For years, with IBM Sametime, we had to use some older administration monitoring screens for Sametime Meetings or get creative with tools. HCL Sametime Meetings has a new whitepaper on Kubernetes monitoring using open source tools.
The authors of the HCL Sametime Meetings monitoring whitepaper have been around since the early days of Sametime, giving valuable insight into what you should begin with and step by step how to set it up using open-source Grafana and Kibana (which sound like twins). You will need servers to run these tools but they can be expanded for service across many of your enterprise systems and networks. Not just for this case. Continue Reading here" HCL Sametime Meetings monitoring for Kubernetes" »
I promised a follow-up posting of where I decided to land after searching for months in the Covid technology landscape ( and we have to admit some wasteland of companies that fell). I am happy to say I am now at HCL in a unique role. It all started thinking about the Domino community, the changes and advancement in the technology and the growth to the platform HCL has eagerly provided.
After learning more about wide range of areas in HCL opportunities, we found that an even better fit for my background existed than just the collaboration space. As of Feb 1, 2021 I started as Continue Reading here" Where Did I Land?" »
I took a much longer break in blogging, podcasting and videocasting than I originally anticipated. Of course, the world pandemic extended it a bit further when Covid-19 changed how we work. Let me back up toward the end of 2018.
IBM has updated IBM Cloud Application Business Insights to version 1.1.0 and is a string competitor to Microsoft Power Business Insights. I will do a full comparison later when I get the code up and running and not in web test mode.
IBM Cloud™ Application Business Insights is an on-premises dashboard designer tool that:
Enables users to build custom dashboards quickly with an interactive, modern user interface (UI). Its drag-and-drop, easy-to-use features provide effective data visualization and analysis capabilities.
Empowers users with end-to-end visibility into the operational performance of their business application, by gathering actionable intelligence through consolidation of multiple data sources, including IBM® and third-party products.
Helps accelerate response and drastically lower mean time to repair (MTTR) on performance degradation of any business application, through advanced UI capabilities, such as data filters, correlations, and drill downs.
Provides the capability to export custom dashboards and share as a PDF.
This version runs on Linux and on premises connecting to your data sources. The drill-down capabilities are easy to understand and the filters and widgets are drag and drop making it easy toi use the built in or custom ones over and over.
You can see the available packages for IBM Cloud Application Business Insights right here.
It was time to evaluate direction with plotting and planning of paths, postings, podcasts, webcasts, conferences and more for IdoNotes and the Spiked Studio brand.
After I typed that I realized it isn't important at all as a number. What started as a random idea to blog became a hobby, passion and then hobby again. It expanded into my crazy idea of multiple blogs. Some of those were merged back together (TheSocialNetworker and Social Stalking for example).
Spiked Studios LLC launched a few years ago as an umbrella to bring together all of the video work I was starting to do and I decided to fold all of the blogs under that banner. That video path became a passion moving even the IdoNotes podcast to video shows only and then expand in directions I could never imagine. Amazon Top 1000 reviewer, live on air at CES twice, on stage at SxSW twice and then product ambassador opportunities.
So what does this blog post mean? Look for expansion in content here at IdoNotes. I announced I am an IBM Cloud Champion for 2018, my first time not being a IBM Collaboration Solutions Champion since the program inception. I will be full force covering Domino 10 and adding more cloud related content.
Plus my job expanded and you should expect to see a lot on data taxonomy, analytics and dashboards. It is simply a reboot that took some planning and thought.
In a change of pace I am once again an IBM Champion for 2018, but this time in Cloud. Since 2011 I have been an IBM Champion in Collaboration Solutions. Due to my expended role I am working more in Collaboration and Cloud technologies.
The stats for 2018 IBM Champions were impressive:
From the 1400 nominations, 650 IBM Champions were selected. You can review the full list below. Among those are:
62% renewing; 38% new Champions
38 countries represented
6 business areas, including Analytics (34%), Cloud (25%), Collaboration & Talent Solutions (24%), Power Systems (9%), Storage (1%), IBM Z (7%)
The role as an IBM Champion stays the same, even across the areas. All of the IBM Champions have shared their knowledge freely, participated in community events and expend their own time and resources to do so.
I am happy to be recognized in another category but that will not change the amount of Collaboration Solutions information I push out on my blog and even thinking of firing up some new podcast episodes. There is definitely webcasts and videos already in the works.
We were updating SSL certificates on IBM Domino servers and the question came up about the differences between EV SSL and Standard SSL. Outside of one costing more I was not sure what the added benefits were to using a EV SSL certificate.
The reality is that a Standard SSL Certificate and an EV SSL Certificate offer the same technical level of protection in encryption standards. The EV (or extended validation) Certificates require a different level of authentication. Not for the user, but for the website itself. That lead me to figure out how the end user even knows if the certificate is a Standard SSL or EV SSL Certificate. I had no clue so I cannot imagine how an end user knows. Continue Reading here" Differences between Standard SSL and EV SSL" »
IBM has partnered with HCL Technologies to invest in a long-term roadmap for the IBM Domino product line and family. This means updates for Domino, Notes, Sametime, Verse, and more
.To show IBM’s level of commitment to stakeholders, the company is entering into a strategic partnership with HCL Technologies to begin delivering on the roadmap with the intent to release version 10 of the Domino portfolio next year. The goal of the partnership is to drive future development of the Domino product family, energize the offering, and protect clients’ investments.
This means to customers that the original fixpack featurepack and support only announcements are totally gone. IBM had previously promised small enhancements and bug fixes through more consistent featurepacks. They were staying away from delivering an entirely new version number for many reasons. One was speed of delivery, legal naming and all that stuff we geeks just say give us a 10. With this move and the below #domino2025 jam announcement, IBM has fully committed to enhancing the entire product family. Continue Reading here" Announcements on IBM Domino and Notes 10 and Beyond for numerous products" »
IBM has announced IBM Bluefizz and the sunsetting of IBM Greenhouse entirely.
The Greenhouse team thanks you and all of our loyal users, customers and business partners for making Greenhouse the place for learning about and trying out IBM collaboration products and solutions. On October 15, 2017 we will sunset both IBM Docs and IBM Connections on Greenhouse. We have officially launched the next evolution of Greenhouse, Bluefizz. We welcome you to start using Bluefizz now to discover the latest social and email products available in the IBM Cloud by visiting https://626.bluefizz.net/.
The Greenhouse Team
There is no word on how the catalog will be migrated or even if it will be migrated to a new marketplace.
It was two years ago (almost to the day they are doing the sunset now) that I wrote a blog posting about Greenhouse was being retired. This caused a but of an uproar in the community about needing such a test platform for customers and business partners that had over 140k members of Greenhouse.
IBM and Salesforce have dropped the gloves, shook hands and both offered data and app integrations to further their partnership. In the recent announcements (previously it was just selling their Watson and Einstein products) they are doing deeper app and data intergration offerings.
I think Salesforce got the raw end of the deal only offering IBM Weather data in Lightning apps. Weather data is pretty abundant, but IBM does own the rights to allThe Weather Company since buying them a couple years ago. I read the press release from Salesforce trying to get a feel for what is different than May (from this blog posting on Salesforce).
IBM on the other hand is expanding Salesforce data in IBM Cloud apps. The IBM Cloud Integration for Salesforce offers a ton of potential. You can use IBM App Connect Lite for free (and even half off a one year subscription).
Sign up for IBM App Connect Lite and you can create up to 10 active flows and 1,000 flow runs per month. Upgrade to IBM App Connect Professional and get up to 20,000 actions per month with a total processing duration of 100 hours per month for half the regular price, using promo code APPC17.
I am going to dig deeper into seeing what we can do with this for our use of Salesforce and how IBM App Connect Lite works with moving some data around.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for July 2017. Here is some of the updates
Verse for iOS 9.4 performance, scalability, and security enhancements Verse mobile for iOS just got better with enhancements to performance, scalability, security, and ease of use. This release contains general performance improvements for Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts views.
Connections: Get started fast with guided tours New guided tours provide first time users and experiences users alike with a quick view of main features and actions on the Home Page, Communities, and Files. If you cancel out of a tour, you need to clear your browser cache of cookies to have them run again. The new tours replace the "Welcome Boxes".
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for June 2017. Here is some of the updates
Verse
Verse: Preview attachments while composing a message
When you compose an email message, you need to be able to preview an attachment while in Draft mode so that you're confident you're sending the correct information. Now you can! Click the attachment to preview it in the Verse window. Click X to close it and return to composing your message.
IBM sent a very confusing email about DB2 on Cloud and renaming. I will just leave this here
On June 22 a number of products will be renamed in our Db2 family of products That's right, Db2 "DB2 on Cloud" will be renamed "Db2 Hosted" and "dashDB for transactions" will be renamed "Db2 on Cloud.
Now notice the DB becomes Db in the new name. I am not sure if that was a typo or on purpose to differentiate the products. Either way taking a product name and swapping a new product into it already confused me.
IBM put together a webcast on the new IBM and CiscoOffering. The webcast is just under one hour. You can stream it with the blow link Watch and replay the webcast right here and even download the presentation here
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for May 2017. Here is some of the updates
Verse
Verse: Calendar delegation
Need to view or manage the calendars of others? You can now use IBM Verse to add people who have given you access to their calendar using IBM Notes. Add them to the Delegation panel, and open any managed calendar in a separate browser tab. When a new calendar notice arrives, you'll be alerted by a red badge in the calendar's browser tab.
Alain Amadou gave Kelly Hardart delegated access to manage Alain's calendar using IBM Notes*. See how easy it is for Kelly to set up and monitor Alain's calendar in IBM Verse. 1. Get the button to open the Delegation panel
The first thing Kelly needs to do is get a button added to the navigation bar. The button will open the Delegation panel where she can manage calendars.
IBM and Cisco partnered together to integrate Cisco Jabber, Cisco Webex or Cisco Spark with IBM Connections. Here are some things we found in testing the integrations. Of course, we presume you have licenses for Cisco and IBM Connections. Your organization needs to choose a standard chat client and direction. You have numerous options with IBM Connections Chat including Sametime, Connections Chat and more. However, only one can be configured for all of the icons and links in the IBM Connections interface. This means the business needs to pick a product. Once ou swap the configs, the entire organization is affected for chat. If they do not have Jabber installed they could be missing communication and awareness will not be working. Continue Reading here" Replacing IBM Connections Chat with Cisco options" »
You can register to attend virtually for the Cross Canada Collaboration User Group event. You can attend in person or virtually for this day of 8 sessions. Sessions will cover Watson, Alexa, Domino applications, case studies, the IBM Connect Hackathon and more.
Register for the Cross Canada Collaboration User Group event right here
IBM Connections is releasing an update that is replacing the Like with a heart icon. It will universally replace "Like" and in some places the happy face icon. I am torn by this decision.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for April 2017. Here is some of the updates.
Verse
Verse: Automatically show remote images
Messages that contain remote images can pose a security risk. Up until now, if you wanted to see an external image, you had to click Show Images in each message containing external images. However, if you are willing to trust external images, you can have Verse automatically show remote images for all messages.
There's a new setting in Mail and Calendar Settings > Security where you can set a new default to Always show remote images.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for March 2017. Here is some of the updates.
Verse Mobile: Android users now can view mail as threaded conversations
Verse Mobile is introducing visual grouping of messages and their replies into threaded conversations or threading. You have the option of viewing messages individually or as a grouped thread.
A thread is shown as one item in the Inbox or folders
Forwarding rather than Replying starts a new thread
At IBM Connect 2017 I presented the above session of Deploying IBM Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a Customer. I was happy to see so many interested in this topic. I also have a video that was complied walking through the steps coming.
Deploying Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a customer Explore the benefits of IBM Blockchain for decentralized and trusted controls. Decentralized and trusted processing of real-time transactions can speed up your business processes! Learn how to deploy both test and production Blockchain environments on IBM Bluemix. Walk through the business needs for the evolving Blockchain technology from the customer perspective. View validations in progress and the health of your peers in the chaincode
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for January 2017. Here is some of the updates.
Verse
Sign and encrypt mail by default
Protect the messages that you send. Now you can digitally sign and encrypt all outgoing mail and calendar messages by default. Go to Mail and Calendar Settings in Verse and select Security.
Calendar Inbox
Make better decisions when responding to calendar notices by viewing your calendar at the same time. The new Calendar Inbox organizes all your calendar notices in one place. This feature is being rolled out gradually to all users. Available on or after January 23, 2017.
Connections
IBM Connections and Box
Box is now integrated with IBM Connections Cloud - Community owners can add Box to their communities so members can view files and folders stored in Box. After the Administrator activates the Box integration the Box app will be shown as an available Community app under the “Edit Community” - “Add App” dialog. To grant access to the files and folders in Box, the Community owner must add the Community members to the selected Box folder.
IBM Connections Cloud has issued an advisory/warning active February 2017 discontinuing iFrame support of Web Mail Cloud. See the below information
...beginning in February 2017 we will no longer support embedding Web Mail Cloud in iFrames on our clients sites. This includes presenting the login, messaging, or other components of the service (such as the address book or calendar) in an iFrame.
If your organization is currently embedding part or all of the way your users access Web Mail Cloud in an iFrame, please begin planning what steps you will need to take to present the service in it's own tab or window
So if you somehow used Web Mail Cloud from the IBM Connections Cloud and embedded the interface into apps or pagesy ou have to revisit that configuration.
I was excited to see I am speaking at IBM Connect 2017 in San Francisco. Catch me on Feb 22 at 10am PST on the second floor of Moscone West, room 2020 (this may change as we get closer). This content overall will be a new and positive change for the IBM Connect event. Look for a track on your standard ICS technologies, with the added bonus of learning new skills and seeing new ideas to spark some interest in your future plans with IBM.
Deploying Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a customer Explore the benefits of IBM Blockchain for decentralized and trusted controls. Decentralized and trusted processing of real-time transactions can speed up your business processes! Learn how to deploy both test and production Blockchain environments on IBM Bluemix. Walk through the business needs for the evolving Blockchain technology from the customer perspective. View validations in progress and the health of your peers in the chaincode
This is totally out of the normal sphere of content but shows how far and fast we adopt and implement new technologies. I will not look too deep into how Bluemix provisions, but more on Blockchain technology deployment and where it can take us in the future.
IBM recently launched the IBM Connections Cloud Inform (IBM Inform) app. The app is geared for administrator to show the health of the IBM Connections Cloud.
The app provides information at the individual service component level (i.e. Verse, Meetings, Traveler, etc.) and will send push notifications from IBM as status changes.
The main screen is the status page with a glaring check mark on green for good and a yellow exclamation on yellow for alert. In the Status by Service page you can edit to show and notify you on only the services you consume from the IBM Connections Cloud. Push notifications can be enabled. Also, the settings menu allows you to put the app into sleep mode to mute notifications.
You can get more info here and go to the Play Store and App Store for the downloads
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for November 2016. Here is some of the updates.
SmartCloud Notes
SmartCloud Notes Administration: Refresh of the pubnames.ntf template
We will be refreshing the pubnames.ntf which will include bug fixes for Traveler and IMSMO as well as renew holiday documents that are due to expire in 2016/2017 (technote 1989194).
IBM mail support for Microsoft Outlook (IMSMO) - search your entire mailbox
IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook (IMSMO) users are able to leverage IBM Verse search to locate messages on the server which are not cached on their workstation.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for October 2016. Here is some of the updates.
SmartCloud Notes web and IBM Verse
Unsupported browser warning message
We plan to enable a new warning message, October 2016. When someone is using an unsupported browser to access IBM SmartCloud Notes web or IBM Verse, a warning message will be displayed at the top of the browser as soon as the unsupported version is detected. The message will say, "It looks like your browser might not give you the best experience.Click here for a list of supported browsers." Users will be able to close the warning message to get it out of the way. The unsupported browser warning message could be displayed before the user interface fully loads. It will display each time the user loads or reloads the page, and it will display in tear-off windows.
On or after November 19, 2016, there will be an additional impact to someone using an unsupported version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (earlier than IE11) in particular with SmartCloud Notes web. Users with browsers earlier than Internet Explorer 11 will see the new unsupported browser warning message and SmartCloud Notes web will not work. Users will notice they can no longer access SmartCloud Notes web from the navbar. We strongly encourage you to upgrade end users with unsupported versions of Internet Explorer to avoid any interruption of mail for those users, and to upgrade all end users to the supported browsers for Connections Cloud, for the best experience.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for September 2016. Here is some of the updates.
SmartCloud Notes
IBM mail now supports Microsoft Outlook
IBM mail support for Microsoft Outlook is now available for IBM Verse and SmartCloud Notes (excluding SmartCloud Notes Entry) users. The following versions of Microsoft Outlook are supported: MS Outlook 2010, MS Outlook 2013 and MS Outlook 2016.
IBM has a series of Bluemix webinars starting August 30 2016. All will start at the same time with the same meeting room URL and passcodes. The first webinar will be the following:
Join us for a webinar series starting Tuesday, August 30, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, Mike Broberg and Brad Noble from the developer advocacy team at IBM Analytics Platform & Cloud Data Services will show you the material available in their "Simple" suite of web applications, all using microservices architectures on Bluemix. All the code is available on the dev advocacy GitHub account.
Apart from showing you how to get started, the team's Simple Suite of example apps are designed to solve real problems and support the future scale that comes with production use
In August 2016 the IBM Connections Cloud team will begin taking steps to introduce a multi-active architecture. Included are a bunch of things you need to know about these changes. IBM states there is many changes that should not interrupt your service but here is why the changes are coming first..
Why is IBM Connections Cloud adopting a multi-active Data Center approach?
This multi-active data center architecture will enable IBM to provide you with a higher performing and more resilient IBM Connections Cloud service.
With this architecture, your users will be served from any number of active data centers within a geographic region. The intent is to eventually build a quadruple set of data centers in the same region.
Users will be served out of the data center most geographically co-located to them under normal conditions, and will automatically be routed to other available data centers in the event of service disruption or planned maintenance.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for August 2016. Here is some of the updates.
Connections
Drag and drop multiple files and folders
Quickly organize files and folders. Now you can drag multiple files to a folder, or drag multiple folders to a folder. Personal files can be dragged into folders you own only. Community-owned files can be dragged into community-owned folders only.
Nest folders using the Connections Plug-in for Notes
The IBM Connections Plug-in for IBM Notes now supports nesting folders. Organize your content in folders the way you want to with nested folders. Work with both personal and community owned files organized in multi-level nested folders.
In a shock to me, IBM has issued a withdrawl announcement for IBM MaaS360 On-Premises. This will end marketing as of Aug 12th 2016 and ends support on January 29 2018.
A: This announcement covers both End of Marketing (August 12 2016) and end of Support (Jan 29 2018) of the IBM MaaS360 (MobileFirst Protect) on-premise product. The SaaS version of the product is not part of this announcement.
From the announcement, they are betting it all on the cloud and how organizations will want this cloud based and managed. On premises sales in 2016 only represented 6.2% of the overall earnings in key markets such as Europe according to the doc linked below.
I ran across this slide online for the IBM stance on their Open Client Strategy and it has great importance. IBM is opening it's server doors to allow you, the customer, to better choose your client of choice. Following the chart you find that the customer can choose not only the best client for the situation, but also the best that fits their worker needs and previous skillsets. Continue Reading here" The IBM Open Client Strategy" »
IBM has announced IBM Bluemix Local System that allows a company to run an appliance on their premises to cloud enable enterprise apps
We created a new appliance that allows customers to run cloud-enabled enterprise apps alongside cloud-native apps, all in a single, fully-integrated, on-premises environment that provides the business agility, control and security they need to stay ahead of their competition.
The Bluemix Local System comes fully integrated with IBM PureApplication Software and IBM Bluemix Local, delivering a local private cloud that simplifies, automates and optimizes deployment of application environments, allowing developers to simply focus on building exciting new apps.
This is a piece of a much larger puzzle of making more apps and environments of brining IBM's cloud platform into your own data center. Of course there are some costs here around PureApplication systems to consider. You can see more in an IBM video here and an upcoming August 10th webcast. (registration)
Now find content faster. Activities has added two buttons that let you open all sections or collapse all sections.
SmartCloud Notes Web
Draft email messages automatically saved
SmartCloud Notes web mail messages are automatically saved to the Drafts folder while they are being created. The messages are saved at regular intervals, so that the draft and changes made to them are maintained. This feature also prevents data loss in the event of a power outage or workstation failure.
Administrators
Mobile SSO Support for ADFS
Updated versions of Connections Chat, Connections Meetings, Connections Social and Verse Mobile apps are targeted for end of July with support for authentication against on-premises instances of Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
Today, Sametime Connect client users enjoy SAML-based authentication with Connections Cloud using Tivoli Federated Identity Manager (TFIM). IBM is pleased to extend SAML-based authentication to work with Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services for SSO scenarios. This applies to organizations that use Connections Cloud Chat but authentication and directory services remain on-premises.
See the previous IBM Connections Cloud enhancement posts right here (and previous SmartCloud naming ones) on IdoNotes
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for June 2016. Here is some of the updates
Verse
Filter messages to show unread when offline
Filtering messages by unread messages is not new, but having that feature available when you're in offline mode is. Tackle your inbox and get organized by identifying which messages are new and which ones have been read. A new envelope icon now appears in the message list toolbar. Click the icon to toggle the display to show only unread messages. The unread filter works on messages in the inbox and folders. It is not supported for search results.
IBM has announced their 2016 ICS Developer Competition at ICON US with solutions leveraging Bluemix. Registration for the competition open may 13th with the competition running from Jun 9-Sep 9,2016. Did we mention prizes?
We're looking for you to work together with colleagues in your company, or even better, in other companies to take an IBM Domino or IBM Connections system and leverage IBM Bluemix and the many services like IBM Watson, Box, Internet of Things, to deliver an engaging experience for mobile, web or Notes 9 client.
Make sure you head over to http://ibm.biz/ics-dev-comp after May 13, 2016 with your team members to sign up.
Prizes will include:
IBM developerWorks Premium subscriptions for all members of the winning and runner-up teams
A cash bonus to have a party
A trophy for the team members
Recognition at IBM Connect 2017 in San Francisco
Solutions will be added to OpenNTF for the community to access the source code.
Seats are still open for day 2 in registration for ICON US !!! Hurry though before it fills and closes
In a confusing move, IBM announces IBM Connect for hybrid clouds, not the annual IBM Connect conference that they hold.
Ready, set, connect… to the hybrid cloud with IBM Connect! Today, IBM Cloud is announcing a new series of Connect offerings that provides the full spectrum of hybrid cloud solutions for enterprises of all sizes. Without all of your apps and data working together on the cloud made possible through IBM Connect, you risk placing last in this digital race.
This will be interesting in the race for SEO, help via Google or whatever else. It could be as simple as someone didn't pay attention or maybe IBM Connect gets a new name, again. I mean the IBM Connect conference we all attend, not the IBM Connect they just announced. Read more here and here
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for April 2016. Here is some of the updates
Connections
Connections: Real-Time alerts focus your attention
Stay up to date with things that require your attention and response. The new notification center in the navigation bar increases your awareness less disruptively. See alerts with a single click - no matter where you are in the service. Allows you stay on track or swiftly shift gears depending on what is required at the moment. This feature will be available on or after March 23
Connections: Easier access to critical companion applications
Files - Now you can access your files in Connections Cloud, right from the IBM Notes sidebar.
Forums - Files attached to forum entries are now easily accessed in search results
Forums - When someone posts a reply to a forum topic, notifications about that reply are now linked directly to the posted reply.
WIKIs: WIKI pages have permanent links - You can rename WIKIs without changing the URL leaving bookmarked links intact.
Groups: Add people when creating a group - You can create personal groups and add people while you are creating the group.
IBM announced some time ago the integration between Box and IBM Connections. I happened to find an online guide to setting up the connections via the Box website. In summary:
Download the widget XML and Javascript from Box
Host both on a web server that requires Dojo. Luckily the IBM HTTP Server does this via IBM Connections
Update the widget XML with the particulars for your IBM Connections Community
Restart Profiles and Communities inside of IBM Connections management screens
Add the widget to the Community in IBM Connections
Log in with your Box credentials (which means yes everyone needs a Box account too
You can set this up to a specific folder or give a user access to their root folder so they can get to all their files.
The entire document, with screenshots, can be found for viewing or donwload on the Box website right here. Also see my post on the Box and IBM Connections integration webcasts
IBM developerWorks Open Tech Talks have now launched and are open for registration. They currently have eight categories of content. Some have nothing there yet however. You should be able to use your developerWorks login credentials (or register) to gain access to these open Tech Talks. As you can see they cover
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for February 2016. Here is some of the updates
Connections Chat
SAML auto-login support on desktop clients
The Sametime Desktop Client now will remember the user name and password in SAML authentication scenario. The Sametime Desktop Client will be automatically logged in once the user name and password are remembered.
Connections Meetings
Support for Safari 9 & Mac OS 10.11
SmartCloud Notes
IBM Mail Onboarding Manager Updates
Multiple mail files are able to be uploaded to the cloud simultaneously resulting in improved performance.
Existing Transfer Group Settings can be used as a basis to create new Transfer Group Settings. Administrators can simply click the Copy button on a settings tile to create new settings based on the existing set.
Multiple administrators in your organization can log in and work in the onboarding tool simultaneously. To view all of the administration activity, click your organization name and then select Audit Logs from the menu.
Syncing of the Trash folder is now targeted for February availability for the following:
Verse mobile iOS/Android clients
Traveler supported, OS provided clients on iOS, BlackBerry 10, and Windows Phone devices
Once enabled, a Trash folder will appear in each of the supported clients. Deleted items will appear in the Trash folder, and may be restored, or permanently deleted from the Trash folder. Please note, when Trash folder sync is enabled, only items in the Trash folder starting the day of enablement and later, and within the user's mail sync filter range, will display in the Trash folder.
Any items in the Trash folder prior to enablement, or outside the mail sync filter range, will not display in the Trash folder on the device.
Desktop Plugins
Windows Desktop and Office plugin:
Support Office 2016
Nested folder usability enhancements
Ability to upload new versions of IBM Docs files directly from the plug-in.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for January 2016. Here is some of the updates:
Verse
Verse Mobile Updates (available on or after Jan 8)
While in other iOS applications, Verse is now a selectable mail application for sending pictures, file attachments, URL links, and more.
On Android, calendar events processed when using the application offline are now immediately reflected in the Verse application calendar. No more waiting for a sync to complete.
Social
Real-time alerts help you focus on items that need your attention
Stay up to date with things that require your attention and response. The new notification center in the navigation bar increases your awareness less disruptively. See alerts with a single click - no matter where you are in the service. Allows you stay on track or swiftly shift gears depending on what is required at the moment.
Leverage third-party apps to maximize the value of Communities
Community owners can add third-party apps to Communities. A new extension point opens up the possibilities for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to create apps for Communities. Developers can now write custom responsive apps that can be surfaced within Communities. Community owners don't have to do anything different from what they do today. As soon as a new third party app has been approved by the administrator, it'll be available for all community owners of that organization
Organize your files with nested folders
Now you can create nested folders to organize your content in a familiar hierarchy. You can create sub-folders within folders to give your content a structure that makes it easier for you and other users to manage content. For both My Files and Community Files, you can build a hierarchy of folders with tree-navigation on the side of the Connections Files page.
Nested folders are also supported in the Connections Mobile app and in the IBM Connections Desktop Plugins for Microsoft Windows and the IBM Connections Plugin for Microsoft Outlook when syncing your offline files with Connections Files in the cloud. Note: Syncing of folders is coming in the future
Drag and drop support added on Microsoft Windows (available now)
Also new in January is the ability to drag and drop files from the Windows desktop directly to an IBM Connections folder in the IBM Connections Desktop Plugins for Microsoft Windows.
Improved user experience working with files
The sidebar is now resizable and labels have replaced the icons on the tabs making it easier to navigate and view information and comments.
Docs
Enablement to help new users get started
A guided tour for new users has also been added to provide an overview of Connections Docs.
Additional browser support and other enhancements
Enhancements have been made to the editors including adding support for Apple Safari 9 and Microsoft Windows 10. A guided tour for new users has also been added to help them get up to speed quickly.
Meetings and Chat
New browser and operating system support
Connections Meeting and Chat are now supported on Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox on Microsoft Windows 10. For the complete list of browsers and operating systems supported, see IBM Connections Cloud system requirements.
IBM has announced enhancements to be found in IBM Docs Next due soon. Enhancements will include some of the following: One of the enhancements for IBM Connections Docs Next is instant, real-time co-editing for up to 20 editors that can utilize @mentions to grab the attention of specific editors. I guess that is instead of just selecting their name as some other programs offer. Comments will be available offline and chat awareness will be available while online. You can see a sample image from IBM below Continue Reading here" What's New in IBM Connections Docs Next" »
IBM has finally announced some of what's new in IBM Connections 5.5 due soon for everyone. Some of the highlights of enhancements include nested folders and: A new user experience theme. Not much else to say but a new theme. Communities get new looks and feel with new features Continue Reading here" What's New in IBM Connections 5.5" »
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for November 2015. Here is some of the updates:
Social
Participate in polls and surveys from the Connections mobile app (available on or after Dec 11)
The Connections app on iOS and Android now allows you to list polls and surveys in a community, submit responses, and see a summary of results if allowed.
Guest invitations are sent with your email address on copy(available on or after Nov 21)
Connections Cloud will now add the inviter to the guest invitation email in the cc field. This provides better awareness that the guest was invited to Connections Cloud and gives the inviter the chance to resend the invitation directly if for some reason the guest did not receive it or deleted the invitation.
New icons that show file sync status (available on or after Nov 21)
IBM has launched the IBM Support Agent Tool into beta. Relying heavily on Watson it is designed to automate responses to your support questions and even update your support requests.
As you can see, the IBM Support Agent Tool leverages Watson to take your normal conversation and interpret your needs. Then it gives possible results or even asks you to log in to update your open support requests. Now this is in beta and only covers Websphere and something else. IBM Domino and IBm Connections are not included yet.
Also note that they have the service running on Bluemix if you peek at the URL for the IBM Support Agent Tool.
IBM officially launches IBM developerWorks Premiumfor an annual price of $399 USD per year. Here is what you get with the annual subscription available to over 60 countries.
developerWorks Premium members enjoy:
12-month Bluemix subscription
240 USD credits on Bluemix to develop apps with services including Watson, IoT, mobile, and many others
Credits of 45 USD per month to create your development sandbox in SoftLayer (up to 540 USD annually)
500+ online technical books from Safari covering the hottest developer topics
Complete video replays of recent O'Reilly conferences
Complimentary certification test for IBM Certified Application Developer Certification
Up to 50% off developer events from IBM and our partners--including 50% off IBM Interconnect (standard rate)
GitHub Micro personal plan with 5 private repositories for one month
Call me crazy here but why would IBM PartnerWorld move communication from it's own platform into channels it does not own when they have a platform?
PartnerWorld Community Members,
By year end, the Connections based PartnerWorld Communities experience will cease. Therefore, please join us on our IBM PartnerWorld official social media channels to collaborate and converse. You will find the topics that have been included in the IBM PartnerWorld Communities and more!
For those not going to TED@IBM in San Francisco, CA on Oct 15, 2015 they have made it possible to register and stream the event.
While the cost to attend live is up to $10k (they report) it is only a half day event with two sessions covering 16 speakers, a lunch and a cocktail reception. I really thought it was more intense than that so I am glad they are offering this free live streaming!
You can register for the live streaming right here.
Now you have more options at your fingertips when viewing a file in Verse. You can upload the file to Connections Cloud and you can’ tear off’ the file enabling you to view it in a separate window
I was looking for some IBM Partnerworld content that linked to IBM Greenhouse when I found it. On the page was the following words:
The IBM Greenhouse is scheduled to be retired in late 2015 or early 2016
I believe I sat stunned for a few moments. The IBM (Lotus) Greenhouse has been an outstanding place for companies and individuals to test a plain install of IBM Connections, iNotes, IBM Sametime and even more.
It is stated that content was being moved to IBM Developerworks. That leaves out a ton of other content such as Activities, Communities and the Solutions Catalog. Even I personally have listings in the Solutions Catalog for some awesome Lotus Blogger and Technical Search widgets (in cooperation with Julian Robichaux) that managed to get over 400 downloads to date. Other solutions have over 20k downloads.
As Gabriella points out, I totally overlooked the discussions and other data that is searchable and so beneficial.
The IBM Greenhouse shows it has over 140k members with 1500 new members this month. Are those users being migrated over? Do we need to recreate all of our connections we have made on Greenhouse? I know this site remained free, but the benefit it gave to the community was priceless. We wish you farewell IBM (Lotus Greenhouse)
Update: Go and read even more summation from David Hablewitz on DeveloperWorks Premium that is coming
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for August 2015. Here is some of the updates:
Verse
Send Encrypted Mail (available on or after August 31)
IBM Verse now offers the ability to send signed and/or encrypted mail from within the Verse client experience.
Updates to Needs Action and Waiting For (available on or after August 31)
The sort order for messages with due dates in the Needs Action and Waiting For message lists has changed. The messages now sort with the nearest due date at the top of the list. This follows the pattern of other message lists which sort with most current messages at the top.
File Viewer updates (available on or after August 31)
A new feature in IBM Verse allows subscribers to open attachments or links in a new browser window, so they can work in Verse and preview files and links at the same time. Another new capability, the "Upload to Files" button has also been added to the viewer, allowing subscribers to upload direct to their cloud files
Team Analytics Updates(available on or after August 31)
The Team Analytics UI has been updated to improve the user experience. Changes include:
Adding the number of addresses to the information in the header of the Team Analytics display, for example: PEOPLE ON THIS MESSAGE (11)
Changing the contents of a bubble when a photo is not available from a silhouette to showing initials
Making your location in the report to chain more prominent by adding a “You” graphic just below your location.
Updating the layout of the grid for individuals who are external to your organization or not included in the report to chain and making it collapsible
Subscribers that open messages containing Lotusscript or Formula language buttons will see a message at the top of the message such as "This message contains content that needs to be viewed using IBM Notes or IBM Client Application Access". Once the subscriber clicks the "Open" button, the message will be opened in IBM Notes or IBM Client Application Access (ICAA). This feature is disabled by default. You enable it through the new option, Allow browser users to open messages with scripted elements, in the Email & Calendar Options page of IBM SmartCloud Administration.
IBM has released the IBM Cloud Portfolio Navigator as a pdf file that you navigate. It was made to hopefully help you wade through the vast cloud portfolio IBM offers. I am not sure it helps. With over 440 pages (at time of this blog post) it is massive.
Three entry points are provided to discover our IBM cloud portfolio: By the client initiative (e.g. Cloud Enabled Data Center, Business Solutions) By the capability (e.g. Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service) By the brand (e.g. Software, Hardware, Services) The tool includes built in navigation which allows you to quickly get to the information you need: Client's key initiatives by buyer, pain, and value proposition One-page offering summary information with features, business value and client benefits Offering sales kits on PartnerWorld
I found that many pages were so heavy with text that using this for presentations was difficult. WE are going to try and make our own trimmed down version to simply working with new customers.
IBM has had demo accounts for Business Partners in the IBM Connection S1 Cloud for a while, but has now enhanced the offering.
Flexible Service Activation for Connections Cloud S1 Demo Accounts The new Flexible Service Activation part for IBM Connections Cloud S1 Demo accounts, allows Business Partners to selectively activate components of the bundled S1 service.
PartnerWorld members are eligible for this no charge, one year renewable Business Partner demonstration account for up to 30 authorized users. Progress your Q3 deals and demonstrate the full capabilities of the S1 bundle, with full administrator access and hybrid mail support:
IBM Verse
Mobile Apps
Connections Social
Document Editors
Instant Messaging
Web Meetings (with Audio/Video)
Check out the IBM Connections Cloud wiki for more on this flexible Business Partner demo account provisioning
IBM is announcing a new pricing model for SoftLayer bare metal and virtual servers and new server configuration options effective 1 July, 2015
New options include:
New standard server configurations and included services, with lower starting prices
Lower prices for local storage disks for both virtual and bare metal servers
Lower prices for RAM for both virtual and bare metal, with bare metal RAM capacities now up to 3TB
New outbound, public bandwidth packages at 1TB/month, 5TB/month, 10TB/month and 20TB/month
Price differentiations by data center location using a consistent pricing model, with price differentiation down to the server resource level (such as RAM, storage, and public bandwidth)
Start looking for more information on the SoftLayer pages.
IBM has announced that the name of the Notes Browser Plug-in will be changed to IBM Client Application Access (ICAA) starting somewhere in June 2015.
IBM Client Application Access This lightweight solution helps clients who want to move to a browser-based interface for email (IBM SmartCloud Notes web, or IBM Verse), while continuing to work with existing Notes and Domino applications on-premise. This complete solution helps subscribers work efficiently, benefiting from all the new capabilities of IBM SmartCloud Notes and IBM Verse, with easier access to applications.
You can see how they snuck the name change announcement in right here.
IBM has released what's new for IBM Connections Cloud for June 2015. Here is some of the updates: Multi party audio video in meetings
New multi-party video capabilities in meetings is available from either the browser or the Connections meetings mobile application, and supports continuous video presence for a more interactive and social experience. Video conferencing is available at no additional charge for customers with subscriptions from IBM Connections Cloud S1, S2, and Meetings.
IBM has announced enhancements coming to IBM Connections Cloud for April 2015. Here are some of the updates. Luis Benetiz was kind enough to give everyone a sneak peek of this at Social Connections
Customize community layout and navigation
Type ahead search
New theme aligned to IBM Verse
Policy to disable chat history on file transfer
IBM Verse for iPhones
Apple Push notifications for To-do's
Google Cloud Messaging integration for Traveler users. (Using GCM is easier on Android to get notifications instead of being constantly connected for push notifications)
I am curious if we will see a new One UI change with a change toward IBM Verse look and feel. This would be some retooling of numerous applications and interfaces for users. While the end result would be cleaner, it might be a bit too clean.
See the previous IBM Connections Cloud enhancement posts right here (and previous SmartCloud naming ones) on IdoNotes.
IBM Verse Basic is the starter kit of welcoming users to try IBM Verse. We previously referred to it as freemium. The final statement of restrictions seem to be announced.
We want you to see how Verse helps declutter your inbox. You can:
Send up to 100 emails in a 24 hour period.
Send mail containing up to 10 recipients per email.
Send mail messages up to 100MB in size.
Have a mailbox quota of 500 MB.
Experience spam filtering for emails sent from outside domains.
I formerly mentioned the restrictions that seemed to have slightly changed just for the number of messages you can send per 24 hour period. and error you get when reaching the send limit. I am still concerned that one of the restriction they chose for the number of outbound messages. How can you successfully test the follow-up, threading and other features fully with a limit no other mail system enforces.
Today IBM had a webcast Introducing the Mail Onboarding Tool (MOM) launching an updated tool for migrating users to the cloud. IBM Design helped build the new interface as shown below. MOM is designed as a browser-server model as a Windows service on your side. Continue Reading here" Introducing the Mail Onboarding Tool" »
IBM has launched IBM Connections Files on Cloud with 1TB of space to directly compete with the other file hosting providers. I first talked about this on Feb 9th and was waiting on more confirmed details. Here is the announced pricing model for IBM Connections Files on Cloud. As you can see, IBM is going after this market hoping to wrap their IBM Connections on Cloud services around it as the upsell. I will say that many of the other services miss this opportunity to offer additional services (I hate using the word social) that engage the customer more and keep them in the system.
Services like Copy.com can already start you with 15GB free (using my link get 15GB today), And it always remains free. What IBM does not offer is any small free amount like every other service. There is a 60 day free trial but that is not enough to keep users hooked into the system. Everyone likes that free space and you end up paying that provider a few dollars each year when you need more. Having no entry point model confuses me some if you want to directly compete.
Will you test out the service? Start a trial? Or stay with something that gives free space as I linked above? I mean 15GB is a heck of a lot of free shared space but I already bought more.
IBM, via Jeff Schick, announced at IBM ConnectED 2015, a cloud file sharing service to compete with services like Dropbox, Box and Copy. While exact dates were not offered this is an interesting market for IBM to enter now.
This cloud based file sharing will be based on IBM Cloud Connections and is likely an entry point into upselling users on a full IBM Connections deployment. While an exact date for this offering was not made, the infrastructure beginnings are already in place.
What I found interesting was the late arrival of this offering when many organizations a deeply entrenched with services like Dropbox already. Most everyone you share with personally even asks what your Dropbox email address is. It seems certain services have become ubiquitous with the term file sharing and starting up usage on another service just for that offering would not be a draw. Continue Reading here" IBM announced a cloud file sharing service at IBM ConnectED 2015" »
IBM announced that IBM Connections Cloud will be adding new IP ranges and sunsetting previous ones. Here is the announcement
IP Address Changes in February 2015 Action required if your firewalls require IP addresses!
On or after February 07, 2015, IBM will be adding several new IP address ranges to the network supporting the Connections Cloud and SmartCloud Notes services in our United States based data center. We plan to transition to these new ranges, sunsetting some of the current ranges at a later date.
This change will not impact clients who are accessing our services as recommended by using our public DNS names (eg. apps.na.collabserv.com) and is specific to services in our United States based data center.
Clients who utilize firewalls requiring IP addresses, private DNS, or who otherwise filter based on IP addresses are urged to contact Brad Ralphs (ralphs@us.ibm.com) or IBM Connections Cloud Support (support@collabserv.com) to ensure you have the full, current list of required addresses inclusive of those being put in place on or after February 07, 2015.
Seems kind of important for you to know since most enterprises block or restrict ranges. Or need to update DNS cache
IBM has announced enhancements coming to IBM Connections Cloud for both February and March 2015. Here are the updates
New feature coming on or after February 4
See meeting invitee status on mobile devices You can now view meeting invitee status in your calendar using Traveler on your iOS, Android, BlackBerry 10, Windows Phone and Windows Tablet devices. Possible statuses are accepted, tentative, declined, and no response. Additionally, the Android client can show a status of delegated.
These capabilities are available for IBM Connections Cloud S1 and IBM SmartCloud Notes customers with Traveler subscriptions.
Announcing a new Files offering available in March 2015 We’re introducing an exciting new standalone offering that enables customers who don’t want the full set of social capabilities in IBM Connections Social Cloud to buy file-sharing, profiles, file sync and more. This offering includes:
secure file sharing in the cloud
file sync with desktop and mobile devices to make sure you always have the right version
profiles for business contact information
updates and notifications in an activity stream to learn what others in your network are working on
This standalone offering is an easy way to start using cloud and expand into other services as needed. It will be available in March 2015.
See the previous IBM Connections Cloud enhancement posts right here (and previous SmartCloud naming ones) on IdoNotes.
It is time for IBM to update the IBM Connections Cloud again with new features and enhancements. Here is what you can expect after January 17 2015.
Work with larger files in Activities We’re continuing to make it easier to work with more content, continuing the improvements announced last year with storage increases for Files, Communities, and Wikis. Now you can upload files as large as 2 GB when you use an HTML-5 browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Additional browser support is coming soon.
Assign tasks more effectively across teams Assign To Dos to one or more members of an Activity to work more easily across teams. Select people from the Activity members list.
View relationship history in your contacts Now you can view the relationship history for each of your contacts. See when a contact is created, when a network invitation is accepted, when a contact is modified, and when a contact is forwarded. This gives you important information about the timeline of your relationships.
These capabilities are available for IBM Connections Cloud S1, S2, and IBM Connections Social Cloud subscribers.
I am happy to be back presenting at Lotusphere aka IBM Connect aka IBM ConnecED 2015, This time I am honored to partner with Wes Morgan for Sametime Deployment Do's & Don'ts and my own Considerations for the Cloud..
In each of these sessions I hope to bring you a unique perspective on decisions you will make while deploying your solutions and how to avoid the common mistakes. Also we look at mistakes that come to haunt you after you have begun roll-outs. I sit in a unique position at Connectria in seeing so many varied deployments both in the cloud and on your own site.
Take a look at the agenda via the Session Preview Tool to get one of the remaining seats for IBM ConnecED 2015. You can get the current pricing at the registration page.
IBM is announcing Mail Next shortly and Microsoft launched De-Clutter for Office 365 today. Both promise to hide your email bring the important mail to the front for you to work better. The goal of each is to learn your email behavior and start working for you via analytics and consistent actions you perform in your email.
For example, if in your organization tree your direct manager sends email, then the system would recognize you need to see that email from them constantly. While emails you always delete or send to folders can be removed or filed away for viewing later. Basically clearing your inbox view (or whatever it becomes) into something manageable. You can train both systems as you go along and they both keep learning. That really is not the core issue users face today.
The product goals are a band-aid and is where both fail. They do not solve the actual problem of receiving too much email. We oversubscribe to content and teach ourselves to ignore instead of unsubscribing from the emails. This tool only hides content from you that you ignore even easier since it is automated. Many of us have email rules that do that now. We send emails to folders and then go delete everything in the folder. Why not stop receiving them in the first place? Is there in inherent fear we will miss something? Yet we never view those messages.
You can see the announcement for De-Clutter right here and all my blog postings on IBM Mail Next right here on the IdoNotes blog.
I am curious of your feedback and conversation on both products as well as the idea we oversubscribe
IBM launched the Bridge to Cloud program to help users move easier into their IBM Connections (formerly SmartCLoud) Cloud offerings. The goal is to keep entitlements in place and move to subscriptions.
"Bridge to Cloud" allows a customer to switch from on-premises Notes CALs to SmartCloud (now Connections Cloud) Notes subscriptions at renewal time, keeping the same entitlements whether they stay on-prem or move to IBM Connections Cloud
Domino server licensing remains as-in (customers transitioning to the cloud will not need to renew Domino messaging server in subsequent years)
Rates will auto renew at the current year price you subscribe under
So in essence you are simply signing on to a subscription model license instead of annual Software and support (S&S) and moving some users for email to their cloud. You could also investigate this same model with partners, like Connectria, and do your apps too. Using XWorks and other models.
IBM has announced the rebranding of IBM SmartCloud to IBM Connections. As you can see in the chart below, IBM Connections is now a platform and not a product. We were first told of this at IBM Connect 2014. Here is a quick chart with the new names plus more news.
These changes will be implemented on or after September 20. No customer actions or changes will be required, and no URLs will change.
There will be a dual entitlement option to help you move to the IBM Connections cloud for your email. You can maintain S&S on the specific offering you have on-premises and wish to bridge to cloud.
Chat with audio and video is coming as well as an a la carte chat offering. This will allow IBM to offer IBM Connections chat as a service. I am sure more news will be coming shortly.
This was to take place on or after September 20, 2014 per all the emails and alerts I received. It seems this hit the web first back on September 3 2014 by CuriousMitch. And IBM has finally announced it.
IBM has releasedTop 10 reasons to choose IBM SmartCloud for Social Business over Microsoft Office 365 whitepaper. Here are some highlights.
Documents from either IBM Connections or SmartCloud for Social Business which are synced to your laptop or mobile device are encrypted. Microsoft’s offline files are not encrypted which may result in the loss of confidential information if your device is lost or stolen.
This is generally a large requirement by organizations. I would not be surprised to see them address this though.
An internal IBM study showed that people located information 32% more quickly using tags because tags allow us to express relationships that are not readily apparent in the content. An Office 365 search would only return items that match the searched text, tagged items are not returned in the results. Tagged items can only be located by browsing a tag cloud
That can be a great selling point as long as users are actually tagging items.
From there I am not too sure about some of the others as organizations just don't seem to care. I am being honest in saying that when we talk to companies that are looking at Office 365 for just mail, the rest of this are things that just come along with mail. They will still use Domino for apps for a long time to come, but it is the mail experience driving the change. Hopefully IBM Mail Next will help in that area.
Get you hands on the Top 10 reasons to choose IBM SmartCloud for Social Business over Microsoft Office 365whitepaper (seems you have to be a partner to get it after some digging, I am looking for a public link)
Google has come out with an offering to give startups $100,000 in credit with full support of application, database and storage servers and all their Cloud Platform products.
Getting eligible is not too difficult:
You must be in an approved accelerator, incubator or VC fund
Have not received Cloud Platform credits before
You have less that $5M in funding
Currently less than $500,000 in annual revenue
Even companies like SnapChat are on the Cloud Platform at Google. Which gives them a good edge at drawing in more incubators and VCs. Everything runs on Google infrastructure with a ton of products and solutions.
IBM announced they added one-to-one audio and video calling to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business this past week. This has been needed for many years.
While Lync in Office 365 has had this capability since as far back as 2011 (from what I can find), it is a welcomed addition to the IBM SmartCloud. While it is limited to only the SmartCloud and web only, they are promising expansion to mobile devices.
As you can see in the image above, right clicking on any name in your contact list (that is also on SmartCloud) will allow you to launch into the new audio and video capabilities. No, you cannot just do a video call by itself, audio is always required.
I hope this spurs some more interest in the SmartCloud, but I wonder if adding this now is way too late against some of the competitors. There is a bit more on the Sametime blog posting
IBM Mail Next updates as of July 2014 as presented by IBM for a SocialBizUG webcast. Design Advisory Program updates, web updates and timelines. These are my notes as they happened. You can now watch the webcast embedded above and get the slides here
Key announcements
Kramer talked IBM Mobile First and iOS-ready apps and the Apple announcement
Now on to the good stuff..... a long list with tons of screen images
IBM Cloud Marketplace has launched to offer a single shopping experience for cloud services. Unfortunately they are running two sites. Let me show you.
There was a webcast titled Energize Notes Domino Enterprises covering Notes 9, Project Hawthorn (IBM Mail for Outlook), SmartCloud Notes, Domino Double Check and more. Here is the slides and a link to the replay of this event (requires login)
Key points from the slides and webcast :
Bridge to IBM SmartCloud renewal option - basically please don't renew your own on site infrastructure, move to us
Use the browser plug-in (Notes Basic client) for your apps
IBM announced it is buying Silverpop, an Atlanta based company, for it's behavioral marketing platform.
Silverpop's behavioral marketing platform enables marketers to take action on customer behaviors in real time, deepen brand loyalty and deliver the perfect customer experience.
Silverpop is a digital marketing software company focused on helping marketers transform the customer experience— increasing engagement and driving revenue. Silverpop makes this possible by using customer data and each individual’s behaviors to inform and drive every interaction in real time
You can read more at the IBM press release or the Silverpop website.
In a recent blog posting from Kramer Reeves, Director/Product Management for Messaging and Collaboration, he announced the extension of End of Life (EOL) for 8.5.x support until September 2016. This is good news to give companies even more time to plan upgrades.
Of course we need an official World Backup Day and they made one. March 31 2014 is the day you promise to backup all your important files. Back them up to something, anything. The cloud, a USB drive, Google or even floppies (ok not that).
IBM is enhancing SmartCloud for Social Business in March 2014 to include Sametime with SAML support, IBM Docs enhancements, also web users and Notes user enhancements.
IBM Sametime chat with SAML support is coming
If your organization uses federated identity management handled by Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), you can now download and chat using a stand-alone Sametime Connect client and log in with your organization's authentication credentials
I am happy to announce Connectria has won a 2014 IBM Beacon Award for Outstanding Expert Integrated Systems Solutions in the PureSystem category
Connectria Hosting, a global managed and cloud hosting provider, was named a winner of a 2014 IBM Beacon Award for Outstanding Expert Integrated Systems Solution, PureSystems Category.
Connectria’s winning solution involved the delivery of a HIPAA Compliant Private Cloud based upon the IBM PureSystems Platform. The hybrid private cloud solution also included an additional PureSystems environment at the customer’s location, managed remotely by Connectria, for disaster recovery purposes.
Connectria already had three IBM Beacon Awards in the IBM Collaboration Solutions group, as well as being a finalist 5 times. This is another great achievement in our expanding portfolio of capabilities.
Connectria, a global managed and cloud hosting provider, has announced an expanded partnership with Tripwire, a leading global provider of risk-based security and compliance management solutions.
To enhance its Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant hosting solutions, Connectria has added Tripwire Enterprise Compliance Monitoring and Tripwire Log Center to its services portfolio. Tripwire Enterprise provides real time compliance monitoring for a wide variety of regulations, including HIPAA and PCI, and automatically detects critical changes that may affect compliance status or indicate security risks saving significant time and resources.
Read more from the press release on the Connectria website
I recap IBM Connect 2014 day one activities and the Opening General Session (OGS) in this Lotusphere Podcast video. We dig into the backpack, the badge attendees wear and how the opening party went. From there it is all about the OGS:
IBM has announced new features in IBM SmartCloud for Social Business going live around January 11 2014. Here is a summary of enhancements and changes
New meetings and chat changes:
Download a new version of the Sametime Connect rich client
Navigate the chat and meeting applications, and launch their communication tools more easily with new context sensitive icons and user flows that have been streamlined to minimize the number of clicks
Share rich content immediately with file transfer* and screen-capture in web chat
Launch a meeting directly from a shared document in Files
See at a glance what's happening with the new Meeting Stream that shows the chat discussion, when people share files, join the meeting, interact with poll questions, etc.
Use additional meeting tools located next to the Audio Conferencing controls (if purchased as an add-on)
Use new Meetings and Audio Conferencing reports available to subscribers
Use new mobile applications that allow users to not just attend, but take control, share content, collaborate, and manage their meetings
Use Meetings effectively with Chrome
Use Federated Identity Management (SAML) support for the Chat plugin embedded in Notes
New "social" capabilities for SmartCloud Docs
Presentations supports AirPlay® Mirroring and dual-screen projection. While your audience sees the full-screen slide show, you can see the slide show, speaker notes, timer, and annotation tool on your iPad®.
Import and export .xslx and .pptx files
In spreadsheets, customize the look of new or existing charts, and edit chart data ranges without going back to the sheet
These new capabilities are available for SmartCloud Engage and SmartCloud Connections subscribers.
Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channels for both IdoNotes as we prepare for IBM Connect 2014 and to Spiked Studio for all the recent CES news.
Connectria and Brightlight Consulting have teamed to provide customers a scalable IBM Netezza® solution in the cloud using a monthly pay-as-you-go model with IBM PureData System for Analytics.
The solution leverages IBM Netezza, also known as PureData System for Analytics, which is part of the PureSystems family. Connectria will host the solution in the Cloud and Brightlight, an expert in Big Data, will provide the services surrounding the Big Data application, database and analytics.
The Connectria and Brightlight Netezza Cloud solution will allow customers to realize the benefits of an IBM Netezza solution without significant upfront capital investment. An expert in Big Data Analytics solutions and IBM’s premier Netezza consulting partner, Brightlight will provide the strategic guidance, best practices, and management services to assist customers in implementing a complete Business Intelligence solution, while Connectria will provide the hosting of the IBM PureData System, powered by Netezza
Connectria is continually expanding and growing and announces the launch of managed Amazon Web Services (AWS) support.
As an AWS Consulting and Channel Reseller Partner, Connectria has begun implementing 100% secure, highly available, managed AWS solutions all backed by Connectria’s superior 24/7 support. Connectria provides and supports a full complement of AWS products, including AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and AWS Simple Storage Service (S3), among others.
By using Connectria’s Managed AWS solutions, Connectria’s customers will enjoy the on-demand, “pay-as-you-go” services of AWS, along with Connectria’s comprehensive managed services and support. Connectria’s experienced, AWS certified engineers will provide a host of AWS services including AWS architecture support, 24/7 AWS monitoring and tech support, AWS data backups, AWS security management, and AWS cost and performance optimization, among many other services.
While showing a customer the benefits of hosting with Connectria the topic of IBM SmartCloud Notes came up. While searching for the site that has the product information for IBM SmartCloud Notes I discovered a very strange URL
IBM has announced an upgrade to IBM SmartCloud Meetings. Enterprise grade audio conferencing has now been made available to subscribers.
IBM is pleased to announce a new global audio conferencing offering complete with VoIP, toll and toll-free calling in more than 50 countries available after July 23.
This service is delivered using a security rich private audio network which is tightly integrated into the SmartCloud Meetings experience for true enterprise grade audio quality.
Users can hold reservation-less meetings for up to to 200 attendees, with Operator support available in 18 languages.
IBM Audio Conferencing Services for SmartCloud Meetings is available as an add-on for SmartCloud Meetings or SmartCloud Engage. Pay as you go, or buy a discounted monthly bundle of minutes. The no-charge, enterprise VOIP service is available for every minute of toll / toll -free dialing you purchase.
I am not sure what back end audio services are in play here, but the addition of the audio conferencing bridge will help reach some more customers maybe.
For my readers is the Forrester Research paper on The Future of Mobile Application Development free of charge.
This report, which is the vision report of the mobile app development playbook for application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals, focuses on the changes application developers need to understand if they want to build modern applications that deliver contextual customer experiences. It also looks at how modern applications will evolve over the next few years and what development teams should prepare for now.
At twenty pages it has some good points and diagrams to present to your CIO to let you start digging into mobile development
*********************************** As an added bonus also grab 8 Steps to Building Mobile Apps Fast in the Cloud from Salesforce. The slides themselves are good if you leave off the marketing at the end. You can grab that one right here
IBM has pushed forward in marketing itself as a leader in providing cloud offerings and solutions. They now state they have over 100 cloud application. With the current purchase of SoftLayer for ~$2B in June 2013, this gave them more data centers quickly.
..the company showed off a series of cloud products centered around such popular topics as Big Data and social analytics for marketing, as well as human resources, sales, customer care and procurement software delivered over the cloud. In all, I.B.M. says it has more than 100 cloud applications.
That is an amazing accomplishment and I bet that the addiion of SoftLayer added numerous applications to be offered into the cloud portfolio.
I have been using Copy.com as an alternative to Dropbox for splitting work and personal storage. Right now Copy.com is offering 15GB free cloud storage for new accounts.
The performance of the service on Copy.com has been great. Upload speeds have been quick and folder management easy. I am waiting on their mobile apps to be released to make it even better. All the sites offer different upgrades and enhancements like password protection of files, expiring shared links, and more.
So why do I use multiple sites like Copy.com, Dropbox, Box.net and more?
Well free storage is one with the amount of data everyone now has
Separation of personal and business data is another. I know that any folder I share on one service would never contain the other information. Call it a simple obscurity step to also reduce making mistakes. Like family photos, vacations and stuff like that would then not appear on the business one
So how do I easily manage it? Simple. I have two folders inside the syn folder. One is set for business and one for personal. I then have subfolders as needed under them and then they automatically get synchronized with Copy.com and Dropbox.
So go get 15GB free on Copy.com while they still offer it for new accounts https://copy.com?r=CPTn0g
Disclosure: That is simple a referrer tracking link so I might get some extra free space by helping share the 15 GB free on Copy.com
While much activity and buzz relating to cloud involves its technological capabilities, the benefits of cloud adoption actually extend into the business realm.
When utilized effectively, cloud capabilities offer numerous opportunities to drive business innovation. Recent technology and social connectivity trends have created a perfect storm of opportunity for companies to embrace the power of cloud to optimize, innovate and disrupt business models.
IBM announced a tune-up for SmartCloud for Social Business coming on March 9 2013. There are two keys areas:
As part of ongoing service improvements designed to help business users work more effectively - this first tune-up of 2013 introduces changes to enhance the user experience:
You’ll see a new, configurable Instant Messaging widget in the lower right corner of the dashboard. This capability is entitled for customers who have SmartCloud Engage or SmartCloud Connections.
We’re making the service more personal and visual - user profile pictures are now prevalent along side or in-place of a contributor or members name within the service.
Look for a prompt with the new license agreement starting March 9, 2013 that the administrator for your environment must accept. I think both of these will be a welcome change with easier web access to Sametime and better user profile picture usage. Having to use a separate Sametime client for this made no sense with the Sametime Proxy and web capabilities
I am getting more heavily involved with communities in Google Plus and Smartphone Photographers is an awesome group you should investigate joining. The community focuses on what we do everyday, take the best pictures we can using only smartphones. Any type of smartphone is welcomed and categories are there for each type.
There is also a weekly theme based contest . Past weeks have included Different Perspective and Shadow Shots. A winner is picked by +1 votes and then makes up the category for the next week contest. No prizes except awesome feedback, valuable critique (never any slamming) and incredible tips.
Did I mention we have a McGyver in the group that can show you how to build stands, tripods, and stuff for cheap to do amazing shots.
As part of an IBM residency on cloud technologies I am authoring articles via the Thoughts On Cloud blog and wanted to point you over to read What is Cloud Assurance? It was my first posting on the site as I start to expand this blog more into cloud technologies that Connectria has done for so long.
Here is the summary from my posting:
The Summary
The controls inside of cloud assurance are built to help build stronger value in your business systems. Internal processes are followed to maintain service to your customers which includes employees, customers, suppliers and partners. Provider processes are followed to give support to tens if not thousands of customers. Without these two brought together the cloud experience will fail. It is up to you as the customer to request that information from your cloud provider.
Read the entire article titled What is Cloud Assurance and look for tons more Cloud content here as I merge in IdoCloud into the IdoNotes family.
The Market Quadrant 2012 for Hosted Business Email and Collaboration by The Radicati Group, Inc was released. While IBM was listed as a Specialist in the report, they also appeared in the lower left corner which shows a loyal subscriber base but behind on capabilities and innovation.
The Radicati Group evaluated 15 cloud-based Hosted Business Email and Collaboration vendors based on various technology platforms, including POP3/IMAP, Microsoft Exchange, and other proprietary technologies
The quadrant choices were mature, top, trail blazers and specialists. Google showed itself as a Top Player. Functionality was rated 1-10 with 10 being the highest and Market Share assigned to installed base in reverse numbering. Meaning the largest installed base was 1. (that is silly tome to not be consistent in numbering direction).
Their definition matches hundreds of current providers:
Hosted Business Email and Collaboration Providers offer cloud-based email services that provide robust, enterprise-grade functionality aimed at business users. These providers typically offer email services on a multi-tenant server located in their data centers.
Their statistic says that 21% of business email is hosted. I find this number quite high and I am unsure of the sample rate. Reading through the requirements and other options, you can make your own conclusions on how they come up with such numbers.
The report is a long 48 pages but much of it is a listing of those companies in the quadrant. Using your own math you could plug in other companies or even dispute why a specific one got placed in a certain corner. Definitely worth the read and the discussion about it.
IBM totally gave away all the last batch of Private Cloud for Dummies via my blog offering last time so a new batch is ready! This ebook copy is free for the taking.
Whether public, private, or hybrid, cloud computing is becoming an increasingly integral part of many companies' business and technology strategy. Many companies want to be able to have pools of computing resources based on a self-service model where the company owns and operates those resources. With a private cloud model, these resources are standardized and automated.
Registration is required but it is 74 pages of great knowledge from Judith Hurwitz and Marcia Kaufman.
You can download your free copy of Private Cloud for Dummies by IBM right here. They all were given away back in June so get yours quick.
Connectria is growing again and this time announces it's alliance with Citrix to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) enablement in a hosted cloud. If you want to see how successful your applications can run in a hosted cloud we have an offer ready!
To demonstrate the ease and success of SaaS enabling applications in a hosted Cloud, Connectria offers a low risk, low cost pilot. With Connectria's QuickStart Pilot, Connectria will stand up ISV applications in a 5 user, fully functioning Citrix and Microsoft environment for 90 days.
To learn more about the offering and working with Connectria and Citrix join us on the webcast “Easily Move Your Apps to a Hosted Cloud” on December 12th. Connectria will be having a drawing for a free QuickStart Program (not just a pilot) for one lucky winner You can register for the webcast right here.
A one hour free webcast replay on choosing cloud providers, key security considerations and guarantees to look for titled IT Decision Makers Guide to the Cloud. This is aimed at CIOs but is a good watch for everyone looking at cloud solutions.
Cloud computing is this year's hot new sports car -- and lots of companies are kicking the tires. It's easy to understand the appeal. By moving essential but undifferentiated services such as email and sales automation to the cloud, enterprises can focus on their core missions. But with concerns about security, privacy, and compliance, enterprises are too often keeping their foot on the brake pedal.
Key questions answered include:
How can effective security serve as an enabler?
What are the key characteristics you should look for when evaluating cloud platform providers?
What is the role of “private cloud” services?
What security and performance guarantees should you demand, and which can you expect?
You can freely watch the webcast at just over an hour right here
Download the IBM SmartCloud What's New & FAQ for December 2012 by simply sending a tweet
IBM is introducing new capabilities to IBM SmartCloud and adding enhancements to IBM SmartCloud Engage and IBM SmartCloud Notes. Here is a breakdown including IBM Docs, Sametime Meetings and IBM Connections capabilities. Make sure to get the pdf version of the FAQ and What's New by clicking here to download by sending a tweet back to the blog post!
IBM SmartCloud Docs will be a huge boost to productivity with the co-editing features if users can start working with the online tool instead of locally.
This is a new cloud-based office productivity service providing teams the ability to work on word processing, presentation and spreadsheet documents and offers real-time co-editing support designed to help users quickly edit files and manage file versions within IBM SmartCloud Connections. Users have the ability to upload, create, share, and edit Microsoft Office or IBM Symphony documents.
Just launched is IBMSocBiz.com as a free resource to keep up on tweets, articles, videos and even photos around IBM Social Business.
IBM Social Business (or ibmsocbiz as we see it in hashtags) is generating a lot of interest. Unfortunately there was not a single place for me to capture it all so I built one for personal use. Then I decided it should be for everyone and set up the aggregation.
You are able to increase/decrease the font, change the background to white or black depending on your preference and please share away with anyone you think may be interested across you business networks.
I have been working heavily in the Lotus Greenhouse IBM Collaboration Solutions Catalog the past week. I can see the browser warnings stopping what could be more traffic.
As you can see in the image from the Collaboration Solutions Catalog that Chrome is not included, Firefox is outdated by about 14 versions and IE is behind by one. I do not see Safari on there at all. I know some enterprises have not upgraded their Internet Explorer version on the desktop, but with the speed revisions are being published I would expect this to be updated regularly.
I quickly needed an online form to collect data and decided to try out the IBM Forms Experience Builder in Lotus Greenhouse. After playing around with the capabilities I realized there was no tutorial to make a quick and simple form in under five minutes. Watch the YouTube video above to see it in action.
The IBM Forms Experience Builder is quite powerful and allows simple to complex forms via a drag and drop interface. You can then share the forms with the public or authenticated users. You can then export the data collected for simple reporting.
Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel or in iTunes to keep up with all the latest videos.
The notice came today that LotusLive.com (SmartCloud for Social Business) will be officially changing over it's domain name to CollabServ.com starting December 1 2012. While the LotusLive.com domain will still work with redirects, they are strongly urging you to make the necessary firewall and rules updates as needed.
Early in 2012, IBM announced rebranding of our service, from LotusLive to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. This quarter, we are announcing the next phase of the rebranding -- changing the service domain itself.
From: *.lotuslive.com To: *.collabserv.com
The above change will take place on or after December 1 2012 so anything that you specifically allow to this domain should be updated. Additionally..
Earlier this year Forrester surveyed enterprise IT leaders on their timeline for implementing cloud (public or private) and understanding the difference between their own virtualization internally and things like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that we at Connectria provide.
Currently, only 8% provide a private cloud for their users with that figure expected to climb in 2015 to 26%. I was not surprised to see that 50% of the respondents state they still run everything on dedicated physical hardware and not virtualization. Sometimes it is cheaper to use a local machine with internal disk that also eat the overhead of the management software.
You have to outline policy based automation, self service portals, resource tracking and more when thinking of deploying cloud services to internal users. Besides security concerns there is training and internal ownership politics to consider. In all this was a good short read.
Forrester is letting me pass From Virtualization To Cloud: A Worthwhile Journey this out to my readers free. Grab your copy here or clicking the cover image above.
I keep an eye on what goes on with Microsoft Office 365 as many of you should and Binary Tree was just selected as the migration tool to take users away from Lotus IBM Notes and Domino.
Binary Tree, a provider of software solutions for migrating to Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office 365, announced that Microsoft has selected Binary Tree migration and coexistence technology to streamline the migration process for customers moving from Lotus Notes/Domino environments to Microsoft Office 365.
This agreement allows Microsoft to offer Binary Tree technology to streamline the customer's migration coexistence experience.
As Binary Tree was a large vendor at Lotupshere for many years showing coexistence and migration into IBM Notes and Domino, it is interesting to see the flipside take place and have Microsoft themselves choosing the tool. Congrats to them as a long time business partner to both.
IBM has given another free paper to share with my readers on IBM Secure Authentication for Mobile Devices that revolves around the Tivoli suite of products. You can download the whitepaper here.
IBM Research has developed an innovative security architecture that leverages several Tivoli products including Tivoli Endpoint Manager, Tivoli Identity Manager, Tivoli Directory Server and Tivoli Directory Integrator to provide the validation of a device, device posture and a user's identity prior to authentication to the network.
This solution will be the basis for a 2012 IBM CIO internal offering for managing remote access of Android and iOS devices. This will provide the first ITCS300 compliant access for mobile devices.
In a recent blog posting on IdoNotes I wrote my opinions about the thousands of Lotus Notes applications clouding the GSA Lotus Notes migration. A new article on GCN by John Breeden II really missed the point of what is going on:
GSA’s problem specifically is with Lotus Notes, which lets users create applications for their own ends. In that sense, Notes was an excellent tool for the distributed computing environment. If users needed to process payroll information every week, they could create a Notes application to help. It needed only to work on a local machine or a few local computers, and life was good.
The GSA is not moving a bunch of desktop created applications to the cloud. They more than likely did not even support that model. They are moving tons of workflow, document repository and critical databases to the cloud and finding out that the model there does not meet all the needs as promised. Then it is taking longer to write new applications at a higher cost than proposed. John Breeden II even backs this argument in his own article:
I guess finding out that thousands of Notes applications no longer work can be an expensive revelation.
A marketing piece hit the airwaves that AT&T is joining forces with IBM to store cloud data in IBM data centers from anywhere, including roaming, in their global cellular network push.
AT&T has announced that they’ll be pushing a global network that users will be able to utilize with cloud-stored data available from anywhere they may roam. IBM is part of this deal with the actual physical data-storage facilities – that data’s gotta be somewhere, after all. These two titans will split revenue from the deal, with Andy Geisse, head of AT&T’s unit for business clients noting simply that this collaboration will be “huge.”
What does this mean for you? I guess that you can sync mobile data to numerous IBM data centers. I find the comments the funny part.
This article from Fierce Government IT still baffles me as the GSA had no available data to back how they would save a single dollar, much rather the projected $15M over five years to migrate their Lotus Notes in house email to Google Apps.. To confuse the issue even more they are attempting to move apps and finding duplication as well as struggling to keep the workflow.
Each GSA component has developed its own inventory of Lotus Notes applications for decommissioning or migration to the cloud, and the GSA office of the chief information officer didn't perform an analysis on those applications to look for duplication, says the GSA office of inspector general in a report (.pdf) dated Sept. 28.
So these thousands of databases, many containing workflow, are now not important enough to have catalogued, combined or verified to see what functionality is being lost?
They blamed this on their delay in migrating the email system. The article uses the quote updating but let us be honest and just say migrate. They say in another article linked below they have saved $2M already. Where?
After spending the past few days living in the world of cloud and more cloud, this whitepaper geared toward CIOs titled The Cloud: When & Why? is right on time.
This whitepaper discusses the main reasons companies choose to adopt Cloud solutions, and also guides companies in evaluating Cloud-based business application investments. It summarizes our research on the economics of Cloud vs. on-premise solutions, and highlights the main differences in drivers of cost and benefits.
CIOs are being told to get in the cloud and get social and really do not understand what it means for their organization. Is the cloud about standardization? Saving costs? Reducing staff? Change licensing to on demand?
All of these are starting points and the whitepaperThe Cloud: When & Why does some good summary and a couple charts. Download your copy and hand it to your CxO
Once you decide the cloud is for you, visit us at Connectria website . Ranked #2 in performance for your hosting needs.
IBM SmartCloud has some work being performed so notify your users about this weekend.
IBM SmartCloud for Social Business Maintenance Announcement
The IBM SmartCloud team will be performing scheduled maintenance during the date and time shown below. While this maintenance is being performed, some SmartCloud services may not be available. (Note: SmartCloud Notes users who access SmartCloud Notes via the Lotus Notes desktop client or BlackBerry® smartphones should not experience any service disruption during this maintenance window. However, SmartCloud Notes web and Traveler users will experience periodic disruptions during the service window.).
Maintenance Schedule: Sunday October 07, 04:00 AM - 08:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
I have been trying to use IBM SmartCloud Meetings app on my iPad and I am frustrated by the experience. With the variance in behind the scenes meeting services that are supported SmartCloud you cannot often join meetings. This leads to confusion for the users and frustration in the product reliability.
Scenario 1: A user with an actual LotusLive (now SmartCloud) sends you an invite with a meeting id that contains a DASH as in apps.lotuslive.com/meetings/join?id=xxx-xxx. Yes it needs to have a DASH. If the moderator has not started the meeting you get an error
Notice Unable to join meeting session
Not that it hasn't started yet. Unable to join. Why am I not able to? There is no more help screens or info. The user has no way to know they should wait or if the product is working.
We did some video work on the last day and I managed to help direct the first one and then get caught up in the second. Take a look at the YouTube clip.
An article from Delimiter in Australia highlights findings from analyst firm Telsyte that Google Apps has moved to number two behind Outlook/Exchange over Lotus Notes/Domino and Groupwise.
Google’s popular Apps collaboration suite has knocked IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell’s GroupWise platforms off their perch to become the second most popular office suite in Australian enterprises behind Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, analyst firm Telsyte revealed this week.
According to a statement released by the company, it conducted a survey of more than 330 local chief information officers and senior IT decision-markers on their enterprise software use and intentions.
There are some flaws in what is written as usual. It compares Lotus as email lumping it in with Outlook, not the full Microsoft suite. It highlights a ton of the cloud stuff as a key factor, with no mention of IBM SmartCloud for Social Business (or the name is too long to type unlike LotusLive). They did mention Google Apps and Office365.
They talk greatly about SaaS and how the offerings are better but no real details of what is better for each.
I wrote about about Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices back in January which is now the Tivoli Endpoint Manager. Since going live they released quite a few additions I wanted to highlight as we move more into BYOD and device controls.
Some highlights of the enhancements and fixes include:
This week I had the opportunity to spend some time at the IBM PureSystem Labs that work with PureFlex and PureApplications. While the PureFlex systems were well defined on the specifications webpage (even after taking 12 clicks to find) the PureApplications systems were not. I included what single image I could find into the video thanks to an IBM rep that was nearby.
The amount of horsepower in each rack with the interchangeable and expandable chassis slots makes it a great data center in a box approach. Coupled with the management platform, you are able to spin on resources on demand and even take them away when demand drops. Check out the video for more.
With all the cloud work I am doing this week, I am consistently running into new cloud solutions. MigrationWiz is a cloud only migration tool that moves users in and out of multiple different mail systems through a web interface. Lotus Notes is now included with fidelity for messages, folders, contacts and even contact pictures.
MigrationWiz is a complete cloud-based migration solution that helps companies move from existing to new messaging systems seamlessly and affordably. With no hardware or software to install, the patent pending technology is a solution designed to meet the needs of individuals, IT administrators, consultants, system integrators and service providers interested in migrating mailboxes.
They offer a free trial (limited mail is moved but shows fidelity and movement) which can then be converted. I was also impressed to see an individual package all the way to enterprise. This means that someone leaving a company could migrate mail on their own. Transfer limits for the two paid programs are 10GB and 50GB mail stores.
I bring this up because MigrationWiz is a two way street allowing movement into Lotus Notes as well as out of.
While this is not large amounts of news that Microsoft licensed BinaryTree for migrations from Lotus Notes to Office 365, the quote used in the article from CMS Wire is what caught my eye:
t’s not clear how many users have already made use of BT’s technologies to do this, but Microsoft claims that it is in the millions: Binary Tree’s software has been used to migrate millions of users from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 and has proven instrumental in the onboarding process,” Kevin Allison, general manager of Office 365 for Microsoft said.
Millions? Of users? Migrated? Millions?
Microsoft can offer four parts of the BinaryTree software under the license agreement but where the heck did these millions come from?
You can read the entire newsletter for the July 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on your company training direction From there we go into articles on:
Properly selecting the number of mail.box files
More on IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials
Websphere Plug-in key.kdb password Expiring
Which message size restriction is best
Watch the new webcast replay with Gabriella Davis, Paul Mooney and myself from Consultant In Your Pocket covering what's New In Lotus Traveler 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and High Availability.
Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter on the right to get notified as new registrations open and for some free whitepapers.
I saw some press releases for Notes2Apps from G-workplace, a firm that provides migrations from Lotus Notes to Google. The Notes2Apps tool is supposed to move data from you applications into Google Docs. Reading what is performed I would not consider much of this a migration, but more toward archiving.
Default templates are already mapped but custom templates are all options.
Any Notes view with rows becomes a spreadsheet in Google Docs
Notes documents become PDF files
Workflow has some limited features in AppScript
Content centric docs become HTML files
You can move to a Google site (html) or a Shared folder (based on reader/author)
Category fields become meta data
Doclinks are not converted
However, Notes documents are a viewer for free form fields and data. Not a single page to be archived. A view is living data, not a screenshot to be placed into a spreadsheet. How do you work with the data in PDF or spreadsheet when the fields no longer relate?
With the removal of doclinks, even the HTML pages they create become standalone with no connectivity between them to show workflow or relationship.
They also offer Notes Sync Google but that just moves attachments on a Notes document into Google Docs.
Has anyone tried this yet? Success? Let us know in the comments
You can read the entire newsletter for the June 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on your company mobile direction and a quick poll. From there we go into articles on:
Fixing a corrupt ACL
IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials
iNotes attachment buffer overflow vulnerability
New mail not appearing in folder in local replicas
Watch the new webcast replay with Gabriella Davis, Paul Mooney and myself from Consultant In Your Pocket covering what's New In Lotus Traveler 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and High Availability.
Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter on the right to get notified as registration opens and for some free whitepapers.
Private Cloud for Dummies (IBM Edition) is a companion to the last IBM ebook I was able to offer to you for free. However, there is only 20 copies or so available for this one.
Whether public, private, or hybrid, cloud computing is becoming an increasingly integral part of many companies' business and technology strategy. Many companies want to be able to have pools of computing resources based on a self-service model where the company owns and operates those resources. With a private cloud model, these resources are standardized and automated.
You can get your free eBook copy of Private Cloud for Dummies here.. Registration is required but it is 74 pages of great knowledge from Judith Hurwitz and Marcia Kaufman.
On the public IBM Cloud Computing resource center a new PDF showed highlighting IBM SmartCloud Engage Advanced. This new offering incudes
IBM SmartCloud Engage Advanced combines enterprise-class email, calendaring, instant messaging, web conferencing, file sharing and social business services in an easy to deploy, simplified package. With SmartCloud Engage Advanced, you benefit from essential and effective collaboration tools in a security-rich environment that help simplify and improve your daily business interactions with customers, partners and colleagues
This is standard blurb stuff so I wanted to see the listing of what is included
SmartCloud Engage Advanced includes:
Powerful business-class email
Calendaring and scheduling
Instant messaging
Web meetings
Business social networking capabilities
File storing and sharing
Contact management
Project management
Easy-to-use administration tools
Communities
Global services offered in 22 languages
Choose the optional SmartCloud Traveller for Notes to access email from various mobile devices including Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Windows Mobile, GoogleAndroid and Nokia Symbian mobile devices.
Choose the optional SmartCloud Notes Hosted BlackBerry Service with or without BlackBerry Mobile Data Services to access email, calendar and contacts from your BlackBerry device
The list varies slightly from the now IBM SmartCloud Engage Standard offering which was the only one before. Standard includes a dashboard, profiles, files, activities, web meetings, instant messaging, communities and forms.
An IDC report came out in February 2012 stating how the future of email is social. I was interested to see that IBM was the sponsor of the paper.
This IDC white paper takes a look at the current state of enterprise email and the perceived and real problems that surround its use. The paper discusses the changing nature of collaboration and work fueled by the social web by examining current email trends and the emergence of new social collaboration tools. Rather than envision "a world without email," it revels a future where email converges with social tools...
The paper begins with a situation overview and a team that needs to work on a project before jumping to a section on the history of email and a statistic that email will reach 2.4 billion users by the year 2014.
Apparently the success of free ebook downloads last week prompted another offer from the publishers forDemystifying the Cloud. NOTE: This one has a maximum of 200 downloads or two weeks, whichever comes first.
This time I bring you Demystifying the Cloudby Janakiram MSV of GetCloudReady.com. He is an independent cloud consultant with a terrific 55 page ebook I was able to get downloads for my readers.
Janakiram was the Web Services Evangelist for Amazon and a Technology Architect in the Cloud group at Microsoft.
He defines the building blocks you need to know about any of the cloud solutions, the definitions of PaaS, IaaS and SaaS, the tenets and anatomy of the cloud. He covers Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and Google App Engine as examples.
IBM has launched a large initiative called PureSystems which offers built-in expertise, integration by design and simplified experience.
Expert integrated systems combine the flexibility of general purpose systems, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of an appliance tuned to the workload.
I was able to get access to a demo account, which by all means did not showcase all of the physical capabilities and on demand sclaing. It was more of a layer inside of the IBM SmartCloud which was disappointing.
I think some of the message about PureSystems is clear, however much of it is very confusing when you get into PureFlex and PureApplications.
I had the chance to get the new Cloud for Dummies (IBM Midsized Company Limited Edition)compliments of IBM. It is a quick roadmap helper and looks at the economics and security of working with cloud services. A quick read you should get your hands on.
The book is ~70 pages in 6 chapters and was written by Judith Hurwitz, Marcia Kaufman and Fern Halper with the assistance of a bunch of IBM names we know. It stars with why cloud computing should be investigated by your organization and moves into basic technical foundations and economics. A brief coverage of governance is thrown in. Each section is short and to the point as most Dummies type books are formatted for easy digestion.
Well I have the ability to make Cloud for Dummies free to download (yes they have a registration form or uses LinkedIn)
I am happy to finally announce that Connectria is opening our fourth data center, this time in Dallas, TX to meet our expanding cloud services.
Connectria Hosting, a global managed hosting provider, today announced that it secured a new location in a Tier 4 CyrusOne data center in Lewisville, Texas.
The CyrusOne facility, a Tier 4 designated facility according to the Telecommunications Infrastructure Standards for Data Centers (TIA 942), is now the fourth data center location for Connectria, with existing data centers in St Louis and Philadelphia.
A Tier 4 designation is the highest level a data center can achieve, designed to host mission critical computer systems, telecommunications facilities and storage environments with fully redundant subsystems (cooling, power, network links, etc) and compartmentalized security zones, controlled by biometric access control methods.
As we expand our reach into cloud hosting with the IBM i launch cloud launch this is an excellent time to talk to us about your needs. Related posts:
Connectria just announced a cloud hosting solution for IBM i platform after two years of testing and working with IBM. This has been under wraps as we worked with them on building this offering.
Connectria’s IBM i Cloud Hosting Solutions have been designed to run on the reliable IBM Power Systems Servers to deliver all the benefits expected from a Connectria Cloud Solution, including reliability, scalability, flexibility and affordable pricing. Customers of Connectria’s IBM i Cloud Hosting Solutions will be able to purchase the IBM i capacity and support they need, when they need it, for as long as they need it -- backed by Connectria’s world-class 24/7 IBM i administration and support. Starting as low as $495/month, Connectria’s IBM i Cloud Hosting solutions are an excellent alternative to purchasing an IBM i System and running it yourself. For each Virtual Machine, customers can add processor, memory or disk capacity as needed, as well as scale from as little as 595 CPW to more than 50,000 CPW. In addition to the IBM i capacity that customers purchase, they will also purchase Connectria’s world-renowned 24/7 IBM i administration and support to ensure their IBM i systems are secure, reliable, and running at peak performance.
There are three hosting options available for you. Visit the site for more information about this awesome new offering!
Connectria has been a leader in the IBM/Lotus hosting and remote management world for some time now. We are happy to announce that our performance and growth is being seen across the services and portfolio. This quote from MarketWatch summarizes the announcement:
Connectria Hosting, a global managed hosting provider, today announced that as of February 23, Connectria ranked an impressive 2nd in the North American market and 4th on a global basis in Cloud Computing Performance (over a 30 day period view) as measured by the Global Provider View on CloudSleuth.
This is an independent benchmark study of cloud hosting providers. They sample the same applicaiton types across the providers to begin making the ratings:
The Global Provider View application uses the Compuware Gomez Performance Network (GPN) to measure the performance of an identical sample application running on multiple cloud service providers. The application continuously measures vendor page delivery performance from more than 35 Internet backbone nodes across the globe. For anyone considering a cloud vendor, the Global Provider View provides near real-time vendor performance comparisons on a regional and global basis.
You can read more about this announcement on the above MarketWatch link, Infoboom and Sys-Con Media.
Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.
A long time user of Lotus Notes, the University of Nebraska, made big waves last year when they announced the move away from Lotus Notes for their entire faculty and staff at campuses (students moved long ago). The article from Daily Nebraskan states they spend $1M USD annually to use the software and will reduce costs by half when they switch to the web based Microsoft Office 365.
NOTE: The University of Nebraska Medical Center is not migrating to the new system because of concerns about security.
With all of the announcements this week, I have received inquiries about my thoughts and more specifications on the Social Mail and embeddable browser client experiences I got to see launched. In this episode I express my thoughts until I can fully read all the technical specifications.
During the keynote today of Lotusphere 2012 there was much talk, and some demo, of the enhancements coming in IBM Connections Next as it is called before moving to Connections 4. Some key areas were analytics integration, activity streams (which I have an entire post on) and OpenSocial Embedded Apps.
Here are some highlights of the announcements and news links for more. There was quite a bit of press there as well. Read on.
Research In Motion joins the rank of software and hardware vendors handling their own BlackBerry cloud services with the beta launch of integration with Office 365.
BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is available at no additional charge to Microsoft Office 365 Midsezed Business and Exterprise plan subscribers. This secure service, hosted by Research In Motion (RIM), directly links Microsoft® Exchange Online with BlackBerry smartphones to offer reliable, mobile access to synchronized email, calendar, contacts, tasks and memo pads.
The beta is launching in 30 countries. Did you notice the quoted section about it being free?
Here at Connectria, we like the following portion:
Managed service providers, systems integrators, carriers, resellers and other partners can also use the cloud service to manage BlackBerry deployments on behalf of their customers.
We are pleased to announce the addition of the announcement of the IBM XWork Server to the What's New in Notes, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server in 8.5.3 webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket. This webcast will feature a panel of IBM business partners giving their opinions on enhancements, features and more. Plus tons of news on the IBM XWork Server.
We have also added Marie Scott from Virginia Commonwealth University to the panel! Registration for the webcast is open! It will be held Oct 4, 2011 at 10am CST.
You can stream any previous webcast at the Consultant In Your Pocket site. Recent webcasts include:
We are pleased to announce the What's New in Notes, Domino & Traveler 8.5.3 webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket. This webcast will feature a panel of IBM business partners giving their opinions on enhancements, features and more.
An interesting idea popped into my head this weekend as I read a technote that actually mentioned Nomad, or Notes on a USB stick for those unfamiliar with the name. Nomad was a hot hot topic back in 2006. It is still frequently used as a search term on my blog.
With everyone thinking they want to run everything in the cloud, which they do already in many fashions unknown to them, the portability question comes to mind with the idea of a semi-full client on tablets and more mobile devices. iNotes and even Traveler is just not enough for the business user. Writing everything to XPages takes time and development costs many companies cannot afford or have the skills to get done. They may never get them done and/or converted to be honest.
IBM now sits at the cross roads of letting those full client customers go eventually as it seems to slowly vanish, or help them move apps to the web by partnering with teams like the recent Transformer 2.0 announcement from GBS. Ed just announced a XPages Application Server license. I do not see how it differs from a Domino Utility Server at this time. I imagine we will hear more on that soon.
When Ed mentioned the launch this week of Transformer 2.0, he quoted the line that says it:
modernizes Notes applications into XPages web applications.
If we move more and more Notes client based applications to web only, do companies need a drive to keep the client? Then a drive to keep mail on Domino? Then we point the directory to AD so we don't need that either.
Next step is to somehow surface .nsf files without Domino, via a plug-in for Websphere, after turning database encryption off sounds like a new plan too. More Notes clients on platforms may just be a help.
An "ebook" was released by Ascendant Technology in conjunction with IBM on using IBM Web Content Manager as the basis for delivering exceptional web experiences. I quoted the word ebook because this is more of an advertising slick or marketing white paper than an ebook.
Being 20 pages long including the cover and back, it walks you through 5 steps:
Introduction
Create & Design
Collaborate
Target & Optimize
Resources
It does a good summary of why IBM Web Content Management can help the lifecycle and process of managing web content for your site. With the premise of ebook I expected more technical detail and less marketing inside.
I thought this was good enough to pass along, mainly with all of the silos of log-in
The ibm.com Community applications will be temporarily unavailable during the Single Sign On deployment. You may notice that the applications are accessible for parts of this deployment window; however, any updates to content may not be saved.
Start: Saturday, 16th April, 11 pm ET
End: Sunday, 17th April, 10 am ET
About Single Sign On (SSO):
SSO means that users can log in to ibm.com Community, then visit other SSO-enabled www applications without having to sign in again - and vice versa. And, if you are an IBMer and have linked your w3 ID with your IBM ID, ibm.com Community (and other SSO-enabled applications) will recognize you with your w3 ID. (If you haven't already linked your IDs, now would be a good time to do that!)
There will be some UI changes as a result of SSO:
New sign in page: Our Lotus Connections sign in page is going away (and will be replaced with a message directing users to the new sign in process, in case anyone has this page bookmarked). With SSO, we will use the generic Web Identity SSO UI.
In addition, the Log Out link will no longer be presented, there will be updated, more user-friendly, messages for some log in error conditions. The Chat function in Communities will be disabled and the links will be removed. We are planning to incorporate a more robust Chat function in 2H11.
This is all about rethinking IT. (or how to move your stuff to our servers)
They had a very tiny busy slide showing Business Process as a Service
They will be announcing the ability to have a public, private or hybrid cloud (have you seen the Connectria website?)
New segments will include Smarter Commerce, Social Business and Business Analytics & Optimization
The new Cloud Computing specialty for partners has launched, as announced in February 2011 at Partnerworld and ibm.com/cloud/partner
IBM had 2k successful cloud engagements in 2010
50% of Fortune 10 and Fortune 50 working on an IBM cloud
Now a change over to clients transforming business using the cloud. They mentioned IBM or internal organization, not partners.
IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ will be launched
IBM Smart Cloud - foundation for Value-Add services and applications
Enterprise has self service with advanced premium support; 99.5% availability; virtual and some physical isolation; bring your own software/pay as you go/free developer use; hourly usage with reserved options; Linux/Windows
Enterprise + has fully managed; 99.9% availability; multiple levels of isolation; IBM provides operating system and tool licenses; monthly usage based and fixed contract; Linux/Windows/AIX
There are nine different virtual (Intel) server configuration choices
There are six data centers
Multiple VLANS for a single virtual machine
Also launched is a IBM Private UC Cloud
Partner software like telephony management, phone presence and unified messaging
Lotus software like Quickr, Connections, Domino, Sametime
Tivoli software for provisioning and management
The end -state vision slide (#21) showed SAP management. Partners were not listed as options in the hosting or cloud solution offerings
From April 8 to Jun 10th 2011 there is no charge access to some capacity in Toronto center. North American Promotion code #PRO1689 with 32-bit Copper and 32-bit silver machines
Over to Bethann Craig for LotusLive offerings
LotusLive won some new clients: Bumba Desa, IndiaFirst Life Insurance, Lofotkraft, Shriram Transport Finance Company
IBM Workload Deployer V3 to manage elastic workloads
IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud. - built on BladeCenter as a single bundle/price/packaged with hardware, software, network and storage.
Cloud Standards Customer Council with Angel Diaz, VP of Software Standards
This is a reinvention of standards for cloud.
There are 55 organizations already in the council. You can apply right here
**************************************************************************************************************** You could also watch a current Consultant In Your Pocket event (free no registration needed but signing up for the newsletter encouraged) on Seeing Shapes in the Cloud.
Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in cloud hosting for IBM/Lotus Software hosting and management.
I am pleased to announce that Connectria is EU Safe Harbor Compliant according to the standards on how Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is to be handled. You may view our certificate here on the Safe Harbor site and the countries for which we are covered.
For those curious to what it means
US-EU Safe Harbor is a streamlined process for US companies to comply with the EU Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data. The process was developed by the US Department of Commerce in consultation with EU.
Intended for organizations within the EU or US that store customer data, the Safe Harbor Principles are designed to prevent accidental information disclosure or loss. US companies can opt into the program as long as they adhere to the 7 principles outlined in the Directive (below).
Background
The European Union has for many years had a formalized system of Privacy legislation, which is regarded as more rigorous than that found in many other areas of the world.
Companies operating in the European Union are not allowed to send personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area unless there is a guarantee that it will receive equivalent levels of protection.
Such protection can either be at a country level (if the country's laws are considered to offer equal protection) or at an organizational level (where a multinational organization produces and documents its internal controls on personal data).
The Safe Harbor Privacy Principles allows US companies to register their certification if they meet the European Union requirements.
You can view the above certificate site for more information.
***************************************** Connectria is a hosting and cloud provider for all of your IBM and Lotus software and hardware needs.
Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.
I am happy to share my slides from BLUG 2011 titled Seeing Shapes in the Clouds. This session walks through numerous architecture designs for moving to the cloud and questions to ask your cloud provider.
Do not forget to watch the numerous replays from the conference on YouTube
IBM finally announced the new Domino Utility Server for LotusLive. since I have gotten pings, a customer call and expect more, let me break down what this means for you, our customer, in the simplest terms I know so far. Let's start with the first part of the announcement:
Based on the same model as the Domino Utility Server, this new license allows you, as LotusLive Notes subscribers, to use the included Notes client for access to Notes/Domino applications
You must be a LotusLive Notes subscriber to be eligible for this server license model. I do not see any minimal user count amount on LotusLive to be eligible, so set a user up over there.
That means that instead of paying per-user software subscription to continue to use Notes/Domino applications, regardless of client/browser access method, you can now switch to a server-only based licensing model. Instead of paying for everyone in an organization to continue to use those applications, you can pay for anyone in the organization to use those applications.
So now both Notes client and browser access are allowed, One cost opens access to everyone in the company
The Domino Utility Server for LotusLive model is available in the IBM Cloud and Amazon models, in addition to on-premises deployments if you are moving or considering a move to the cloud.
If you use LotusLive then you can keep a Domino server in-house or with a partner if you are trying to outsource management, backups, monitoring and more. All for a fixed Domino server license cost.
Special pricing is planned so you can trade up from Domino Enterprise Servers, in conjunction with deployments of LotusLive Notes (or LotusLive Notes and LotusLive Engage).
You can free up Enterprise license cost, per user application costs and more. You must have a user on LotusLive Notes.
The Domino Utility Server for LotusLive licensing model may be utilized with other "pay as you go" offerings through IBM Cloud, Amazon EC2, or business partners providing Domino application hosting services
I have tested the IBM Cloud. You can watch IdoNotes Episode 105 screencast of my trials here. Amazon will allow usage based models (good for very small models) in the public or private.
However, the key is the last part. We (Connectria) are now able to offer you a Domino application server model that you can easily implement at a fixed license cost. Internet connection, private connection, backups, networks, firewalls, monitoring. Just another item to strengthen our position as a Lotus software hosting leader. Read more aboutHow to Choose and Migrate to a Cloud Email Provider by Forrester where Connectria is mentioned.
******************************************************** You could also watch a current Consultant In Your Pocket event (free no registration needed but signing up for the newsletter encouraged) on Seeing Shapes in the Cloud.
Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.
Forrester has launched two recent reports and ReadWriteWeb Enterprise wrote a nice summary including Connectria in the article. We pride ourselves in over ten years of Lotus Software hybrid or outsourced hosting and remote management.
Diversified hosting and telecoms, such as AT&T, Connectria, ....
Forrester doesn't offer any specific recommendations about any particular company. Instead, it encourages decision makers to consider their organization's needs and existing partnerships. The firm also recommends considering hybrid models.
Once again, salesforce (yes no caps as their logo shows) hit my inbox with a webinar coming April 4th on migrating off of Lotus Notes. As we have seen this before, I took special interest in the speaker and the claims his website made, EscapeNotes.
So I went on to find the site EscapeNotes. and see what it was all about and the claims it would make. Here we go:
You can migrate off Notes in DAYS
An automated tool can do it all
They have a diagram on "How we do it" found on the EscapeNotes site that actrually shows an area of things that cannot be migrated. A XNscore is generated (I have no idea what that is and their demos have no audio). The tool has some pop-ups and then makes a complexity score. It then generates NotesPedia (the encyclopedia of your Notes infrastructure down to the latest detail.
It basically BUILDS NOTES DATABASES to show you the information it pulls from ACL's, catalog, access, templates and more. It then hits an Excel spreadsheet. Why would this not use force.com to hold and make these documents?
I watched a bunch of the demos and step 3 said no knowledge needed of Notes or coding in Force.com. If you watch the demo the is a ton of things you need to do and code.
Moving users forces the Notes workspace icons to launch their web browser to open the application. So there is no migration in that sense. Users just click a web link.
For a product moving you off Notes they sure use the term Notes a lot.
I received a link today for a Cloud Sales Guide for IBM Business Partners. There is nothing NDA in there or even close, only references and areas to get more information. I did find one portion I wanted to highlight. That was the lack of Lotus Software across three of the areas.
Tomorrow, January 12th 2011, there will be a free webcast on Seeing Shapes in the Clouds at 10am CST from Consultant In Your Pocket. Many are debating how they would utilize the cloud as part of, or even replacement of their Lotus infrastructure. This webcast will cover
questions to ask
security considerations
network considerations
architecture decisions
how different Lotus products behave
LotusLive choices
extending your own infrastructure
Join in and bring your questions, managers and those thinking about using Lotus software in the cloud. You can register for the event right here.
Another free webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was announced last week titled Seeing Shapes in the Clouds. It is about cloud architecture in the Lotus world and things you should consider. Here is the full abstract:
While investigating numerous cloud solutions, including LotusLive, you need to understand how this fits into your business plans both technically and functionally. Explore architecture pitfalls from ten years of Lotus software hosting and learn the right questions to ask about data security and retention, geographic location and more. Understand TCO and ROI while shaping your infrastructure for the cloud.
Lotus is currently undergoing a major shift to cloud solutions and lines of business need an understanding of the architecture decisions surrounding the multiple directions. In this session the business cases as well as simplified pictures will be presented.
Enterprise decisions around implementing Lotus software in the cloud is becoming a hot topic. This webcast will dive into the following:
Defining the difference in hybrid, cloud and on-prem deployments
You can also watch the replays of past webcasts, for free, at Consultant In Your Pocket including the recent What's New In Domino 8.5.2 Administration.
While reading the recent NetworkWorld issue (vol 27 number 19 for your reference) they highlighted an issue with Google and their stance on not allowing your organization to fully audit their data protection in the Bits section:
Many customers worry about how well cloud providers protect customer data, and there is no satisfactory way for customers themselves to evaluate it, says Adam Swidler, a product marketing manager at Google speaking at the Mass Technology Leadership Council Security Summit. "We won't let you audit to the degree that you would audit your own infrastructure," Swidler says. "It's never going to be the same as auditing your own infrastructure. You'll have to extend some level of trust to third-party verification."
I found it more interesting that you cannot even find full descriptions of the data protection policy from either Google or LotusLive online.
I searched the LotusLive site, support forums and more for this information. I also looked through searches against the site to make sure there was not something indexed I could not find linked.
What are the data protection policies of cloud providers? What should they offer to you in terms of documentation and access? Here is some of our stance as Connectria on being a cloud provider:
We are SAS70 Type II verified and proud of that fact. It open a lot of doors into working with your organizations for the processes we have in place and documentation surrounding it. This allows us to show you documented procedures for most anything. We welcome visits to our data centers (escorted of course) to view operations and facilities.
So, in essence, we are happy to discuss segregation of data, physical and logical security and more with you and your teams.
While at Tri-State LUG, Kevin Cavanaugh took the stage for a session on LotusLive Notes and how it fits into everyone's infrastructure. There were a lot of questions around architecture, certification, helpdesk and more. Kevin did his best to answer them all but there is some comparitive issues that arose that I have some opinions.
Application hosting
- this is something that LotusLive Notes does not currently support. Connectria Hosting does. With the shared directory infrastructure there is issues with signing applications to run properly as agents and even script. They cannot take the chance of your code affecting other users on these shared servers. We at Connectria dedicate a Domino server to be part of your existing (or new if you never had Notes) environment with any security settings you need.
Custom mail templates
- LotusLive Notes will support a custom mail template if you pay Lotus to check it out first, according to Kevin. We allow as many custom mail templates as you need at Connectria Hosting. You can have every user running a custom template, or stick with out of the box design. It is up to you.
Hybrid modeling -
This is something we have done at Connectria for over ten years. We become an extension of your Lotus Domino environment. Kevin was queried on performance and possible lag with having the servers in Virginia or the other IBM data center for LotusLive. He didn't touch on managed replicas, new in 8.5.2, but we are all to familiar with the scenarios and possible performance issues.
Kevin went on further to state your mailfile hosted on LotusLive Notes are clustered across four physical servers, two at each data center. This gives an idea of the current userload and scaling on LotusLive Notes.
Also, I made mention that everyone needs to understand in the LotusLive Notes hybrid model you are sharing server resources, network connectivity, firewall and data storage with an unknown number of other companies. At Connectria Hosting we provide the dedicated hardware, firewall and network connection into your own VLAN. We segregate your data storage as well as connectivity.
Pay by credit card -
This is something we do not touch. LotusLive is provisioning anywhere from 1 to XX users and allows you to setup via credit card now. I am sure this looks great for some SMB companies needing services for Notes in the cloud. I do not see us offering this type of commodity buying since we are a cloud extension of your infrastructure, not just hybrid.
Lotus Traveler and BES -
LotusLive Notes offers Traveler for an additional cost to cover hardware needs. We include this in your hosting if you desire. We can also set up a dedicated machine to just handle Traveler against your mail servers to be that Internet facing presence.
BES is a catch-22. While LotusLive Notes will not support the current BES, since it is not multi-tenant, they want to. We dedicate a BES server to you for your access. We have many companies utilizing this type of service as their mobile environments grow and they do not want the traffic or access on their network. This is something we love to host for our customers at Connectria Hosting.
Tri-State LUG kicked off in NYC with over 100 attendees from all over the tri state area and a few stragglers, like myself. Mitch Cohen did a fine job opening the event with excellent organization compatriot Kathleen McGivney.
Alistair took the stage to cover the following:
Canadian Thanksgiving and Columbus Day (yes he started there)
Major shifts in collaboration
Alistair took the approach of where collaboration is headed. Lotus began with Smarter Planet in 2008 with the theme of making people smarter to be a Smarter Planet. IBM Software has divisions to offer a portfolio aligned to meet any customer need.
Social is a fundamental process optimization opportunity. Business went from mainframe --> departmental --> PC --> Internet --> Social.
Reinventing Relationships, what we saw here with Project Vulcan and here, is the key message he is pushing through now about integration to create an Exceptional Customer Experience (Northstar). He then lead into the recent customer announcemnts and case studies based on these.
Mobile had a slide all of it's own with the lead as Traveler as the fastest growing deployed solution. Mobile is becoming the primary access point for collaborative solutions.
Editor: I have mentioned this before that any new product always has huge growth after launch with a starting point of zero. I would love to see market penetration numbers of overall deployed as a solution as a selling point, coupled with the dynamic growth.
Cloud deployments became the next slide focus highlighting cost, flexibility, extranet collaboration and ending in hybrid. Alistair highlighted the multi-tenant capability of LotusLive Notes (see my editor secion below)
Editor: I think Lotus realizes that not every application can move to the cloud for some time to come and started promoting the hybrid model. I do not recall seeing it in the very early launch stages. The pish was a total cloud solution.
Alistair mentioned the multi-tenant capability, but no one outside of Lotus is able to access this code, even though it is based on the 8.5.2 codestream.
A great quote was captured by Victor Toal that Alistair made about Lotus now running services on Domino:
#tristatelug IbM having to drink their own coolaid (Lotus Live) makes them take customer requirements more serious and implement them
LotusKnows and market presence was a push by Lotus to answer the request from the dedicated userbase to have more promotion of the platform.
He then opened the floor to any questions which is a great user group move to keep it informal.
I see other bloggers have picked up on this article as well. The FastCompany blogger, Drew Neisser, does a nice job with his article Why IBM Could Be Bigger Than Facebook In Social Mediafollowing along the launch event last week for the IBM Customer Experience Suite. The blogger explains how IBM can be the leader in the social media metrics space and the leader in social software in enterprises. Making it a larger adoption that Facebook in enterprises.
For my blog coverage of the launch events last week feel free to read both Part 1 and Part 2 right here in IdoNotes .
The blogger summarizes:
Drenched in the vision Schick shared for the IBM Customer Experience Suite, it occurred to me that IBM could end up being more important to the business use and monetization of social media than Facebook
I think this speaks highly of the vision IBM has and the continued purchasing of companies that provide analytical services. IBM is stretching out it's arms to embrace social media monetization, metrics and tracking through the compilation of software packages. Taking all of these and making a deployable platform or even cloud solution makes perfect sense as companies attempt to grasp how to best work with, and not against social media
I am anxious to install and test the IBM Customer Experience Suite myself across some initiatives and social media plans.
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Back in July 2010 I received a surprising email from Salesforce (Goodbye Lotus hello cloud direct from Salesforce) telling you to migrate away from Lotus. A new email has arrived now stating that Lotus is becoming an island and you had better jump ship and run away form your Domino based apps quickly.
I said it before, if you are a partner that Lotus is launching integration with for things lie LotusLive, you can definitely still market yourself. But to go so far as to say the software you partner with is becoming extinct is a bit of a stretch.
I am pleased to announce that we (Connectria) have brought in our subsidiary Managed Hosting division, RedPlaid, to create a unified hosting solution.
Launched in 2006, REDPLAID Managed Hosting (“REDPLAID”) targeted small to mid-sized organizations that wanted secure and reliable Windows & Linux hosting solutions with a wide range of managed services. REDPLAID leveraged Connectria’s experience in delivering highly reliable and secure solutions that it had built for companies like Deutsche Bank and IBM. These solutions were packaged into standardized offerings that could meet the needs of a wide audience at very attractive prices. Since its inception, REDPLAID’s business grew exponentially, providing a complementary offer to its parent, Connectria, whose focus has been providing complex hosting solutions for large enterprises.
With the blending of all the services, we now offer under a single umbrella:
self managed
managed
complex
cloud
Visit our new Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.
Lotus finally announced LotusLive Notes to officially launch August 24th. While they are giving you a huge price break in licensing, you are only licensing mail from everything published I can read (Ed Brill, Collaboration Matters, Volker weber). The breakdown is easy:
For $5/user/month you get 25GB of mail, calendar, tasks and instant messaging. You also operate in a multi-tenant architecture
This is great if Lotus was just an email client. It seems Lotus was pushed into making a cloud offering and have coded Domino to finally allow multi-tenant from Notes clients, not just the web as old XSP mode did. Ed's posting compares them against Exchange hosting and Google mail hosting.
EDITOR NOTE: I applaud all the hard work from the Lotus team in making this happen, do not mistake that portion. I just don't get the move into the space is all
So why does this tone of this posting sound bitter? This is something we have asked for up to ten years now as one of the largest hosting providers Lotus has. The ability to serve smaller customers in this manner. But, we never intended to just offer mail. We want it all. Lotus has now written it, but apparently it is untouchable by partners, except to sell their service.
Our solution differs greatly: provided dedicated hardware, unlimited mailbox size based on the server you already choose and configure, DWA, XPages, application support, Traveler, instant messaging and presence through Sametime Limited Use, add on BES if you wish. The list goes on. You get the idea on the flexibility.
We stay away from multi-tenant machines to cover HIPPA concerns, SAS70 concerns, PCI concerns and more. Want your network isolated? We do it by default? will Lotus be offering your multi-tenant Domino portion through it's own dedicated network segment? Highly unlikely since you will hit the server over the same connection. How will you terminate your connection to their data center for a multi-tenant server?
Do we do that for $5/user/month? Nope. We flat rate the servers and let you pick what license you need from Lotus.
The point is don't overlook the bigger picture that Notes is not just email. The license cost is just email. If you want to really think about expanding your architecture for disaster recovery, remote clustering, outsourced management, and more you should know we built it.
I was saddened to read on ITNews that AMP becomes the first cloud computing client to CSC in Australia with their move to hosted Exchange and Sharepoint.
Financial services firm AMP has dumped Lotus Notes, looking to instead rent Microsoft's collaboration tools over the network from the Australian data centres of CSC.
What I found most interesting and was wanting to read, is why they chose that solution. LotusLive was listed and here was the areas in which they tested:
AMP's IT Director for service management Sharmini Sivathas told iTnews that "extensive pilots were undertaken to evaluate the end-user experience for several platforms."
This review assessed such factors as security, information risk and regulatory requirements, interoperability and integration risk, cost, mobile device support, reliability, support models available, usability and end user feedback.
I don't think LotusLive failed any of these. It all had to to deal with AMP being a ten (10) year customer of CSC and wanting to keep their data and solutions in Australia instead. The factor of location was more than obvious in the article and should have been stressed more.
This is the exact heading from Salesforce in an email I received. I thought Salesforce was a partner with Lotus and integrator with such things like LotusLive? Their advert states:
Thousands of companies struggle to integrate and administer their Lotus Notes apps every day. Now—faced with a costly forced upgrade—many are moving to the cloud with Force.com
I, ahem, filled out the form required to access some of the information they provide including two free hours of assessment, an online savings calculator and free online training.
I went through the calculator for a knowledge base type app in IT Management. Savings were an amazing 50% + average. However, I am using a standard template right out of the Lotus install. No development, no maintenance, no nothing but people entering documents.
All of them were the same. For some reason they feel moving it online, spending the time and effort to redo the entire application and migrate tens of thousands of documents was simpler? Cost effective? I don't buy any of that nor do I buy the TCO stats on the next tab.
So Salesforce is now going directly after Lotus applications and migrating people off of the system.
This article just hit the wires, but the comments sum up the issue. They just didn't get the best way to use and secure the information. I do not consider this a strike against cloud computing. Reading the article deeper showed that they felt it was against the compliance of the Electronic Communications Policy. I question whether the location of the mail content was the issue or that is was not on university controlled hardware.
Most of these cloud initiatives are not well planned or thought out in advance and often do not take into account the reaction of the community at large. It seems the university system jumped the gun slightly and are puling back the reigns.
