It (unsurprisingly) looks very much like Notes 8 but the developers have thrown in a couple of extra features. What I really liked was :
o Widgets in the client - Connections, QuickR, Sametime, etc. all accessible via the Notes client (not new, I know) but the way a user can seamlessly slide into the next collaboration tool with a simple click was quite impressive.
o The To Do's - you can in Notes 8.5, when writing up a mail, create a table of tasks allocated to people. When the mail is sent out, those tasks get separately sent as To Do's to the allocated people's mailboxes. I see in my crystal ball major uptake of this functionality in meeting-crazy Mars.
o Also cool is the ability to drag and drop emails from the mailbox to the To Do's list or even funkier, to the Calendar! And that, abracadabra, creates a meeting for you with the subject line <-- subject line of email, invitees <-- To's and cc's of email. Don't you love it.
It's funny though how much similar Notes 8 and Outlook look, and apparently it's not even by design ; )
Thursday, September 25, 2008
QuickR Next & Enterprise Content Management
Not much to blog here as Brian's already done it, but some work definitely coming up around Document Collaboration with QuickR hooked to an ECM. At the moment I don't think we have any widely used ECM in Mars (except our very own versions of it, H & S drives, which Mat is busy plotting to get rid of asap), so this will likely be a comprehensive piece of work. Perhaps a Proof of Concept which we can also aim at attempting a change in user behaviour as far as sharing is concerned?
Domino & Notes : Business Benefits
Two of the best sessions I attended was Parts I and II of an IBM marketing stint by the Notes/Domino (Microsoft Inquisition) sales team.
They talked about IBM market shares, industry predictions/stats (interesting to note btw that IBM are nearly suing Gartner because of a couple of "wrong" reports Gartner published quite widely). Some facts :
o Based on industry data, the TCO difference per user between a Domino and an Exchange shop is less than 60 cents (Domino @ $153.16, Exchange $153.70).
o Average cost of migration per user is $300.
o The cost of migration of applications from Domino onto a non-Domino platform, for a 2500 applications environment of average complexity, is about $6 000 000.
IBM are now also doing Notes applications migration cost analyses (the like EMC have recently done for us) with obviously the aim of convincing existing customers of the lack of value there is in the migration.
IBM can also help provide the ammunition required by their "allies" - ie. strategists - in their customer communities to help gain buy-in for Domino at decision-making levels in the company. This is one offer I will be happily taking advantage of over the next 4-6 weeks! If not the content, the approach I'm sure will help : )
Overall, the team seemed geared up to pull off some extreme IBM marketing over the next few months and will be doing anything short of dropping pink flyers from helicopters to make sure the world out there knows that Notes 8 is beautiful, Symphony beyond Office and Sametime Embedded a "first class citizen" :D
They talked about IBM market shares, industry predictions/stats (interesting to note btw that IBM are nearly suing Gartner because of a couple of "wrong" reports Gartner published quite widely). Some facts :
o Based on industry data, the TCO difference per user between a Domino and an Exchange shop is less than 60 cents (Domino @ $153.16, Exchange $153.70).
o Average cost of migration per user is $300.
o The cost of migration of applications from Domino onto a non-Domino platform, for a 2500 applications environment of average complexity, is about $6 000 000.
IBM are now also doing Notes applications migration cost analyses (the like EMC have recently done for us) with obviously the aim of convincing existing customers of the lack of value there is in the migration.
IBM can also help provide the ammunition required by their "allies" - ie. strategists - in their customer communities to help gain buy-in for Domino at decision-making levels in the company. This is one offer I will be happily taking advantage of over the next 4-6 weeks! If not the content, the approach I'm sure will help : )
Overall, the team seemed geared up to pull off some extreme IBM marketing over the next few months and will be doing anything short of dropping pink flyers from helicopters to make sure the world out there knows that Notes 8 is beautiful, Symphony beyond Office and Sametime Embedded a "first class citizen" :D
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Quickr Next
The last session on Tuesday was a demo/feedback session for some provisional new features of Quickr. The single most interesting new feature is the "Personal Place" - think of it as a web based replacement of the trusty H: drive. It also enables seamless transfer of documents into team spaces, and from there into enterprise content management systems.
The connector for windows file explorer allows familiar access to the documents, but the true power is the ability for users to work on any of those documents with others, including full versiong and editing control.
It will be interesting to see how the MS products compare...
The connector for windows file explorer allows familiar access to the documents, but the true power is the ability for users to work on any of those documents with others, including full versiong and editing control.
It will be interesting to see how the MS products compare...
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
SameTime Unified Telephony (SUT)
It's been a year since I last looked at SUT, and it's moved on leaps and bounds since then (it's actually a product rather than flash mock-ups!)
For those that don't know, SUT is the main Lotus play for the telephony integration which sits on top of SameTime, the Lotus Unified Communications platform.
The main idea behind SUT is that the user controls how they want to be contacted (Softphone, Deskphone, Cellphone, Voicemail etc) along with 'rules' for how to route their calls depending on things like their online status, location, time of day etc. What this means in practice is that you don't need to 'guess' where the person is or worry about calling them at an inconvenient time. It's all integrated right into the SameTime client, which then includes additional rich presence (i.e. it shows you whether I am currently on a call)
The product is now up and running, and while there are still some issues to work out with the network vendors around billing and call control, the product direction is now very focussed and it's looking really slick. It is clearly targetted purely at large enterprises, and I'll be talking with Steve next week to see how we can lay our hands on some early kit!
For those that don't know, SUT is the main Lotus play for the telephony integration which sits on top of SameTime, the Lotus Unified Communications platform.
The main idea behind SUT is that the user controls how they want to be contacted (Softphone, Deskphone, Cellphone, Voicemail etc) along with 'rules' for how to route their calls depending on things like their online status, location, time of day etc. What this means in practice is that you don't need to 'guess' where the person is or worry about calling them at an inconvenient time. It's all integrated right into the SameTime client, which then includes additional rich presence (i.e. it shows you whether I am currently on a call)
The product is now up and running, and while there are still some issues to work out with the network vendors around billing and call control, the product direction is now very focussed and it's looking really slick. It is clearly targetted purely at large enterprises, and I'll be talking with Steve next week to see how we can lay our hands on some early kit!
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!
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!
Simplifying Notes ID Management
My first session today was a (far too) detailed look at the new identity vault mechanism that will be delivered as part of Notes 8.5
The basic mechanic seems to be that all the id files are stored in an identity vault (a specialised notes database), and allows specific functionality for the user to download their id file as required.
As the id file is now accessible centrally, this enables some 'forgotten password' type functionality which sounds good, but unfortunately is not compatible with the "Notes Shared Login" which is the functionality that allows single sign-on integration with the Windows account.
Strangely enough, when people were commenting that this "didn't seem very sensible or aligned with the rest of the Lotus vision", the response was that the best solution was to integrate everything direct with Active Directory!
Ho Hum, and I had such high hopes too...
The basic mechanic seems to be that all the id files are stored in an identity vault (a specialised notes database), and allows specific functionality for the user to download their id file as required.
As the id file is now accessible centrally, this enables some 'forgotten password' type functionality which sounds good, but unfortunately is not compatible with the "Notes Shared Login" which is the functionality that allows single sign-on integration with the Windows account.
Strangely enough, when people were commenting that this "didn't seem very sensible or aligned with the rest of the Lotus vision", the response was that the best solution was to integrate everything direct with Active Directory!
Ho Hum, and I had such high hopes too...
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