocate of MS Office - but at others they just arn't even close. Next step for us is to get a view of the FIM roadmap, from Microsoft and in detail. We'll stay up to date with the product and confirm that we are NOT (as my Vision presumes) a 'simple' organisation, because if we are, this might just about do (as long as someone else implements it!), but it's a very long way down the catwalk before we show off our new identity if it's to have a Microsoft badge on it.
ILM"2" Workshop by the Oxford Computer Group in conjunction with Microsoft and Gemalto
21st April 2009 at Cardinal Place, London.
Presentor Good - I think he did what he was there to do
Content Poor - Too technical for me, or even you - unless you are an SQL Programmer
Relavance Good - Based on the agenda, Poor - based on what actually happened
Materials Poor - Poor handouts, narrow customer mix, presenter used someone else's slides
Venue Poor - Unhelpful and moody staff, no coffee.
Overall Good - Why? Because I saw what I think (hope) is the worst of the product, not the best.
Doug.
More Reading:
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
So... IBM or not IBM ?
I have just read through all the posts on the blog and overall, except for a few negative or doubtful comments here and there, most of the bloggers and commentators seem rather impressed with what IBM has to offer.
We are already an IBM shop, albeit an old rusty crumbly shack of a shop. Like it or not, Lotus Notes works for us and our much hated Notes databases are a pillar for many of our units. We are very heavily dependent on Sametime and many teams, specially in Mars IS, would not be able to function without it. Imagine trying to run an Atlas upgrade without Sametime.
Now with the emergence of Enterprise 2.0, we are investing a lot of effort into leveraging other types of collaboration software to help the business work better together. Social software, blogs, wikis, forums, you name it and we want it. And we want it not only for "traditional" Mars, but also for all the organisations that Mars has and will be acquiring. The tools are out there, the question is then, who do we get them from.
Do we go start from scratch and invest in an all Microsoft environment? Sounds like a lot of work & a lot of money. However future acquisitions of Mars are likely to be in the SME area and stats show that the majority of the organisations in this space (bingo!) are on a Microsoft platform rather than an IBM one. If we were to move to Microsoft, integration or even absorption of new acquisitions would become easier and much cheaper.
Do we do Best of Breed and invest in industry-strength integration to force these different best bits into continued seamless co-existence? Hmmm. Is there a need for Best of Breed in Mars ?
Or do we stick with IBM and tap into this fully integrated seamless solution we could just naturally expand into from our current Lotus base? IBM's offerings presentation slide is almost an exact copy of the Mars requirements presentation slide that has been circulating over the past year. Donald? ;-) IBM has everything we think we need. Sticking with IBM would allow us to then focus our attention on the more difficult task which is to bring about that culture shift that will encourage our users to use these tools that we are rolling out.
To be fair though, one argument I keep hearing in favour of IBM is that traditional Mars is 2 times bigger than non-traditional Mars and therefore moving away from the traditional IBM environment in Mars will cause more user disruption than the other option. This is not strictly true : regardless of which direction we move to, we will be upgrading part of our user base and migrating the rest. Either way, the whole user base will be hit with a round of training and some inevitable disruption while they get used to their new IW.
What it all boils down to is cost vs. benefits for each of the scenarios that are open to Mars in this area. An objective and fair evaluation of what Mars would need to invest with each vendor to achieve the 1-Mars vision should help us make the right decision for Mars. This work is currently underway ... watch the space.
Still, I agree with Gartner that the whole debate about IBM/Microsoft sort of misses the point. The time is to assess the viability of checking out the cloud. But this is another blog entry for another time!
We are already an IBM shop, albeit an old rusty crumbly shack of a shop. Like it or not, Lotus Notes works for us and our much hated Notes databases are a pillar for many of our units. We are very heavily dependent on Sametime and many teams, specially in Mars IS, would not be able to function without it. Imagine trying to run an Atlas upgrade without Sametime.
Now with the emergence of Enterprise 2.0, we are investing a lot of effort into leveraging other types of collaboration software to help the business work better together. Social software, blogs, wikis, forums, you name it and we want it. And we want it not only for "traditional" Mars, but also for all the organisations that Mars has and will be acquiring. The tools are out there, the question is then, who do we get them from.
Do we go start from scratch and invest in an all Microsoft environment? Sounds like a lot of work & a lot of money. However future acquisitions of Mars are likely to be in the SME area and stats show that the majority of the organisations in this space (bingo!) are on a Microsoft platform rather than an IBM one. If we were to move to Microsoft, integration or even absorption of new acquisitions would become easier and much cheaper.
Do we do Best of Breed and invest in industry-strength integration to force these different best bits into continued seamless co-existence? Hmmm. Is there a need for Best of Breed in Mars ?
Or do we stick with IBM and tap into this fully integrated seamless solution we could just naturally expand into from our current Lotus base? IBM's offerings presentation slide is almost an exact copy of the Mars requirements presentation slide that has been circulating over the past year. Donald? ;-) IBM has everything we think we need. Sticking with IBM would allow us to then focus our attention on the more difficult task which is to bring about that culture shift that will encourage our users to use these tools that we are rolling out.
To be fair though, one argument I keep hearing in favour of IBM is that traditional Mars is 2 times bigger than non-traditional Mars and therefore moving away from the traditional IBM environment in Mars will cause more user disruption than the other option. This is not strictly true : regardless of which direction we move to, we will be upgrading part of our user base and migrating the rest. Either way, the whole user base will be hit with a round of training and some inevitable disruption while they get used to their new IW.
What it all boils down to is cost vs. benefits for each of the scenarios that are open to Mars in this area. An objective and fair evaluation of what Mars would need to invest with each vendor to achieve the 1-Mars vision should help us make the right decision for Mars. This work is currently underway ... watch the space.
Still, I agree with Gartner that the whole debate about IBM/Microsoft sort of misses the point. The time is to assess the viability of checking out the cloud. But this is another blog entry for another time!
Monday, January 26, 2009
It wasn't ALL hard work
(The EUT Development team, locked away in a back room, worked tirelessly to plan out the future strategy) Karoona: "Honestly, I haven't had very much to drunk."
----------------------
Dai: "It was amazing. Truly a touching moment that I don't think I'll never forget."
Mike: "What was?"
Dai: "The presidential inauguration"
Mike: "Oh.... I thought you meant SameTime."
----------------------
Greg: "Do we turn left or right here?"
Karoona: "Hmmm... I'm not sure. We might have to phone Dai"
Greg: "We're at the end of the driveway... How can we be lost already???"
Friday, January 23, 2009
How Fascinating!
The last day of Lotusphere dawned, and I for one spent most of my time comparing notes with other CPG customers and also browbeating the developers on my pet Lotus Notes peeves...So a fairly quiet day with not too much to report ... until the closing session by Benjamin Zander about leadership, which I thought was fantastic.
Rather than blather on about it here, I found two of his earlier sessions online that formed part of the hour long session. I highly recommend them! Go here (20 mins) and here (15 mins) to watch - they will help you understand "how fascinating!" and why we all keep saying it!
Rather than blather on about it here, I found two of his earlier sessions online that formed part of the hour long session. I highly recommend them! Go here (20 mins) and here (15 mins) to watch - they will help you understand "how fascinating!" and why we all keep saying it!
That's all from me on Lotusphere 2009. Many thanks to my co-bloggers for their excellent posts - I feel like I've been to all the sessions this year (yes, my head hurts!) I hope you enjoyed our coverage too!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
What were they thinking? When UX Design collides with Reality
This was an overall good insight into IBM's usability practices. We're told that in LS2008 IBM promised to deliver that Notes 8 would deliver a "world-class user experience" and dedicated a big team of user researchers, usability specialists, visual designers & interaction designers to the design of Notes 8 - and QuickR, Connections, Sametime 8, etc. etc. This team focuses on gathering feedback from various sources (forum, bleedyellow.com, GCPC, developers, customers, ...), prioritise and input that feedback into development.
What makes IBM's approach to usability interesting is the set of personas they have created to represent certain types of users. Meet Samantha, Mary, etc. each of whom have a very detailed profile and are taken really seriously by the IBM community. This I thought would be an approach that would work quite well for EUE, coupled with the user segmentation work that Paul Wickham's been doing - we could have our own Brad, Tom, Keanu etc ;)
Anyhow, the IBM Usability team is now focused on bringing consistency for Samantha and co. in the new technologies. We can already see elements of this in Quickr & Connections. The new Notes client and iNotes, as I believe Brian has already blogged previously, are very similar. This consistency in look-and-feel enhances seamlessness of usage for the end user, who can slide from Connections into QuickR for example without even noticing that he has done so. Very slick.
As a side note, it was good to see IBM's initiatives on gathering end user feedback and acting on it. If we do upgrade to Notes 8, we'll make sure we add to the cause!
What makes IBM's approach to usability interesting is the set of personas they have created to represent certain types of users. Meet Samantha, Mary, etc. each of whom have a very detailed profile and are taken really seriously by the IBM community. This I thought would be an approach that would work quite well for EUE, coupled with the user segmentation work that Paul Wickham's been doing - we could have our own Brad, Tom, Keanu etc ;)
Anyhow, the IBM Usability team is now focused on bringing consistency for Samantha and co. in the new technologies. We can already see elements of this in Quickr & Connections. The new Notes client and iNotes, as I believe Brian has already blogged previously, are very similar. This consistency in look-and-feel enhances seamlessness of usage for the end user, who can slide from Connections into QuickR for example without even noticing that he has done so. Very slick.
As a side note, it was good to see IBM's initiatives on gathering end user feedback and acting on it. If we do upgrade to Notes 8, we'll make sure we add to the cause!
Project Liberate :-S
Using the open office source code and the eclipse framework Lotus has created Symphony; which for basic text editing / presentations / spreadsheets works great. It’s completely free too, who can complain? The majority of Microsoft Office functionality lays unused so in this context it seems ridiculous to pay for that privilege.
By the end of the year it will be compatible with the latest version of office, and by 2010 will be aimed at more than just basic users with macros and other functionality being introduced.
The other side to this story is Project Liberate: “An IBM complementary Consulting Engagement to help customers understand alternatives when negotiating a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement”. A bold move when IBM openly admits Symphony is an inferior office product, but this is a long term strategy and at least they are contributing the developments back into the openoffice.org community.
Is the world going mobile??
This was an interesting session presented by a Blackberry user and a WMD user, split into two halves
- Demos of phones: Nokia, Android, Blackberry....
- The installation of a traveler (traveller :P) server.
At the beginning one presenter gave out his email address and requested people send him questions. Within an hour the Traveler server was set-up, a device configured and the mail could be read. Finally, the phone was remotely wiped completely. Simple but effective I thought, maybe it could be of value to associates with wi-fi phones. Traveler is bundled with domino licences too; Mobile Connect is a similar VPN solution.
LotusLive; Aka Bluehouse
During the opening session LotusLive, IBM's offering for the 'cloud', was announced. For companies up to 10 000 users it may be cheaper than hosting their own email services. However for a company of Mars' size it could allow an extension of the intranet into the IBM data centre based in the US.
The idea may seem a little farfetched; but there are features such as 'Click to Cloud’ which allows documents to be shared from Domino into LotusLive and vice versa. This would allow people from other companies to collaborate with people from Mars seamlessly. There is a plug-in for the notes sidebar to allow documents to be taken offline, Skype integration and some other IBM business partner involvement.
A more realistic service is set to be released later this year, called LotusLive iNotes, which is a product aimed at boundary workers.
The idea may seem a little farfetched; but there are features such as 'Click to Cloud’ which allows documents to be shared from Domino into LotusLive and vice versa. This would allow people from other companies to collaborate with people from Mars seamlessly. There is a plug-in for the notes sidebar to allow documents to be taken offline, Skype integration and some other IBM business partner involvement.
A more realistic service is set to be released later this year, called LotusLive iNotes, which is a product aimed at boundary workers.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
ID106 - Notes & Domino Archiving: Offerings and Roadmap
The need for archiving is currently driven by 4 factors:
- Reduce storage size of mail
- Legal compliance and eDiscovery
- Collection of Enterprise Content from other systems
- Line of Business application optimisation
IBM currently offer 3... well, 2 methods for archiving:
Domino server based archives, which will continue to be available but are being de-emphasised;
IBM's Common Store product, which is being retired; and
IBM Context Collector, which replaces CommonStore, Email Manager and Records Crawler into one unfied system.
There are also plenty of 3rd party products out there.
Mobing forward, they intend to push more on personal (user) e-mail archiving, and support for a platform agnostic Enterprise Content Management framework that any vendor can hook into.
For the user side, they recognise that the current archiving system in Notes is difficult to use, even more difficult to find and doesn't always work. They presented a "vision" for the future of user archiving. They call it a vision, but it was really a narrated story with some concept screenshots which were literally mocked up with pencil and paper.
In summary, they're moving to have roll-over nsf file archives for the user (rollover is date or size-based, and is automatic). Archived messages will leave a stub message in the main mail interface, and the message searching window will contain a checkbox to enable searching of archived mail. Whilst archiving will continue to have a scheduled process, the user will be notified if the schedule is missed due to the machine being powered off. The user will also be able to restore the message from archives easily from a link in the message stub.
Some of the features may be available in a point release for Domino 8.5.x, but most won't be around until "Domino 9 or beyond", they say.
Notes Client on Citrix
This session, far from being what I expected (a hands-on this-is-how-we-do-it) was mainly details of how version 8.0.2 runs much better on Citrix than the previous version (which, it's generally agreed, was awful)
They recommend Citrix XenApp 5.0 to get it working, and there's a few tweks with disabling Windows services and tuning the Anti-Virus software to imporve performance.
They did a lab test of server loading, and managed to get up to 145 clients connecting per (2 x quad core cpu 64 bit server with 32Gb RAM) server. They tested with 32 bit vs 64 bit servers, dual vs quad core and differing RAM and explained where the bottlenecks seemed to be on each configuration.
I did ask the question about what load each user was doing and it was only email, calendar and writing a document in embedded Symphony.
Personally, I'd think that ocne you add the other server overheads (presentation server, SQL back end, WAN accelerators, load balancing servers, etc.) that you'd need for a production level environment, 145 users on such a grunty server doesn't look like that much of an acheivement just to get mail and calendar. After all, if you gave the users the newer browser-based iNotes client, they'd get virtually the same experience of a no-footprint client and you'd scale far more users per server.
They recommend Citrix XenApp 5.0 to get it working, and there's a few tweks with disabling Windows services and tuning the Anti-Virus software to imporve performance.
They did a lab test of server loading, and managed to get up to 145 clients connecting per (2 x quad core cpu 64 bit server with 32Gb RAM) server. They tested with 32 bit vs 64 bit servers, dual vs quad core and differing RAM and explained where the bottlenecks seemed to be on each configuration.
I did ask the question about what load each user was doing and it was only email, calendar and writing a document in embedded Symphony.
Personally, I'd think that ocne you add the other server overheads (presentation server, SQL back end, WAN accelerators, load balancing servers, etc.) that you'd need for a production level environment, 145 users on such a grunty server doesn't look like that much of an acheivement just to get mail and calendar. After all, if you gave the users the newer browser-based iNotes client, they'd get virtually the same experience of a no-footprint client and you'd scale far more users per server.
INV 102 Future Directions for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Products
I know that there are a lot of blogs around Notes 8.5 that have been posted, however, here is mine on IBM's future direction on Notes domino 8.5 and beyond. Having have chance to chat with some of the experts, I do get an impression they are investing resources into the product to make it even better. As solid as the R8.5 product, IBM is raising the bar to make it even more stable and powerful. Here are just some highlights that was taken away from the session.
Notes Focus for 2009
Cold startup time improvement from v8.0.1 to v8.0.2 > 7% improvement to 8.5
warm startup times
general responsiveness
memory improvements
Mac support with notes 8.5
Drag/Drop of text within the rich text editor
offline support activities
choose for multiple addresses for a person in type ahead
inotes improvement
forward contact as vcards
roaming user available with new file-based options
support of lotus notes id vault with lotus notes share login
mac and linex support
ability to view the views like a pim view
calendar federation
Notes Share login
notes id vault
document compression
lz1 compression inside database
domino attachment
router enhancement
domino configure tuner
DAOS I+O improvement
domino designer enhancements.
xpages
Notes Focus for 2009
Cold startup time improvement from v8.0.1 to v8.0.2 > 7% improvement to 8.5
warm startup times
general responsiveness
memory improvements
Mac support with notes 8.5
Drag/Drop of text within the rich text editor
offline support activities
choose for multiple addresses for a person in type ahead
inotes improvement
forward contact as vcards
roaming user available with new file-based options
support of lotus notes id vault with lotus notes share login
mac and linex support
ability to view the views like a pim view
calendar federation
Notes Share login
notes id vault
document compression
lz1 compression inside database
domino attachment
router enhancement
domino configure tuner
DAOS I+O improvement
domino designer enhancements.
xpages
BP305 - The document format dance
This session went over the various differences betweed ODF, OOXML and PDF formats.
At the heart, all three are XML driven and all are ISO standards. PDF is the clear winner for read-only content and archiving, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be adopted straight away.
For editable content, there is currently no clear choice between ODF and OOXML, and most programs do, or soon will, support both.
The speaker suggested that OOXML has a lot of support in the US, being Microsoft sponsored. ODF is the preferred format in Europe at the moment, so it could end up with ODF being the de facto standard for non-US companies.
Microsoft, of course, support the ECMA stardard OOXML, but not the later ISO standard (there were some alterations) and support for that won't come until Office 14. Interestingly Apple's iPhone editor also uses OOXML.
Lotus Symphony uses ODF, as does OpenOffice/Star Office as well as Google Docs.
So, the key take-aways from this is to use PDF for read only stuff, use XML where you can and ultimately keep your options open either way.
At the heart, all three are XML driven and all are ISO standards. PDF is the clear winner for read-only content and archiving, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be adopted straight away.
For editable content, there is currently no clear choice between ODF and OOXML, and most programs do, or soon will, support both.
The speaker suggested that OOXML has a lot of support in the US, being Microsoft sponsored. ODF is the preferred format in Europe at the moment, so it could end up with ODF being the de facto standard for non-US companies.
Microsoft, of course, support the ECMA stardard OOXML, but not the later ISO standard (there were some alterations) and support for that won't come until Office 14. Interestingly Apple's iPhone editor also uses OOXML.
Lotus Symphony uses ODF, as does OpenOffice/Star Office as well as Google Docs.
So, the key take-aways from this is to use PDF for read only stuff, use XML where you can and ultimately keep your options open either way.
BP206 Domino Health Check
IBM recommends that a Health checks should be done on a regular bases, but the best time to do a health check is when a new project is about to the implemented. This ensures that the environment is healthy for the new project.
Good practices that IBM recommends are all currently being used by Mars IS. Examples: Document repository, change controls, and User community acceptance.
New for Mars IS:
One great tool that was release 2 weeks ago is called Domino Configurator Tuner (DCT) that could assist EUT Operations/Development obtain gauge on the domino server health status. The DCT evaluates server settings according to a growing catalog of best practices. All servers in a single domain can be evaluated together. DCT generates reports that explain the issues DCT uncovers, suggest mitigations, and provide references to supporting publications. This free tool is like having an IBM expert at our fingertips checking the server health and providing feedback for us to fix critical issues before they occurs.
Click here to download a Full version copy now: This product will only support Notes Client 7 or higher:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24019358&rs=0&cs=utf-8&context=SWA00&dcÔ00&q1=dct
ID211 - Executing a security assessment of Domino
We all know I'm not usually one to prattle on about security, so I'll make this one brief.... :-)
The majority of the session was about patterns in hacking recently and things to watch out for. They're telling us that due to the current economic climate, security is becoming more important because:
The majority of the session was about patterns in hacking recently and things to watch out for. They're telling us that due to the current economic climate, security is becoming more important because:
- Desperate times breed desperate people, and if people need money they may see an economic incentive.
- Higher rates of staff turnover/reduction at companies may lead to higher numbers of disgruntled people whom have inside knowledge of systems
- Staff changeover in companies without proper change control in place may lead to an administrator leaving and their replacement thinking patches, etc. have been done when they haven't.
So, what are the hackers up to? Leaving the script kiddies aside, there's a general, iterative procedure that a professional hacker tends to follow, being:
- Recon - investigate the system and find out as much as they can, determining internet points of presence.
- Probe & Attack - check for open ports, WiFi sidejacks, open file shares, anonymous access
- Gain toehold - get low level access as an anonymous or standard user in unobtrusive manner, social engineering attacks, etc.
- Advance - use the towhold position to attempt buffer overflows, injection attacks, weak passwords
- Stealth listening - consolidate their position, cover the tracks, look for further opportunities for privelige escalation, packet captures, etc.
- Takeover - own the system via a rootkit, download data or use system as a launching place for attacks on other systems on the network or internet.
One of the particular things they mentioned to crack down on is open file shares. Having access to the file system would allow the attacker to download nsf files, or the address book. Having access to the ID files is a particular risk, because they can be downloaded and subjected to an offline attack. Certificate ID file too, because that could be attacked and used to certify a new admin.
INV112 - Using a Virtual Microsoft Desktop Alternative
The underlying message of this session was about the stranglehold that Microsoft have on the desktops at the moment, and how it's become less necessary.
Presently, the documents people are creating are tied to Microsoft's Office suite. That, in turn is chained to the Windows operating system, which is linked to the desktop (via OEM or otherwise). A major upgrade of any one of these components usually triggers an upgrade of the others. ie. Wanting to upgrade the office suite usually means upgraded harware, and therefore an OS upgrade too.
At the Office level, the way to decouple this is to use open standards (more on that in a later blog) to store documents, so it becomes irrelevant whether you're using Office or Symphony/OpenOffice. And using Symphony means you're not tied just to Windows as the OS.
To decouple the OS from hardware upgrades, they recommend looking at VDI solutions, as you can maintain the hardware for longer, etc. etc. They showed some Gartner reports and pretty graphs, but they're the same ones we've already seen about trends and TCO of virtual desktops.
The other thing, brought in right at the end, was a move towards Desktop as a Service. Basically, like VDI but with the desktop hosted in the cloud. Nice, but not sure how practical it is for a large company.
Presently, the documents people are creating are tied to Microsoft's Office suite. That, in turn is chained to the Windows operating system, which is linked to the desktop (via OEM or otherwise). A major upgrade of any one of these components usually triggers an upgrade of the others. ie. Wanting to upgrade the office suite usually means upgraded harware, and therefore an OS upgrade too.
At the Office level, the way to decouple this is to use open standards (more on that in a later blog) to store documents, so it becomes irrelevant whether you're using Office or Symphony/OpenOffice. And using Symphony means you're not tied just to Windows as the OS.
To decouple the OS from hardware upgrades, they recommend looking at VDI solutions, as you can maintain the hardware for longer, etc. etc. They showed some Gartner reports and pretty graphs, but they're the same ones we've already seen about trends and TCO of virtual desktops.
The other thing, brought in right at the end, was a move towards Desktop as a Service. Basically, like VDI but with the desktop hosted in the cloud. Nice, but not sure how practical it is for a large company.
ID405 - Sametime Advanced
I'll say upfront, I was rather disappointed with this session.
Sametime Advanced seems to have some nice features is it, but I'm not really sure how much they would get used at Mars.
In addition to multi-user chats, there is a more formal "chat room" feature available, with document sharing included. The can also be accessed from a browser interface too. It's nice, but SameTime meetings gives you the same functionality.
Broadcasts are another feature - you can broadcast a message out to a group, and those that respond are joined into an n-way chat. I can see maybe ART or teams like that using this, for getting help on a problem.
Instant poll works similar to Broadcasts, but with a polling/survey message. Meh.
Skilltap is virtually identical to broadcasts, but specifically pointed to asking questions that require specialist answers. At the end of the chat, the questioner has the option of reviewing the answers and adding them to an FAQ. It's an interesting way of working, sure, but surely the last thing we need is yet another silo of information locked away somewhere else?
And then there's desktop sharing, which gives... well, desktop sharing.
The other major functional benefit, which is the main value proposition for upgrade, would be the ability to customise the look and feel and location of the Sametime notification baloons.
So, all in all, some nice stuff, but anything we'd actually use we already have perfectly good ways of doing.
Sametime Advanced seems to have some nice features is it, but I'm not really sure how much they would get used at Mars.
In addition to multi-user chats, there is a more formal "chat room" feature available, with document sharing included. The can also be accessed from a browser interface too. It's nice, but SameTime meetings gives you the same functionality.
Broadcasts are another feature - you can broadcast a message out to a group, and those that respond are joined into an n-way chat. I can see maybe ART or teams like that using this, for getting help on a problem.
Instant poll works similar to Broadcasts, but with a polling/survey message. Meh.
Skilltap is virtually identical to broadcasts, but specifically pointed to asking questions that require specialist answers. At the end of the chat, the questioner has the option of reviewing the answers and adding them to an FAQ. It's an interesting way of working, sure, but surely the last thing we need is yet another silo of information locked away somewhere else?
And then there's desktop sharing, which gives... well, desktop sharing.
The other major functional benefit, which is the main value proposition for upgrade, would be the ability to customise the look and feel and location of the Sametime notification baloons.
So, all in all, some nice stuff, but anything we'd actually use we already have perfectly good ways of doing.
Directory Independence
I get all the best topics! I attended a session today about some future functionality in Domino. The idea is to provide an option to store all the person documents in an external LDAP directory, such as Active Directory. This is different to the secondary directory I talked about before (already in the product).
Initially user groups are likely to stay in the Notes NAB, but as with all early development, details are scarce and the plans are hazy. The presenters took us through some early code and it looks like the mechanisms to find the external directory servers are fairly primitive so far (basically there is a single DNS entry that defines a specific directory server), so it will be a while before this is robust and business ready. Great direction though - and if we can remove yet another directory from our environment we can start to think about less complex (and cheaper!) directory synchronisation tools
Initially user groups are likely to stay in the Notes NAB, but as with all early development, details are scarce and the plans are hazy. The presenters took us through some early code and it looks like the mechanisms to find the external directory servers are fairly primitive so far (basically there is a single DNS entry that defines a specific directory server), so it will be a while before this is robust and business ready. Great direction though - and if we can remove yet another directory from our environment we can start to think about less complex (and cheaper!) directory synchronisation tools
BP403 - Best practices for migrating Exchange to Domino
This session revolved around 2 case studies of companies migrating from Exchange to Domino and 1 from a Unix mail system to Domino that had been assisted by IBM, and the lessons learned from those cases.
Interestingly, all the cases revolved around a highly de-centralised mail system moving to centralised Domino. No-one went for decentralised Notes, and no examples of centralised Exchange to centralised Notes were cited. One of the migrations had started, but was halted partway though at the customer request, due to the economic downturn.
Some of the problems encountered were (in my own view) basic project management issues. Failure to define standards first, risk management and training needs.
On the technical problems, a few of the challenges they faced were:
Interestingly, all the cases revolved around a highly de-centralised mail system moving to centralised Domino. No-one went for decentralised Notes, and no examples of centralised Exchange to centralised Notes were cited. One of the migrations had started, but was halted partway though at the customer request, due to the economic downturn.
Some of the problems encountered were (in my own view) basic project management issues. Failure to define standards first, risk management and training needs.
On the technical problems, a few of the challenges they faced were:
- local PST files, which IT may not even know exists if they are user created.
- .msg emails saved on the file system
- Mail archives
- Calendar/Scheduling lookups
- Personal Address books
- Non-Blackberry mobile clients
- Blackberrys requiring a full wipe and resync as part of the migration
- Recurring meetings
- Outlook Journal
- Outlook Notes
- Unattended/Generic mailboxes
- Inbox rules
- Password synchronisation and distribution
IBM consulting, for one of the clients, ended up using 6 separate toolkits as well as customised scripts to manage the migtations.
All in all, there weren't any "best practices" discussed. It was probably better to say that it was a "things to watch out for" or "why you should get IBM consulting to help you" session.
ID207 - Getting the most out of DAOS
This was a more in depth technical look at DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service) and, as I blogged previously, something we should definitely use when we move to 8.5
Aside from the obvious benefits of reducing the database size and de-duplicating attachments, another point raised was that mail attachments are typically quite static and are usually not accessed all that often. Therefore, by spinning them out to separate files on the disk, it's more cost effective to place the repository on Tier 2 storage, saving your faster disks for the databases.
It's also worth noting that DAOS is not just for mailboxes - it will work with ANY notes database. That includes mail.box, by the way, so once a message with an attachment hits the server, it's written to the disk once and once only, and the pointer stub gets routed through the server. They've seen about a 13% reduction in disk I/O, as well as a 10.5% decrease in CPU usage from this.
Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses. There are a few caveats to be aware of. These include:
Aside from the obvious benefits of reducing the database size and de-duplicating attachments, another point raised was that mail attachments are typically quite static and are usually not accessed all that often. Therefore, by spinning them out to separate files on the disk, it's more cost effective to place the repository on Tier 2 storage, saving your faster disks for the databases.
It's also worth noting that DAOS is not just for mailboxes - it will work with ANY notes database. That includes mail.box, by the way, so once a message with an attachment hits the server, it's written to the disk once and once only, and the pointer stub gets routed through the server. They've seen about a 13% reduction in disk I/O, as well as a 10.5% decrease in CPU usage from this.
Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses. There are a few caveats to be aware of. These include:
- The size of the attachment still counts towards the user's quota size, even though it's not stored within the nsf file.
- The attachment size does NOT count towards the 64Gb size limit for an NSF file. In one case, a client has created an NSF file which is logically storing 2TB of data, but thanks to DAOS the NSF is still less than 64Gb. However, this database cannot be replicated to any non-DAOS server, because the replica would then be over the limit
- Copying/duplicating an NSF file file at the OS level, or deleting an attachment file will cause the DAOS system to go out of sync. Things will still work, but files will not be deleted off the file system when the documents are deleted until after resync/verification is done. This can be automated, however.
- Transaction logging must be enabled on the server, and the available space in the logs must be large enough to buffer the largest file you might want to pull out.
- You need to create/upgrade the database format to 8.5 format.
So, there's a few things to note but they're fairly minor, compared to the significant savings that can be made.
ID206 5 New Tricks You Didn't Know about Lotus Notes Administrator
Here are some top Domino administration tips (including some undocumented gems!) that will make Lotus Notes Administrator lives easier. These time saver tricks will shave a few hours off our daily work so that we could do more work : )
These are just some examples of what you can do. More updates to these shortcuts in the near future.
1) Connecting Remotely to a Server directly in the Admin Client:
Add to Notes.ini
Add: RemoteProgram=C:\vnc\vncviewer.exe %hostname%
2) Cataloging All Databases: This will allow you to create views that show all databases in your domain.
Select formulas for views in Catalog.nsf included: &!(DBListInCatalog = "0") to keep those databases from being displayed.
Set Catalog_Disk_Usage=1 to have percent used logged by the Catalog Task.
3) Finding Duplicate Replicas: Duplicate Replicas on a server can cause confusion and can be tricky to find.
Option 1# use SHOW DIR command in the server console.
Option 2# Tweak the by Replica ID view in the Catalog.nsf
4) File Panel Output to Printer: No more need to do screenshot and send them to the site team. Just select the databases on the server in Admin client and hit print.
This can only be done with R7.0.2 or higher clients
User : Sort on any column and then print to produce reports
Version 8.5 allows copy and paste rich data from the files panel.
5) Update Task Tuning: The Updating task can overwhelm a notes server. How to tell if the task is overloaded?
Check the following:
Update.pendinglist
Update.DeferredList
Update.FullTextList
.Max
(If the numbers are high, then request are being backed up.
Also use 'Show STAT Update" command to see them or "Statistic Tab in the admin client. Chart them over time using Stat event generators in the Events4.nsfTuesday, January 20, 2009
This is how hard Life @ Lotusphere is (Karoona's words but Brian's message)
Tomorrow is going to be the 4th day since Brian and I landed. 4 days, that's 96 hours and we have not had any time at all to go shopping. Not that we are complaining, but the closest experience we have had of shopping so far was the far away massive mall we had a fleeting glimpse of through the window of the car that carried us straight from the airport to the hotel.
4 days in. No shopping. My dollar notes reside unspent, untouched, neatly folded in my purse. Dreadfully painful as you can imagine this is, I'm however amongst the least badly hit. Poor Brian brought with him only 3 watches. Tomorrow is Day 4. He only has 3 watches. Is the fashionista going to have to completely shatter his belief system and wear the same watch twice in 4 days??
This is how hard Life @ Lotusphere is. Our heart goes out to all of those people who are stranded in the desert without any water for days. We know how you feel.
-- blogged by me on Brian's behalf
4 days in. No shopping. My dollar notes reside unspent, untouched, neatly folded in my purse. Dreadfully painful as you can imagine this is, I'm however amongst the least badly hit. Poor Brian brought with him only 3 watches. Tomorrow is Day 4. He only has 3 watches. Is the fashionista going to have to completely shatter his belief system and wear the same watch twice in 4 days??
This is how hard Life @ Lotusphere is. Our heart goes out to all of those people who are stranded in the desert without any water for days. We know how you feel.
-- blogged by me on Brian's behalf
Sametime Unified Telephony
I attended two sessions on this, and the more I see, the more I like.
It encompasses most of the features that OCS 2007 Release 2 does (eg. Telephone/IM presence, Click-to-call, Click-to-conference, VC, embedded softphone, etc.) but with a few nice extras too.
Call routing is a good one. Users can add their own home, mobile, other numbers and establish rules on where calls will go. This goes way beyond call forwarding, though.
You can base which phone (if any) based on time of day, your Sametime status, physical location (as documented in Sametime via Location Awareness), and who the calling party is. It can try one phone, then divert to another on no answer, with different diversions based on these rules - almost the same level of functionality as an inbox rule.
The paradigm of having a personal number, that identifies YOU rather than a physical device is also a good one, which I can personally resonate with today. As my co-bloggers are aware, I ran out of mobile phone credit (mainly because I have to pay the inbound portion of international calls to the US). Sure, I could have purchased a pre-paid SIM, but then I'd have to tell everyone the new number.
With SUT (Sametime Unified Telephony), I could get a prepaid SIM here, and set that phone up in Sametime. A UK caller would call my same number, which would come in to ISB, hop over the WAN link as a VoIP and have a Mars USA PBX make a domestic call to me. So far, so good. UK calleds can reach me at my own number.
BUT.... If I wanted to make an outbound call to the UK, I can initiate that through Sametime too. Mars USA would initiate a call to my mobile, then it would route it over the WAN and the UK PBX initiates the other side of the call. Therefore, at each point it's a local call - even for outbound calls that (in theory) originate from my mobile.
Now, because the ST server is brokering the call, that means I can now seamlessly transfer the call between my mobile, desk phone, hotel phone, IP softphone, etc without hanging up the call, and the other party would never know.
The main strength of SUT over OCS is that the end user has full control over their personal call rules.
It encompasses most of the features that OCS 2007 Release 2 does (eg. Telephone/IM presence, Click-to-call, Click-to-conference, VC, embedded softphone, etc.) but with a few nice extras too.
Call routing is a good one. Users can add their own home, mobile, other numbers and establish rules on where calls will go. This goes way beyond call forwarding, though.
You can base which phone (if any) based on time of day, your Sametime status, physical location (as documented in Sametime via Location Awareness), and who the calling party is. It can try one phone, then divert to another on no answer, with different diversions based on these rules - almost the same level of functionality as an inbox rule.
The paradigm of having a personal number, that identifies YOU rather than a physical device is also a good one, which I can personally resonate with today. As my co-bloggers are aware, I ran out of mobile phone credit (mainly because I have to pay the inbound portion of international calls to the US). Sure, I could have purchased a pre-paid SIM, but then I'd have to tell everyone the new number.
With SUT (Sametime Unified Telephony), I could get a prepaid SIM here, and set that phone up in Sametime. A UK caller would call my same number, which would come in to ISB, hop over the WAN link as a VoIP and have a Mars USA PBX make a domestic call to me. So far, so good. UK calleds can reach me at my own number.
BUT.... If I wanted to make an outbound call to the UK, I can initiate that through Sametime too. Mars USA would initiate a call to my mobile, then it would route it over the WAN and the UK PBX initiates the other side of the call. Therefore, at each point it's a local call - even for outbound calls that (in theory) originate from my mobile.
Now, because the ST server is brokering the call, that means I can now seamlessly transfer the call between my mobile, desk phone, hotel phone, IP softphone, etc without hanging up the call, and the other party would never know.
The main strength of SUT over OCS is that the end user has full control over their personal call rules.
I know I have added no pictures ...
... but I promise I will next time. Please don't remove my access Mat with the God Rights ; )
What's new in the Notes 8.5 client
Many of the new features in the Notes 8.5 client were presented as upcoming in last year's LoLA conference and we had already blogged about them but in a nutshell the most memorable ones are :
- The inbox has been re-designed to contain fewer icons - for example, unread emails still have the sender's presence icon on the left but unread emails don't have any presence icons next to them. The assumption, and I agree, is that if it's been read, it's been dealt with.
- The calendar has been redesigned and can now import even more public cals & icals can be imported. For example, you can now choose to have your Google Cal - or other favourite personal cal - overlying your Work Cal and available offline once imported too. You can toggle this additional Calendar on and off as you please. Replication conflicts between the technologies have been addressed and we're assured now works like a dream.
- You can now put Tasks in an email and these tasks can be assigned to your favourite people from the address book directly in the email. Perfect for taking minutes and even better, when the email goes out, the recipient opens the email and if a Task was assigned to him, the Task gets added to his Task List automatically (previously known as the To-Do list).
- Drag and drop an email from your inbox into a slot in your calendar and this creates a calendar entry automatically with the recipients/senders of the email in the To field.
There were a few other useful features which would be good to show you and the best way to do this is probably to add it to Mat's showcase list ... Also worthy of mention is that the Notes 8.5 client's UI is also, like all its counterparts in the Lotus suite, uber slick!
- The inbox has been re-designed to contain fewer icons - for example, unread emails still have the sender's presence icon on the left but unread emails don't have any presence icons next to them. The assumption, and I agree, is that if it's been read, it's been dealt with.
- The calendar has been redesigned and can now import even more public cals & icals can be imported. For example, you can now choose to have your Google Cal - or other favourite personal cal - overlying your Work Cal and available offline once imported too. You can toggle this additional Calendar on and off as you please. Replication conflicts between the technologies have been addressed and we're assured now works like a dream.
- You can now put Tasks in an email and these tasks can be assigned to your favourite people from the address book directly in the email. Perfect for taking minutes and even better, when the email goes out, the recipient opens the email and if a Task was assigned to him, the Task gets added to his Task List automatically (previously known as the To-Do list).
- Drag and drop an email from your inbox into a slot in your calendar and this creates a calendar entry automatically with the recipients/senders of the email in the To field.
There were a few other useful features which would be good to show you and the best way to do this is probably to add it to Mat's showcase list ... Also worthy of mention is that the Notes 8.5 client's UI is also, like all its counterparts in the Lotus suite, uber slick!
Web-based Email ... and IM, Calendar and everything else!
First it was iNotes, then DWA, and now iNotes again. The web front end to Lotus Notes, iNotes has come a long long way from the version we know and ... tolerate.iNotes 8.5 is very very slick. There are 3 'modes' - Full, Lite and Ultralite.
The full web client is almost indistinguishable from the standard Notes 8 client - integrated Sametime, Widgets, SideShelf and all. It's fast (or 'snappy' as the devs prefer to call it) and totally useable. It has the integrated Quickr connector that Karoona talked about in the previous post, so the user experience (and the behaviour changes that this drives) are consistent. Give me this web client and I'll uninstall Notes from my machine!
Lite mode looks the same as full mode, but removes the integrated sametime, widgets and sideshelf to optimise bandwidth. Still very usable, but I might still need my Notes client...Ultralite mode does what it says on the tin. The interface is reminiscent of an iPhone, mostly because it is designed to work on an iPhone! You can also use this mode for very low bandwidth connections on traditional PC browsers which works well if you just need email and calendar.
Of course, to actually remove the Notes client we still have some 7000 notes applications to address. Now I'm sure Greg was wittering on about some Xpage thing that might be handy here...
Not only does the current iNotes product offer a superior user experience than Microsoft's OWA (which I should confess I use at home), it is equally at home on IE, Firefox AND Safari (James, you may now rejoice). The devs wanted to know if we'd also like it on Chrome or Opera...
Lotus QuickR : winner of Karoona's Most Impressive Product Award 2009 !
QuickR as you probably already know is an environment where people can create "places" to collaborate. These places are created from templates and are made up of different components - picture tabs on a page - such as wikis, blogs, document libraries, group calendars, mashups etc. Users can have temporary or team spaces but also personal spaces which they can choose to share. So what's new, you'll ask.
First and foremost, QuickR looks super shiny and glossy. The UI is slick, the tool is very user friendly. Not exactly a business case to implement QuickR, but the reason I mention this is because as an end user myself, this is a tool that I would actually want to use and promote within my team to support collaboration.
Second, and more importantly, what IBM have achieved with QuickR is to make it easy & natural to move content to a collaborative environment, which will support the change in mindset we need to make happen in our environment. Let's face it, today, if an end user has to share any information with his team, he'll send it in an email regardless of how big the information is or what its format is. We all do it. Our user community is used to staying put and ping-ponging their information around which results in large amounts of redundancy of information, version "anxiety", storage problems, da-di-dah. What we really need is for the information to stay put in one place, and for the users to access the information as required. This however will only happen if users are able to find and access whatever information they need readily, quickly and easily - ie more readily, quickly and easily than they can today in their endless stocks of email history.
Getting information in and out of QuickR is where IBM have hit gold. QuickR is accessible via its connectors from the rest of the IBM suite & also from other applications, eg.
First and foremost, QuickR looks super shiny and glossy. The UI is slick, the tool is very user friendly. Not exactly a business case to implement QuickR, but the reason I mention this is because as an end user myself, this is a tool that I would actually want to use and promote within my team to support collaboration.
Second, and more importantly, what IBM have achieved with QuickR is to make it easy & natural to move content to a collaborative environment, which will support the change in mindset we need to make happen in our environment. Let's face it, today, if an end user has to share any information with his team, he'll send it in an email regardless of how big the information is or what its format is. We all do it. Our user community is used to staying put and ping-ponging their information around which results in large amounts of redundancy of information, version "anxiety", storage problems, da-di-dah. What we really need is for the information to stay put in one place, and for the users to access the information as required. This however will only happen if users are able to find and access whatever information they need readily, quickly and easily - ie more readily, quickly and easily than they can today in their endless stocks of email history.
Getting information in and out of QuickR is where IBM have hit gold. QuickR is accessible via its connectors from the rest of the IBM suite & also from other applications, eg.
# from the sidebar of the Notes client for people to move attachments in and out of their inbox. As soon as the user has dragged an attachment (directly from their email) to the QuickR sidebar, that attachment gets replaced automatically with a link to the uploaded document in the email. Useful eh? Also, when a user is sending out an email, if there is an attachment in the email, Notes will pop up a window to offer them the ability to move that document to QuickR.
# from iNotes (aka DWA, aka web-based Notes). Works in the same way as in the rich client.
# from Sametime. Integration with the Sametime client I found particularly exciting - users can righclick on a document in their QuickR connector in ST, start a multichat with a group of users based on that document and work together on that document real-time, all at the click of a button.
# Lotus Symphony, MS Office, MS Sharepoint, Windows Explorer, MS Outlook and more is on the way.
From the end user's perspective, all QuickR is is another folder which they can share with the people they want. Checking documents in and out of QuickR is very easy for the end user. In fact, the seamlessness with which QuickR integrates with all the other applications from an end user perspective is what I think will sell.
Overall, fantastic product. If money was no object, I would have loved to roll it out to our users next month ; ) ... o and have a medieval castle in the South of France.
Centralising our infrastructure
Last year we started doing very high level work on the feasibility of centralising our Notes infrastructure with our current network. In summary, if we go central, Notes replication traffic - which represents a large part of our network traffic in Mars - will be drastically reduced. However, on the downside, Notes interactive traffic as users access their databases across the WAN would then go up - but by how much? We know the size of our pipes, we know how much bandwidth Notes takes up today. What we do not know is how much traffic would be generated once our thousands of databases have been centralised.
I spoke today to an IBM business partner, Trust Factory, who have developed an algorithm that will calculate based on #user sessions on each server, length of the user sessions & data consumption, how much traffic would be generated if that server was accessed across the WAN. This piece of analysis coupled with the information we already have on our network topology should give us some solid factual information about the feasibility of centralising our infrastructure.
Their customer list was shiny - Philips, Daimler, etc. etc., their demoes were impressive, their pitch just right. If we do decide to do anything along these lines this year, I guess I'll be talking to them.
I spoke today to an IBM business partner, Trust Factory, who have developed an algorithm that will calculate based on #user sessions on each server, length of the user sessions & data consumption, how much traffic would be generated if that server was accessed across the WAN. This piece of analysis coupled with the information we already have on our network topology should give us some solid factual information about the feasibility of centralising our infrastructure.
Their customer list was shiny - Philips, Daimler, etc. etc., their demoes were impressive, their pitch just right. If we do decide to do anything along these lines this year, I guess I'll be talking to them.
Extending the Innovation Team
I promised to post on the IBM Center for Social Software. This is a relatively recent specialisation within IBM's long standing Research Labs, and as the name suggests it is totally focussed on Social Software.Unlike other IBM research labs, this Center uses a methodology called 'Venture Research' which basically means they experiment directly both on the internet and on IBMs internal network - giving them access to huge numbers of users. Google have been doing something similar for a while (although I don't know how they analyse and collect data from their experiments yet), so it is good to see IBM stepping up, and will be interesting to see how they balance consumer vs enterprise social software...
One very interesting offering that I've not heard before is the "residency program" from the IBM Center for Social Software. Basically it would enable specific associates to work with IBM researchers on tough design or strategy problems related to social software. IBM bring their expertise in social software, design and data visualisation - as well as experience and platforms to support the research effort. We provide people that understand the corporation and the problem to be solved.
It's not cheap, but it might be a cost effective way to address some of our 'architecture of participation' strategy questions...
Video Collaboration
Why can't we capture our video conferences / web conferences? The storage and bandwidth issues are getting easier to address with modern compression. One real reason is that a recorded video file will rarely be used to collaborate because (a) it takes too long to find the right video and (b) then find the right bit of the videoInsight is another research project within the IBM Center for Social Software. It's similar to YouTube, but allows more granular text and comment markups, and also allows you to link to specific sections of a video. Comments and any captions are all searchable too, so if you needed to find that bit of the CFOs speech where he talked about 'focus', you would get straight there.
You can also imagine our marketing teams using this kind of functionality when working on TV adverts to very easily and remotely collaborate with the advertisement agencies on new campaigns.
I know that our Web CC colleagues are very interested in video. At the moment this tool is only available internally on the IBM network, but if this is of interest we've been offered a full onsite demonstration. I guess I'll be talking to James...
Connecting with Lotus Connections
I heard this software described as 'the Facebook for enterprise' however that could not be further from the whole picture. The new version of Connections, version 2.5, is set to be released; this session focused on the tools added to the connections portfolio.
Some features already available are: Profiles, which are similar to facebook profiles, however they act like associate search linking people in an organisational chart. People link themselves with Blogs, Communities, Activities from there profile.
The key point to make here is that all the services are integrated; profiles can have several related blogs, blogs can be incorporated into communities, communities can containing activities to organise work. Yet even with the integration the services act in a standalone way.
A scenario within Mars could be to have a EUT Innovation Blog (to capture ideas); this is associated with the EUT innovation ‘Community’ which links the team together. Good innovations are assigned to people as activities to complete, the output from completed innovation activities could be documented in the innovation Wiki (Wikis are available in version 2.5). This is a shared Wiki between all the innovation communities within Mars IS. All of these standalone technologies could be integrated using Lotus Connections.
Even if Connections is not feasible for Mars; it could still be good to see how the different social technologies could be integrated in a similar way.
Some features already available are: Profiles, which are similar to facebook profiles, however they act like associate search linking people in an organisational chart. People link themselves with Blogs, Communities, Activities from there profile.
The key point to make here is that all the services are integrated; profiles can have several related blogs, blogs can be incorporated into communities, communities can containing activities to organise work. Yet even with the integration the services act in a standalone way.
A scenario within Mars could be to have a EUT Innovation Blog (to capture ideas); this is associated with the EUT innovation ‘Community’ which links the team together. Good innovations are assigned to people as activities to complete, the output from completed innovation activities could be documented in the innovation Wiki (Wikis are available in version 2.5). This is a shared Wiki between all the innovation communities within Mars IS. All of these standalone technologies could be integrated using Lotus Connections.
Even if Connections is not feasible for Mars; it could still be good to see how the different social technologies could be integrated in a similar way.
The Top 10 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure
I've just come out of a session about Project Management in IT. There was not much new to learn for us Prince2 Practitioners ;-) but the presenters gave it a quirky twist by talking about what NOT to do rather than giving out the Top 10 tips.
Here we go - The 10 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure.
1. Believing the hype.
ie believing everything your suppliers (internal and external) tell you. Trust, but verify. Eg. if they say Akonix will work with Sametime like a dream, very good, but check. If possible, get the hype in writing. Of course, from experience we know that sometimes you get the hype in writing and still it's not accurate ;-)
2. Solving the wrong problem.
... or solving a problem that doesn't exist! Understanding and validating the why behind every project is crucial. In other words, a business case should lead to a project, not the other way round.
3. Using the wrong people.
More often than not, Project Managers have to work with the army they have rather than the army they want. Which makes learning how to tap into individuals' strengths and synergies in the project team a pre-requisite for the team manager. If you can, put finding the right people on your project's critical path.
4. Measuring the wrong things.
10% budget spent =/= 10% project finished !
5. Hope as a Risk Management Strategy (that was my favourite one!)
6. Round is a shape (not keeping fit!)
Train your people and have them practise project management hands-on. As the presenter put it, "watching somebody else exercise can be momentarily invigorating but doesn't work the beer belly" ;-)
7. Ignorance as a Defence.
If you don't know, ask. Do not assume.
8. Ostrichism
"I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts."
9. Giving perception sway.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don't leave room for people to assume. And if it's ugly, don't decorate, manage it! :-)
10. A hero behind every tree. (Somebody please explain the choice of words to me!)
Plan for regular humans, not superheroes - although I wouldn't mind having Batman on my project team ;-) Good planning and project management should save you from bringing in Professor Xavier and his team of X-men at the last minute for that last all arms out weekend.
Nothing ground-breakingly fresh in this list but if you ever needed to see it all in one place. Onto the next session now!
... this felt a bit like writing a self-help book :D
Here we go - The 10 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure.
1. Believing the hype.
ie believing everything your suppliers (internal and external) tell you. Trust, but verify. Eg. if they say Akonix will work with Sametime like a dream, very good, but check. If possible, get the hype in writing. Of course, from experience we know that sometimes you get the hype in writing and still it's not accurate ;-)
2. Solving the wrong problem.
... or solving a problem that doesn't exist! Understanding and validating the why behind every project is crucial. In other words, a business case should lead to a project, not the other way round.
3. Using the wrong people.
More often than not, Project Managers have to work with the army they have rather than the army they want. Which makes learning how to tap into individuals' strengths and synergies in the project team a pre-requisite for the team manager. If you can, put finding the right people on your project's critical path.
4. Measuring the wrong things.
10% budget spent =/= 10% project finished !
5. Hope as a Risk Management Strategy (that was my favourite one!)
6. Round is a shape (not keeping fit!)
Train your people and have them practise project management hands-on. As the presenter put it, "watching somebody else exercise can be momentarily invigorating but doesn't work the beer belly" ;-)
7. Ignorance as a Defence.
If you don't know, ask. Do not assume.
8. Ostrichism
"I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts."
9. Giving perception sway.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don't leave room for people to assume. And if it's ugly, don't decorate, manage it! :-)
10. A hero behind every tree. (Somebody please explain the choice of words to me!)
Plan for regular humans, not superheroes - although I wouldn't mind having Batman on my project team ;-) Good planning and project management should save you from bringing in Professor Xavier and his team of X-men at the last minute for that last all arms out weekend.
Nothing ground-breakingly fresh in this list but if you ever needed to see it all in one place. Onto the next session now!
... this felt a bit like writing a self-help book :D
Travel Socially!
This morning I was at the 'glimpse of the future' session by the IBM research center. I'll cover the center in another post - here I want to discuss one specific research project - Project Sojourn. This was a 6 week project to research how corporate travel could be improved through the use of social software. The result is an application mockup and some storyboards on how everything would work.
For those familiar with TripIt, there are a lot of parallels (if you're not familiar then go have a play!), but the IBM solution is much more geared towards enterprises, allowing users to see things like corporate rates and leveraging internal sources of information such as whereabouts, calendars, units DB, user profiles etc. Other nice enterprise features include automatic notification of other people attending the meeting if you are delayed, real-time update of travel plans etc. I can't really do it justice here so will make sure the slides get posted when I'm back in an office.
As a frequent traveller myself, I want this tool yesterday! On the other hand we do already have some parts of this functionality, such as the 'who is visiting site x' in the whereabouts DB (Christophe can now be smug as he was way ahead with this idea!)
My personal prediction? Expect to see this as a linked-value* offering with Lotus Connections v3.
*I had no idea what all these IBMers meant by 'linked value' either, so I asked! Basically it refers to anything you get when you are using multiple Lotus products. In this case you would probably get the full functionality through a combination of Sametime (to be able to seamlessly contact fellow travellers), Connections (to mine for people potentially travelling to the same events) and Lotus Notes (for the Calendar)
AD204 - XPages 101
This session was a primer on XPages, which is IBM's new method of writing web front ends to Notes databases.
It can provide a Web 2.0 style interface, and under the hood provides a full XML, AJAX, javascript and JSF (Java Server Faces) programming through the Eclipsed based development environment.
There's definitely a lot of power here, and basic UIs can be developed very rapidly. But, like anything, to do a thorough job will take time and planning, no matter what tools you use.
Depending on the future strategies, GSM and WebCC should take a look.
It can provide a Web 2.0 style interface, and under the hood provides a full XML, AJAX, javascript and JSF (Java Server Faces) programming through the Eclipsed based development environment.
There's definitely a lot of power here, and basic UIs can be developed very rapidly. But, like anything, to do a thorough job will take time and planning, no matter what tools you use.
Depending on the future strategies, GSM and WebCC should take a look.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Domino & Sharepoint Coexistence
I got talking to the nice chaps over at CASAHL today about how to make Domino applications and Sharepoint applications available to disparate sets of users. They have some really interesting tools that could allow us to 'replicate' the content of Notes/Sharepoint/Other applications onto different platforms (so we wouldn't need to license everyone for everything!).In theory we could replicate all the WWY Sharepoint systems onto the Mars Domino platform, while also replicating most of the Mars Domino Applications to a WWY Sharepoint platform. We'll need to do some work to see if the theory would hold for our environment though!
What really got me thinking was their recent work with 3M, who apparently had 350,000 Notes applications (no, that's not a typo!) Apparently 60% of those applications were no longer used, and of the remaining apps 'only' 15,000 were actually unique templates!
We're not so bad after all ;-)
Lotusphere Keynote Announcements
We had the traditional keynote speech this morning with the Blue Man Group performing the start/finish (and randomly helping with a demo in the middle), and Dan Akroyd as the special guest talking about collaboration as part of a film crew. Lotus announced strong growth (12,236 new customers since launch of Notes 8, and 16 consecutive quarters of revenue growth), so they must be doing something right!
I definitely don't have space here to cover all the technologies, demonstrations and customer testimonials that Lotus went through, so here is a quick review of the bigger announcements:
Lotus have been working with RIM to deliver Connections, Sametime and Domino apps (through X Pages) on Blackberry devices. IBM have also worked on making those apps accessible on other popular mobile devices. Bluehouse has been renamed and expanded and is now called LotusLive (and yes, it includes the email piece that Karoona is so smug about). The SAP integration project (Atlantic) is now a product that will ship in March under the brand name "Alloy". Connections 2.5 is due in Q3 2009 and we are promised it will "continue to make the competition pale in comparison". Sametime Unified Telephony will ship mid 2009.
ID201 - Lotus Domino 8.5 and beyond
Dai will probably have more to add to this, but I was quite impressed. A few key features upcoming are:
Notes shared login: The initial login prompt can be removed from the Notes sign-on, and the ID file will be unlocked using the Windows login password.
ID vault: This is a server based repository for ID files, and can be used to automatically provision them to the desktop. It can also handle password changes, by helpdesk or self-service
Storage: This is the biggie. DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Storage) works by pulling attachments out and storing them as individual files on the file system (optionally encrypted) of the notes server. It will also handle de-duplication. IBM have seen between 40-82% reduction is disk usage by doing this. Because mail files are smaller, it's more I/O friendly too, and reduces database compaction/reindexing/defragmenting times considerably. Also, because attachments are reasonably static, incremental and differential backups are considerably smaller and faster.
Notes shared login: The initial login prompt can be removed from the Notes sign-on, and the ID file will be unlocked using the Windows login password.
ID vault: This is a server based repository for ID files, and can be used to automatically provision them to the desktop. It can also handle password changes, by helpdesk or self-service
Storage: This is the biggie. DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Storage) works by pulling attachments out and storing them as individual files on the file system (optionally encrypted) of the notes server. It will also handle de-duplication. IBM have seen between 40-82% reduction is disk usage by doing this. Because mail files are smaller, it's more I/O friendly too, and reduces database compaction/reindexing/defragmenting times considerably. Also, because attachments are reasonably static, incremental and differential backups are considerably smaller and faster.
ID401 - What's new in Sametime 8.5
There are four main areas of improvement in the new version of Sametime:
Sametime meetings - is vastly improved. It was demoed at the keynote this morning, but the meeting room functionality, meeting recording, discussions, questions and minute taking features look very nice indeed.
Sametime client - not that much change between 8.0.2, but coming along is a DHTML based web client which can be provided on an extranet basis, which is reasonably feature-complete. Under the hood is a set of web-based REST APIs, which means customised clients can also connect in to this interface to. It does require a Sametime web proxy server, though.
Mobile clients - There are enhanced mobile clients for Blackberry & Windows mobile, as well as those clients also being able to use the web browser version too
Audio-Visual - AV performance has been improved, with new codecs provided to double the video/audio quality for the same bandwidth. There is also better bandwidth allocation/management provided. Also coming is interoperability with external video conference systems, including Polycom and Tandberg.
Intergration with Microsoft OCS will be there, but that's also being backported to 8.0.2 via a hot fix that will be available next week. (Can someone please make sure Alan sees this???)
Sametime 8.5 is expected to ship in Q3 2009
Sametime meetings - is vastly improved. It was demoed at the keynote this morning, but the meeting room functionality, meeting recording, discussions, questions and minute taking features look very nice indeed.
Sametime client - not that much change between 8.0.2, but coming along is a DHTML based web client which can be provided on an extranet basis, which is reasonably feature-complete. Under the hood is a set of web-based REST APIs, which means customised clients can also connect in to this interface to. It does require a Sametime web proxy server, though.
Mobile clients - There are enhanced mobile clients for Blackberry & Windows mobile, as well as those clients also being able to use the web browser version too
Audio-Visual - AV performance has been improved, with new codecs provided to double the video/audio quality for the same bandwidth. There is also better bandwidth allocation/management provided. Also coming is interoperability with external video conference systems, including Polycom and Tandberg.
Intergration with Microsoft OCS will be there, but that's also being backported to 8.0.2 via a hot fix that will be available next week. (Can someone please make sure Alan sees this???)
Sametime 8.5 is expected to ship in Q3 2009
Introducing Mashups
A ‘Mashup’, in essence, is a lightweight web application created by combining information from more than one source to deliver new functions and insights.
The session on: IBM Websphere Portal & Mashup Centre highlighted how these tools can be used to develop powerful applications quickly from information that already exists.
The aim of a mashup is not to solve a business critical problem for thousands of people or even be a long term strategy. Instead it focuses on the other side of the ‘longtail’ spectrum; transferring the development of simple tactical applications from a few core developers into a community of users.
The session on: IBM Websphere Portal & Mashup Centre highlighted how these tools can be used to develop powerful applications quickly from information that already exists.
The aim of a mashup is not to solve a business critical problem for thousands of people or even be a long term strategy. Instead it focuses on the other side of the ‘longtail’ spectrum; transferring the development of simple tactical applications from a few core developers into a community of users.
AD513 - Making mashups successful in the Enterprise
The first part of this presentation covered off much of the same material as in the keynote this morning using the Lotus Mashup Manager, but with a few more real-world examples of what some companies were using mashups for.
The second part looked in more detail on how to help to make them more effective, and more secure, in the enterprise.
On the effectiveness part, they discussed the IT central vs self-service vs hybrid models. For Mars, probably the hybrid model would work best: have a Centre of Excellence team to deisgn, build and document the widgets, then make them available for users to mash as they see fit.
For security, the Mashup Manager allows admins to set permissions on a "per feed" and "per field" basis, to ensure sensitive data can be excluded from mashups. It is also possible to track usage for auditing as well as utilisation purposes. The tracking/logging is in a very raw format, which might seem odd but it's acutally deliberate - you can pull the tracking data into a mash-up. ;-)
I'm sure there's definitely a place for mashups with us - bares much closer investigation.
The second part looked in more detail on how to help to make them more effective, and more secure, in the enterprise.
On the effectiveness part, they discussed the IT central vs self-service vs hybrid models. For Mars, probably the hybrid model would work best: have a Centre of Excellence team to deisgn, build and document the widgets, then make them available for users to mash as they see fit.
For security, the Mashup Manager allows admins to set permissions on a "per feed" and "per field" basis, to ensure sensitive data can be excluded from mashups. It is also possible to track usage for auditing as well as utilisation purposes. The tracking/logging is in a very raw format, which might seem odd but it's acutally deliberate - you can pull the tracking data into a mash-up. ;-)
I'm sure there's definitely a place for mashups with us - bares much closer investigation.
Do sea gulls like liquorice ?
Because today, in one of the breaks, I went to sit outside in the glorious sunlight by the water for a bit and a huge innocent looking (except for the beak) sea gull soon waddled over cackling shamelessly into my personal space. Generous as I am, I fed him - I know it's a him because his voice was big and loud - a piece of pink-and-black-and-pink liquorice (the ones I don't like in the assorted packs) which it gobbled up like a greedy pig - although I'm not sure how because it suddenly occurred to me that birds cannot chew. Anyhow, Mr Sea Gull swallowed the liquorice and then, believe it or not, the ungrateful little glutton started making threatening little runs at me and odd noises (in a changed voice) too and I had to run away (well, get up and move away as fast as I could without making it look like I was scared of a bird!).
So I'm thinking, does anyone know if sea gulls like liquorice ? And if they don't, why don't they politely refuse?
Blog Admin Mat just had to add >
So I'm thinking, does anyone know if sea gulls like liquorice ? And if they don't, why don't they politely refuse?
Blog Admin Mat just had to add >
Cloud Computing : Is it for us ?
I attended a very good session on cloud computing today. In the light of the Google POC that we might run this year, this was THE session to be in. Incidentally, the presenter, Bob Balaban, was from Binary Tree, a company which assists in migration of email, IM et al and to whom we have been talking about the Google POC!
After a high level introduction to cloud computing, we had an overview of the modus operandi of the major vendors "in this space"(*). Bob The Presenter was refreshingly non-Microsoft/IBM/Google biased but did drop numerous hints on what his company could do to help with migrations. We will be talking to them on vendor showcase day.
We also had a demo of a cool piece of code that migrated emails from Lotus Notes to Gmail - very satisfying for my inner geek - highlighting along the way this interesting fact : Google apparently throttles data input @ 1 transaction per second, which means that if we want to migrate 1,000,000 things (emails/pictures/attachments/... ), it will take us 278 days, ie 11.5 days!! In a public consumer context, this makes complete sense - around the world users upload single objects at a time so it makes sense to build the queue "horizontally" - go Democracy! In an enterprise migration, however, uploads will need to be done in batches for thousands of bursting inboxes. Defo needs some clarification from our Google friends when we meet them this Friday in New York, but in the meantime, can you please start cleaning your inboxes ;-)
The benefits of moving into the cloud are numerous and I'm sure you know them by heart - no kit inhouse, no cumbersome rich clients on users' machines if it's all browser-based, reduction in inhouse support headcount (ie errmmm the staff could be "re-deployed to perform other more value-added activities"), dead-easy scale-up or down on user base, etc. etc. The downsides are less numerous : migration costs have been known to outweigh any reductions in TCO, loss of control of the environment, co-existence costs and issues during the migration period, legal risks relating to the location of the data in the cloud deserves a whole blog by itself (http://www.gregonsecurity.mars/? ;-) and perhaps more importantly, quality of support service can (will!) suffer.
So - would Cloud Computing work for us? My initial feel is that it would, but only if we do it for our whole user base. Yes we might have a lower Quality of Service, Support & Availability, but would this not be insignificant enough to be an acceptable compromise given the savings per user involved? This is part of what we intend to find out more about with the Google POC. On the other hand, I think having part of our user population serviced on premise and the other part in the cloud will only drive costs up because we don't operate on a large enough scale to have a very flexibly scalable environment. We would very likely end up having a full-fledged premium environment inhouse anyway and pay extra for the lesser tiers of service!
Or is the question - if the world is heading to the clouds (and it definitely seems to be!), when is the right time for us to join the flow? So far there have been few large companies that have taken the leap, although a very well-known black-caffeine-filled-bubbly-liquid-that-comes-in-zero-or-full-fat-versions brewer recently moved onto MS Online. The question comes down to whether we want to be pioneers or followers, and if we want to be pioneers, can we afford to do so in the current economic climate?
The Google POC should hopefully allow us to answer some of these questions. Watch this space!
(*) As a side note, I'm pleased to report that I was not completely mad in my thinking in LoLA that IBM have left a gaping hole in BlueHouse - IBM's SaaS offering for online collaboration via web conferencing, social networking, IM, Shared Documents, ... - by not having any email functionality incorporated in it. They have now announced the acquisition of OutBlaze.com, whose messaging functionality will become an integral part of BH. I did mention this to anyone who would listen at LoLA, I'm sure the acquisition has nothing to do with what I said, but the whole thing does make me feel warmly smug ;-)
After a high level introduction to cloud computing, we had an overview of the modus operandi of the major vendors "in this space"(*). Bob The Presenter was refreshingly non-Microsoft/IBM/Google biased but did drop numerous hints on what his company could do to help with migrations. We will be talking to them on vendor showcase day.
We also had a demo of a cool piece of code that migrated emails from Lotus Notes to Gmail - very satisfying for my inner geek - highlighting along the way this interesting fact : Google apparently throttles data input @ 1 transaction per second, which means that if we want to migrate 1,000,000 things (emails/pictures/attachments/... ), it will take us 278 days, ie 11.5 days!! In a public consumer context, this makes complete sense - around the world users upload single objects at a time so it makes sense to build the queue "horizontally" - go Democracy! In an enterprise migration, however, uploads will need to be done in batches for thousands of bursting inboxes. Defo needs some clarification from our Google friends when we meet them this Friday in New York, but in the meantime, can you please start cleaning your inboxes ;-)
The benefits of moving into the cloud are numerous and I'm sure you know them by heart - no kit inhouse, no cumbersome rich clients on users' machines if it's all browser-based, reduction in inhouse support headcount (ie errmmm the staff could be "re-deployed to perform other more value-added activities"), dead-easy scale-up or down on user base, etc. etc. The downsides are less numerous : migration costs have been known to outweigh any reductions in TCO, loss of control of the environment, co-existence costs and issues during the migration period, legal risks relating to the location of the data in the cloud deserves a whole blog by itself (http://www.gregonsecurity.mars/? ;-) and perhaps more importantly, quality of support service can (will!) suffer.
So - would Cloud Computing work for us? My initial feel is that it would, but only if we do it for our whole user base. Yes we might have a lower Quality of Service, Support & Availability, but would this not be insignificant enough to be an acceptable compromise given the savings per user involved? This is part of what we intend to find out more about with the Google POC. On the other hand, I think having part of our user population serviced on premise and the other part in the cloud will only drive costs up because we don't operate on a large enough scale to have a very flexibly scalable environment. We would very likely end up having a full-fledged premium environment inhouse anyway and pay extra for the lesser tiers of service!
Or is the question - if the world is heading to the clouds (and it definitely seems to be!), when is the right time for us to join the flow? So far there have been few large companies that have taken the leap, although a very well-known black-caffeine-filled-bubbly-liquid-that-comes-in-zero-or-full-fat-versions brewer recently moved onto MS Online. The question comes down to whether we want to be pioneers or followers, and if we want to be pioneers, can we afford to do so in the current economic climate?
The Google POC should hopefully allow us to answer some of these questions. Watch this space!
(*) As a side note, I'm pleased to report that I was not completely mad in my thinking in LoLA that IBM have left a gaping hole in BlueHouse - IBM's SaaS offering for online collaboration via web conferencing, social networking, IM, Shared Documents, ... - by not having any email functionality incorporated in it. They have now announced the acquisition of OutBlaze.com, whose messaging functionality will become an integral part of BH. I did mention this to anyone who would listen at LoLA, I'm sure the acquisition has nothing to do with what I said, but the whole thing does make me feel warmly smug ;-)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Notes on Linux! ... Again!
My last session of the day was a showcase of Notes & Domino on Linux. I've been running the Notes 8.5 Beta client on ubuntu for a while so the step by step install was old news, but the tools and tips on running the server on SLES 10 are certainly welcome.
Assuming we consolidate our Notes environment (whether tactically or strategically) having a supported build on Linux would make our Processing colleagues very happy that we weren't cluttering up the datacenter with lots of Windows servers, and we'd probably get deeper technical support from them on the Linux platform.
As you can run several domino partitions on a single linux box, it would probably be cheaper too!
As an aside, it was interesting to see the presenter using Virtual Box (a free product from Sun) to virtualise an XP operating system. It allows a 'seamless mode' similar to Citrix where the virtualised OS is hidden but the application window appears to be running natively on the Linux OS. Microsoft announced something similar that we blogged about from the MMS conference but I have my doubts that it will be free! I'll be having a play when I finally get back to the UK and undoubtedly Malc will now tell me that he's been using it for years, but I can think of some great innovation work around this functionality!
Assuming we consolidate our Notes environment (whether tactically or strategically) having a supported build on Linux would make our Processing colleagues very happy that we weren't cluttering up the datacenter with lots of Windows servers, and we'd probably get deeper technical support from them on the Linux platform.
As you can run several domino partitions on a single linux box, it would probably be cheaper too!
As an aside, it was interesting to see the presenter using Virtual Box (a free product from Sun) to virtualise an XP operating system. It allows a 'seamless mode' similar to Citrix where the virtualised OS is hidden but the application window appears to be running natively on the Linux OS. Microsoft announced something similar that we blogged about from the MMS conference but I have my doubts that it will be free! I'll be having a play when I finally get back to the UK and undoubtedly Malc will now tell me that he's been using it for years, but I can think of some great innovation work around this functionality!
Mobile Everything
The Lotus Mobility Portfolio session covered a lot of old ground that we've already blogged about at the LoLa conference last year, but there were a couple of interesting nuggets to make the 2 hours worthwhile...
There was an amusing* 6 minute clip that explains Lotus Mobile Connect better than anything I can write here. View it here
Also some good tools that the presenter uses that we should look at as we start to get more serious about mobile devices (is Col reading this?)
With the enormous growth of mobile devices and netbooks, are we missing out on impulse sales just because the site is inaccessible to mobile browsers? If this isn't a problem for us now I'm willing to bet that it will be - and surprisingly soon.
IBM has a solution for this, and I'm sure others do too. What's even better though is that tools exist to measure the number of site hits that don't result in a sale, and also to measure the browser configurations being used to access the site. But is anyone looking?
* this is the special definition of "amusing" that only applies after 2 hours of Security presentation
There was an amusing* 6 minute clip that explains Lotus Mobile Connect better than anything I can write here. View it here
Also some good tools that the presenter uses that we should look at as we start to get more serious about mobile devices (is Col reading this?)
- www.testiphone.com - allows simulation and testing of many different devices
- www.mymobiler.com - iPhone simulator
- www.useragent.org - useful when developing websites that may be displayed on many different devices
With the enormous growth of mobile devices and netbooks, are we missing out on impulse sales just because the site is inaccessible to mobile browsers? If this isn't a problem for us now I'm willing to bet that it will be - and surprisingly soon.
IBM has a solution for this, and I'm sure others do too. What's even better though is that tools exist to measure the number of site hits that don't result in a sale, and also to measure the browser configurations being used to access the site. But is anyone looking?
* this is the special definition of "amusing" that only applies after 2 hours of Security presentation
JMP202 - Exploiting Lotus Sametime Platform & SDK
This session revolved around integrating Sametime with other applications and environments. It was interesting to see what some vendors are doing with ST, usch as Walkie Talkie voice integration, or integration with virtual worlds.
One of the major pieces of interest is Sametime 8.5 will offer a Proxy Server, allowing HTTP front-end access to community servers. Coupled with that is a web-based Sametime client which is fully DHTML based.
In addition to the obvious application of publishing Sametime client to extranet/internet clients without the need for a VPN, the other possibilities would be to publish presence information and initiate chats from BlogCentral, Associate Search and such.
One of the major pieces of interest is Sametime 8.5 will offer a Proxy Server, allowing HTTP front-end access to community servers. Coupled with that is a web-based Sametime client which is fully DHTML based.
In addition to the obvious application of publishing Sametime client to extranet/internet clients without the need for a VPN, the other possibilities would be to publish presence information and initiate chats from BlogCentral, Associate Search and such.
Lotus Domino & Notes Security A-Z
Well that was different! First presentation I've been to where the two presenters seemed to publically disagree about the content - and there was a lot of content!
Beyond giving me just enough knowledge to be dangerous (you have been warned), there was good coverage of some of the new features in versions 7, 8 and 8.5 that not only improve security but also improve the end user experience and ease some administrative burdens.
The ID Vault is still probably the biggest win, allowing us to remove some custom scripting and simplifying the initial configuration of the Notes client, but there was also information on setting up Active Directory as a "secondary directory" which we will need to look into soon.
There was also some good information on standard events that should be monitored to ensure security, and coverage of best practice configurations for all the new policies that can be configured.
One point that we will have to review is that apparently the Notes 8 client 'breaks' the roaming configuration we use at Mars (H: drive), but Notes 8.5 has the roaming ability built-in, again allowing us to remove more custom scripting
Something that was only briefly mentioned but triggered some thoughts was around categorisation of each database by Privacy and Security ratings, based on factors such as 'does the database contain consumer information' etc. We should make sure we do something around this in the upcoming database discovery work. I'm sure Jean-Marc will be thrilled!
I'll leave you with a telling comment from security professionals :
"Security is a trade-off between what users will put up with and what you need to protect your environment"
If our security colleagues are representing the side of "protecting our environment" in this trade-off, who is representing "what the users will put up with"? I don't think we have a clear answer on this yet, but i wouldn't be surprised if EUE are in the frame under the guise of the "Usability Centered Design" initiative. Expect to hear more about this!
I'll arrange for all the Lotusphere slides to be hosted internally so interested parties can view all the slides directly.
JMP205 - Integration of Notes and Domino with Office, .NET and Symphony
This session was predominantly on integrating various Office suites at the software (VBA/scripting level) - how to get information out of Notes and into other applications in various ways. Pushing data from a Notes app out to an application (controlled via COM) was covered, as was pulling data from VBscript or OpenOfiice UNO scripting.
One of the examples shown was how to do a mail merge in Word, but using data from Notes contacts address list as the data source.
At the server side, the general technique was to use a Notes Agent running as a web service either providing SOAP access or presenting data as XML.
XML was the most flexible - once it is available via a URL returning XML, data can be imported or connected into Excel, Word, an ASP web page or presented in Sharepoint.
As an interesting side note, if the data is rendered as a pseudo RSS feed in XML, it can also be brought into Google Docs spreadsheeting tool as well.
Most of the details were fairly low level, so I won't blog about each option in detail but if this is functionality you might need, let me know and I can talk you through it.
One of the examples shown was how to do a mail merge in Word, but using data from Notes contacts address list as the data source.
At the server side, the general technique was to use a Notes Agent running as a web service either providing SOAP access or presenting data as XML.
XML was the most flexible - once it is available via a URL returning XML, data can be imported or connected into Excel, Word, an ASP web page or presented in Sharepoint.
As an interesting side note, if the data is rendered as a pseudo RSS feed in XML, it can also be brought into Google Docs spreadsheeting tool as well.
Most of the details were fairly low level, so I won't blog about each option in detail but if this is functionality you might need, let me know and I can talk you through it.
SHOW401 - Build a complete, autonomic IT Solution
This session was an introduction to Lotus Foundations, which is offered as a prebuilt appliance on IBM and 3rd party hardware, as well as VMware image.
It's a Linux (SLES10 by the looks of it) based appliance, but with the OS and management on a disk-on-chip arrangement, to allow booting in the event of a failed, or unconfigured , disk array.
It's designed as an all-in-one small office (5 to 5000 user) solution, and offers File sharing (Windows, rsync, NFS and Apple), web server (L.A.M.P.), firewall with VPN support, ftp and DNS as well as Domino - no Sametime at this point.
At the hardware level, it supports drives in a RAID1 or RAID5, as well as Lotus' own idb (Intelligent Disk Backup). There's an auto-update feature as well.
All in all, for a small business it looks like a reasonable option. Not necessarily suitable for a banch office of a larger deployment, but I'm told that there'll be some annoucements about that later this week.
It's a Linux (SLES10 by the looks of it) based appliance, but with the OS and management on a disk-on-chip arrangement, to allow booting in the event of a failed, or unconfigured , disk array.
It's designed as an all-in-one small office (5 to 5000 user) solution, and offers File sharing (Windows, rsync, NFS and Apple), web server (L.A.M.P.), firewall with VPN support, ftp and DNS as well as Domino - no Sametime at this point.
At the hardware level, it supports drives in a RAID1 or RAID5, as well as Lotus' own idb (Intelligent Disk Backup). There's an auto-update feature as well.
All in all, for a small business it looks like a reasonable option. Not necessarily suitable for a banch office of a larger deployment, but I'm told that there'll be some annoucements about that later this week.
LS2009 Day 0 : Who's attending what
Here we are, with our yellow badges round our necks, Lotusphere 2009 is officially open !
Quick trailer of what you can expect to be blogged following today's sessions.
Brian : The A-Z of IBM Lotus Domino Security Features (he did draw the short straw!)
Mike : Introduction to JavaScript for LotusScript Developers
Greg : Build a Complete, Integrated Autonomic IT Solution in Less Than an Hour with IBM Lotus Foundations
Me : Introducing IBM Lotus Domino Designer 8.5, Now with Eclipse!
Once Dai is here this evening, we will finalise who is attending which sessions and I'll post the full agenda so you can then post any questions you might want us to ask.
More tonight!
Quick trailer of what you can expect to be blogged following today's sessions.
Brian : The A-Z of IBM Lotus Domino Security Features (he did draw the short straw!)
Mike : Introduction to JavaScript for LotusScript Developers
Greg : Build a Complete, Integrated Autonomic IT Solution in Less Than an Hour with IBM Lotus Foundations
Me : Introducing IBM Lotus Domino Designer 8.5, Now with Eclipse!
Once Dai is here this evening, we will finalise who is attending which sessions and I'll post the full agenda so you can then post any questions you might want us to ask.
More tonight!
Lotusphere 2009
Almost all here! Greg & Mike arrived a couple of days ago and have been settling in. Karoona and I arrived yesterday on a very uneventful flight, and we'll be joined by Dai this afternoon to round out the EUT presence at Lotusphere this year.
So far we've had a couple of requests from the rest of the team to make sure we cover Email Archiving, Future of Quickplace, Sustainability and of course get the latest hints and tips in running our environment. Add a comment on this post to let us know if there is anything else you'd like us to make sure we cover.
With the upcoming Wrigley integration work we will also be putting special focus on tools and partners we can use to help make our two environments work seamlessly together and we will be investigating any offerings that we can use to cost effectively simplify our overall environment.
We have a full working Sunday ahead of us - unfortunately I drew the short straw so I get to start my day with "The A-Z of IBM Lotus Domino Security Features". I hope you're all as excited as I am ;-)
So far we've had a couple of requests from the rest of the team to make sure we cover Email Archiving, Future of Quickplace, Sustainability and of course get the latest hints and tips in running our environment. Add a comment on this post to let us know if there is anything else you'd like us to make sure we cover.
With the upcoming Wrigley integration work we will also be putting special focus on tools and partners we can use to help make our two environments work seamlessly together and we will be investigating any offerings that we can use to cost effectively simplify our overall environment.
We have a full working Sunday ahead of us - unfortunately I drew the short straw so I get to start my day with "The A-Z of IBM Lotus Domino Security Features". I hope you're all as excited as I am ;-)
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