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?)

• 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

One area that we haven't spent much time thinking about is that last one on the list. Let's take a real world example - www.MyMMs.com. Right now the site is optimised for 'standard' browsers on traditional deskops and laptops, and works great. But what if you're out and about? If someone suggests that it would make a great valentine gift? Try it on your phone now! You might buy if you can use the site right then and there, but if it's a frustrating experience would you always get onto a 'real' PC and follow though?

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

Productivity Tools for the Mobile Worker

A more detailed look today at some of the new/improved products in the mobility area.

The two most interesting products are Lotus Traveller - version 8.5 adds a lot more security features such as device wiping and device security compliance checking/enforcing, and Lotus Mobile Connect, which effectively is a native client-less VPN gateway for Lotus Notes - this is the product that enables the Ultra-Lite iNotes that is optimised for the iPhone.

What is really handy is that the products can operate in a 'proxy mode' within the DMZ (similar to our BES environment), and only the gateway servers need to be at the new version of Notes (8.5). This solution also handily delivers email to internet based users, which I vaguely recall was of interest to some of our users...

The backend email servers need to be at least up to 7.02

Finally, the last item worthy of note is the IBM Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (you've got to love those snappy product names), which is a bolt-on product to websphere which automatically adjusts the website to best fit your mobile device. Check out the IBM home site from different devices to see how/whether it works!

Lotus Leadership Alliance 2008

I'm here, and as Karoona already mentioned my Starwood hotel membership thing paid off with a nice room overlooking the ocean. A bit wierd looking down at passing helictopers though!

I've just finished the sessions of the first day, which have been about the Lotus strategy in 5 areas :

• Notes & Domino Roadmap
• Ultimate Web Experience
  
• Unified Communication & Collaboration
  
• Social Software
• Online Collaboration

I won't go into the specific details of each session, but the key message I took away was one of strong product interoperability and stability.

In other news, there were some nice tasters on mobile device integration across Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices - it looks like we will finally be able to retire OneBridge!

There is an interesting product called Foundations Start which is an appliance type model for small businesses or branch offices. In theory it covers both Messaging & Collaboration as well as Client Architecture. Possibly a solution for "Office on a Box"

Lots more to say but I will save it for the detailed sessions over the next two days.

The last session of the day was a surprise guest speaker, which turned about to be Chris Gardner who wrote the autobiography "The pursuit of happyness" which you may have read/seen. He is a hugely motivating speaker, although I did notice that some of the audience were reduced to tears ;-) If you get the chance to hear him tell his story then I'd encourage you to take the opportunity!