by Chris Miller at 10:55:54 PM on Monday, February 28th, 2005
This is an interesting twist as we saw Microsoft
try to pry
their way with LCS almost
a year ago (where the heck is that bulldozer of a product right now in
deployment anyway?). But with the lack of interest still blossoming
into a dead product, Intellisync creates
and launches an integration point
for Microsoft Outlook and AIM. Plus the loss of Sametime and AOL
connectivity in 6.5.1 release.
Basically you will get awareness in the address fields (sounds like Notes/Sametime to me) and in vcards with the little AIM 'running man' icon. Almost like what you see for my awareness on the left of this posting.
I see value in scanning my mailfile and building a list off of that for a possible buddy section. Emailing everyone is not necessary in my eyes, and what if they cannot relate certain IM names with the sender of an email. How many of us have AOL IM names that have nothing to do with email addresses? Many of us I can imagine will never match, or worse yet, have multiple IM accounts.
I don't even need to say where this goofy quote comes from, ok I will. Radicati Group. Where else!
I am beginning to think they have never seen or heard of Notes and Sametime.
The biggest benefit I do see ifs with Outlook running in lots of desktops, and this being a plug-in, there could be some good and easy penetration without AOL having to join the fight for enterprise IM space.
Basically you will get awareness in the address fields (sounds like Notes/Sametime to me) and in vcards with the little AIM 'running man' icon. Almost like what you see for my awareness on the left of this posting.
In addition to gathering and providing presence information, the plug-in also serves a marketing function: Once it has completed a scan of the user's Outlook contact list and offered to import matches into the user's AIM buddy list, it provides a second list of users that are unregistered with the AIM service and offers to send invitations to them to join.
I see value in scanning my mailfile and building a list off of that for a possible buddy section. Emailing everyone is not necessary in my eyes, and what if they cannot relate certain IM names with the sender of an email. How many of us have AOL IM names that have nothing to do with email addresses? Many of us I can imagine will never match, or worse yet, have multiple IM accounts.
I don't even need to say where this goofy quote comes from, ok I will. Radicati Group. Where else!
"It's functionality they should be offering natively if they can," he said, noting that Microsoft has largely dominated in terms of basic integration between IM and other applications, and presents a challenge to AOL's ability to penetrate the enterprise market.
I am beginning to think they have never seen or heard of Notes and Sametime.
The biggest benefit I do see ifs with Outlook running in lots of desktops, and this being a plug-in, there could be some good and easy penetration without AOL having to join the fight for enterprise IM space.
| Comments? Comments? (2)
Category: Announcement Rant Sametime Tags :Announcement |
  Location: St. Louis, MO |
by Chris Miller at 01:40:39 PM on Saturday, February 26th, 2005
OK, this used to make sense and actually have
some value. But right now it seems to be working against me in 6.5.3
at a customer site. Now we have to include the expansion
factor into the equation.
These two together only measure the response time, the client could
see more. So how is it beneficial? So they are saying the indexes
help decide which server for load, but the client could see worse. Well
I was seeing both of the indexes go up and down like stocks before and
after a merger.
You can adjust the indexes and expansion factor as you wish, but they were not high enough to begin with. So we started that morning with an unstable 6.5.1 server cluster, with availability somewhere in the 40/14 range with the 40 being the internal server. After the upgrade to 6.5.3 we saw the availability jump to 75/30 on normal load. This tells me there was some improvements along the way in stability and scaling. Yes, they do use iNotes very sparingly on the outside server. Most load is the clients accessing mail and applications.
What is the point to all this? Well the expansion factor stayed low on the outside server, around 7-8 but jumped to as high as 60 when it was the only server and we were upgrading the internal one.
My guess is that the outside server was sending traffic randomly between the internal NIC and external NIC to talk to the same server. But wait, you say! Chris, you said one was internal and one was external. Due to their architecture, you can get to the outside server from inside to let them have some sort of cluster. But, since the connection records use DNS, it reads the external IP address and tries to go out through the proxy and Internet to connect to the server. The organization does not run internal DNS and relies on the ISP.
I verified they did not have any ini parameters to adjust the availability and help regulate load. They did not and were allowing Domino to decide the factor on the fly for them at each polling. To make this shorter, we decided to let it sit this weekend and get a better range of availability with a couple days of usage instead of relying on the few hours after the upgrades.
More on Monday or Tuesday on this topic then.
You can adjust the indexes and expansion factor as you wish, but they were not high enough to begin with. So we started that morning with an unstable 6.5.1 server cluster, with availability somewhere in the 40/14 range with the 40 being the internal server. After the upgrade to 6.5.3 we saw the availability jump to 75/30 on normal load. This tells me there was some improvements along the way in stability and scaling. Yes, they do use iNotes very sparingly on the outside server. Most load is the clients accessing mail and applications.
What is the point to all this? Well the expansion factor stayed low on the outside server, around 7-8 but jumped to as high as 60 when it was the only server and we were upgrading the internal one.
My guess is that the outside server was sending traffic randomly between the internal NIC and external NIC to talk to the same server. But wait, you say! Chris, you said one was internal and one was external. Due to their architecture, you can get to the outside server from inside to let them have some sort of cluster. But, since the connection records use DNS, it reads the external IP address and tries to go out through the proxy and Internet to connect to the server. The organization does not run internal DNS and relies on the ISP.
I verified they did not have any ini parameters to adjust the availability and help regulate load. They did not and were allowing Domino to decide the factor on the fly for them at each polling. To make this shorter, we decided to let it sit this weekend and get a better range of availability with a couple days of usage instead of relying on the few hours after the upgrades.
More on Monday or Tuesday on this topic then.
by Chris Miller at 11:19:25 PM on Thursday, February 24th, 2005
Recently I have been getting a lot of Google
hits for "CertFX hacks". As many of you know CertFX
sells practice testing software for the IBM brand and many other softwares.
I use the product myself, and yes, know the owners of the company
from work and outside of it.
I also know that there is a company hiding on the Internet behind a registrar that is using their test questions and reselling them as their own. So why would I post a way to hack into CertFX to get free practice tests? Is it really that necessary that your company won't buy the tests for you to get certified? Is it that important you get certified? If so, buy the tests. They run specials all the time, mainly at the conferences.
As a side note, no , I will not give out Trillian hack either. Go buy it for the $25. It is more than worth it and I pay for it. Awesome product.
I also know that there is a company hiding on the Internet behind a registrar that is using their test questions and reselling them as their own. So why would I post a way to hack into CertFX to get free practice tests? Is it really that necessary that your company won't buy the tests for you to get certified? Is it that important you get certified? If so, buy the tests. They run specials all the time, mainly at the conferences.
Sorry it is late after days of working on multiple clients and server issues so if I sound a bit like ranting, well I am :-)
As a side note, no , I will not give out Trillian hack either. Go buy it for the $25. It is more than worth it and I pay for it. Awesome product.
by Chris Miller at 10:14:39 AM on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
With the growth of Google, they went on a
rampant hiring binge for a short time now. Well it seems one of the
employees started creating
a diary, including criticism
of his new employer, in his blog. Soon after his hiring, cataloging
of daily events, including it seems some indications of market, finance
and money figures, he was terminated. Now there are always two sides,
and his point was that he removed all objectionable content as soon as
they said something. But should he have put it there in the first
place. I always think that would be the place for PR to take control
of. Why do I need to say that stuff? Let marketing take the
heat for saying something they shouldn't.
So to jump right into my thoughts. I blog from work, sure. It is hosted on our servers, sure. We support numerous other bloggers on the server, sure. But have I ever crossed the line in talking about internal company business as the man above did? No. I never mention a co-worker name, even in glowing entries. Just for the sake of not having to think twice, I just don't (and yes I have seen someone searching my blog for employee names from our own company peeking, and I am confidently safe from ever doing so).
We notice Ed talks tons about Lotus and IBM, but only where he should, in market drive, analysis, competitive, etc. But never in the bad sense or mentioning other names. Well marketing clips that are public (like ones for Ken Bisconti) and the general harassing of others like Alan do occur. But those are easily seen for what they are. I also notice that other bloggers I read follow the same lines. So yes, I think this guy crossed a line, wherever that may be.
So to jump right into my thoughts. I blog from work, sure. It is hosted on our servers, sure. We support numerous other bloggers on the server, sure. But have I ever crossed the line in talking about internal company business as the man above did? No. I never mention a co-worker name, even in glowing entries. Just for the sake of not having to think twice, I just don't (and yes I have seen someone searching my blog for employee names from our own company peeking, and I am confidently safe from ever doing so).
We notice Ed talks tons about Lotus and IBM, but only where he should, in market drive, analysis, competitive, etc. But never in the bad sense or mentioning other names. Well marketing clips that are public (like ones for Ken Bisconti) and the general harassing of others like Alan do occur. But those are easily seen for what they are. I also notice that other bloggers I read follow the same lines. So yes, I think this guy crossed a line, wherever that may be.
by Chris Miller at 10:27:46 AM on Monday, February 21st, 2005
So faithful reader, where has Chris been last
Thur and Fri that he vanished from all reasonable postings? Well
I was scooped up, hooded, spun three times and placed in the back of a
black truck before being whisked to a government facility. Ok. part
of that is true.
We were called in last minute to help scale a LearningSpace infrastructure. The website itself will be public, but where we had to go was not. It is amazing the security precautions and what you go through to even move a server from build-up to production. At least three different groups are involved in that activity and once that server leaves the build-up, odds are (if it stays running) you will never see it again except through a remote console.
So let's move into the tech side since I can't say any more detail about the above. It was a simple tiered architecture without much redundancy. The real issue was the number of concurrent users they get now and what is expected by Aug. There was no way that they could handle the load. We ended up taking the 3 server environment to 7 total with some hardware load balancers. All this was architected, installed, configured and ready for production in two days. The site will actually go live on their scheduled outage time of Tue nights though.
The end result was a LearningSpace 5 environment behind a few firewalls, a load balancer, then 4 core servers, 2 content servers and some back-end database servers to provide the redundancy and scaling needed to reach their concurrency goal. I would love to give the nitty-gritty details like usual but just be happy and pleased with that. But no, they are not using LDAP so there is no tech info there.
We were called in last minute to help scale a LearningSpace infrastructure. The website itself will be public, but where we had to go was not. It is amazing the security precautions and what you go through to even move a server from build-up to production. At least three different groups are involved in that activity and once that server leaves the build-up, odds are (if it stays running) you will never see it again except through a remote console.
So let's move into the tech side since I can't say any more detail about the above. It was a simple tiered architecture without much redundancy. The real issue was the number of concurrent users they get now and what is expected by Aug. There was no way that they could handle the load. We ended up taking the 3 server environment to 7 total with some hardware load balancers. All this was architected, installed, configured and ready for production in two days. The site will actually go live on their scheduled outage time of Tue nights though.
The end result was a LearningSpace 5 environment behind a few firewalls, a load balancer, then 4 core servers, 2 content servers and some back-end database servers to provide the redundancy and scaling needed to reach their concurrency goal. I would love to give the nitty-gritty details like usual but just be happy and pleased with that. But no, they are not using LDAP so there is no tech info there.
by Chris Miller at 09:02:31 AM on Thursday, February 17th, 2005
Stephan
Wissel came forward with a comment
on how they handle the issue of local address books. I thought it
was interesting and deserved some discussion.
since R6 it is official that the users names.nsf can live on a server (a.k.a. Roaming profile - We did that for backup since R4). With a little scripting help we do:
a) synchronize the users NAB with the Names in the mailfile automatically (user doesn't even know that they would need to do so)
b) Filter out the names from the public NAB. Here we tried two strategies: either remove them from the users NAB (which p***d some users off) or exclude them from the sync with the mail file.
Hth
:-) stw
So he is saying with the roaming feature enabled in Domino 6, they are pushing names to the mailfile in the background with scripting or filtering out public address names. I fully agree with the second choice for a couple reasons:
I guess where we are heading in all this is the option to guarantee that addressing will not fail and there will not be those weird names when addressing from the web in DWA.
Hi Chris,
since R6 it is official that the users names.nsf can live on a server (a.k.a. Roaming profile - We did that for backup since R4). With a little scripting help we do:
a) synchronize the users NAB with the Names in the mailfile automatically (user doesn't even know that they would need to do so)
b) Filter out the names from the public NAB. Here we tried two strategies: either remove them from the users NAB (which p***d some users off) or exclude them from the sync with the mail file.
Hth
:-) stw
So he is saying with the roaming feature enabled in Domino 6, they are pushing names to the mailfile in the background with scripting or filtering out public address names. I fully agree with the second choice for a couple reasons:
- If the user is utilizing Domino Web Access (DWA) then why would they need the public addresses in the personal address book? The server has that directory as an option. Sure, we could go so far as to say DOLS, but why not then give them the public directory in DOLS also? Makes sense to me.
- If you filter the names from the public NAB and then push a mobile directory catalog for users requiring it, you guarantee updated names, addresses and encryption keys for all users. Plus doing this on the server side (could be a strictly roaming server for scaling reasons) would take the user end scripting out of the picture also. A nightly scan could be done. Once again some would say they store possible personal or additional information in the local listing for another employee that you would not want or shown in the public listing. So let's just make the filter match the public listing and even match the public key. All would be satisfied that way.
I guess where we are heading in all this is the option to guarantee that addressing will not fail and there will not be those weird names when addressing from the web in DWA.
by Chris Miller at 05:38:08 PM on Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
| Comments? Comments? (1)
Category: |
Location: St. Louis, MO |
by Chris Miller at 10:17:09 AM on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
Just a little tidbit trick we picked up today.
It seems that users like to copy entries from the public directory
into their local NAB and then sync with DWA, or worse yet create their
own entries for people inside their company into their address books. This
causes a nice duplication to show when you are attempting to send an email
from DWA with two choices for the person.
Of course we (as administrators) expect this behavior. But the way the name shows really throws users off Here is a screenshot, and yes it was blurred some but you get the idea. I didn't want the names out there for gosh sakes.
As you see, the yellow part says more than one entry was found for the name and the white part shows both the way the user would see it from Domino and then one that almost looks like LDAP. This server has no Directory Assistance or Directory Catalog in place. So through testing and troubleshooting using our own mailfiles, if you had an entry that did not exactly match the server NAB, then this pop-up would show. If they did match, the mail would address as normal and off it went. So no more typing in names in your personal NAB of people from the Domino Directory folks!
Of course we (as administrators) expect this behavior. But the way the name shows really throws users off Here is a screenshot, and yes it was blurred some but you get the idea. I didn't want the names out there for gosh sakes.
As you see, the yellow part says more than one entry was found for the name and the white part shows both the way the user would see it from Domino and then one that almost looks like LDAP. This server has no Directory Assistance or Directory Catalog in place. So through testing and troubleshooting using our own mailfiles, if you had an entry that did not exactly match the server NAB, then this pop-up would show. If they did match, the mail would address as normal and off it went. So no more typing in names in your personal NAB of people from the Domino Directory folks!
by Chris Miller at 03:30:00 AM on Friday, February 11th, 2005
I am teaching the Sametime Admin class at
a LAEC yesterday and today. There have been speedbumps and potholes all
along the way during the first day. The course material is still
3.x while we are teaching 6.5.1. But most of the issues arise over
misconfigured DNS or host name entries in the server documents.
Well we came across an issue where the checkbox to enable Instant Messaging could not be found in the Domino Web Access preferences. I know it should be there, and the users had a Sametime server specified in their person records. I was dumbfounded that it wasn't there for some reason. So I broke out the laptop to do a quick search of the Knowledgebase. The new IBM support for Lotus really bites and sometimes it seems you cannot even find technotes with the darn number in the first place. So here is the exact reason (technote #1190873) that is was not showing, matching down to the version. Who knew they made this little gem of a change? Quite frustrating when a point release makes a change like this for some reason.
Well we came across an issue where the checkbox to enable Instant Messaging could not be found in the Domino Web Access preferences. I know it should be there, and the users had a Sametime server specified in their person records. I was dumbfounded that it wasn't there for some reason. So I broke out the laptop to do a quick search of the Knowledgebase. The new IBM support for Lotus really bites and sometimes it seems you cannot even find technotes with the darn number in the first place. So here is the exact reason (technote #1190873) that is was not showing, matching down to the version. Who knew they made this little gem of a change? Quite frustrating when a point release makes a change like this for some reason.
| Problem |
| In Domino Web Access (iNotes
Web Access) 6.5.3 or above, you want to use the Instant Messaging feature.
The Help documentation states to do this you must enable Instant
Messaging via Preferences > Other > Enable Instant Messaging. However,
when you navigate to this area the "Enable Instant Messaging"
option is not there. This option is definitely available in previous
releases of Domino Web Access 6.5x.
|
| Content |
| This is working as designed
starting in Domino Web Access (DWA) release 6.5.3. An enhancement
request was made in DWA 6.5.1 to hide this "Enable Instant Messaging"
option in the user preferences if the DWA server is not configured for
Instant Messaging.
This request was addressed in DWA 6.5.3.
Excerpt from the Lotus Notes and Domino Release 6.5.3 MR fix list (available at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/): Instant Messaging
|
by Chris Miller at 01:29:25 PM on Wednesday, February 9th, 2005
One more change for HP that had to build up
after last year's performance by HP
HP's Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina has resigned, effective immediately, citing differences over HP's future. CFO Robert Wayman steps in as interim CEO.
| Comments? Comments? (0)
Category: Announcement Tags :Announcement |
Location: St. Louis, MO |
by Chris Miller at 05:00:00 AM on Tuesday, February 8th, 2005
This company prides themselves as
however with this opinion they came out with without compromise, they attended Lotusphere and came out with this beauty (that is a pickup of the original here that requires free login to view) of a thought from author Richard Edwards (who is the Research Analyst - IT Infrastructure, Intelligence, Collaboration for the group it seems):
With most organisations only now upgrading to Release 6.0, I cannot see IBM converting these loyal customers to Notes/Domino Release 7 any time soon, and as a result this can only weaken the impact of IBM Workplace on the general market - something of a pity given the platform's huge potential and significant technological advancements.
I agree that a lot of enterprises are still heading toward Domino 6, even after 2 years. But why not jump straight to some release of 7? I know a bunch waited for 6.5.x releases for the integrated IM and client enhancements. With 7 they can get the client and new server enhancements all at once.
Does anyone else see this as true or as an issue? They are using the leverage of companies just moving to 6, and not moving towards 7 as an issue with IBM Workplace family of products? As I scratch my head at that confusing statement he made, maybe someone else can make sense of it.
Europe's Leading IT Analyst Company providing Analysis without compromise
however with this opinion they came out with without compromise, they attended Lotusphere and came out with this beauty (that is a pickup of the original here that requires free login to view) of a thought from author Richard Edwards (who is the Research Analyst - IT Infrastructure, Intelligence, Collaboration for the group it seems):
Butler Group Opinion
With most organisations only now upgrading to Release 6.0, I cannot see IBM converting these loyal customers to Notes/Domino Release 7 any time soon, and as a result this can only weaken the impact of IBM Workplace on the general market - something of a pity given the platform's huge potential and significant technological advancements.
I agree that a lot of enterprises are still heading toward Domino 6, even after 2 years. But why not jump straight to some release of 7? I know a bunch waited for 6.5.x releases for the integrated IM and client enhancements. With 7 they can get the client and new server enhancements all at once.
Does anyone else see this as true or as an issue? They are using the leverage of companies just moving to 6, and not moving towards 7 as an issue with IBM Workplace family of products? As I scratch my head at that confusing statement he made, maybe someone else can make sense of it.
| Comments? Comments? (4)
Category: Announcement Domino 7 Lotus Workplace Rant Tags :Announcement |
Location: St. Louis, MO |
by Chris Miller at 02:18:44 PM on Monday, February 7th, 2005
I finally got off my behind to start testing
the new conferencing adapter. Let's make this very simple. Just
download and install. Well maybe. There are a couple things
to be aware of.
Now if you play with this new feature and don't like it or want to turn it off there are two simple steps you must perform. Yeah simple, right.
1. Open the stconfig.nsf database and edit the MeetingServices document. Set the Audio Bridge Services field value to "false."
2. Run the "regedit" command and change the following registry setting to "0":
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Lotus\Sametime\MeetingServer\ServiceAudioBridgeServer\Enabled
So we are playing with this new piece and will let you know as the test goes on.
- The download includes an updated template for the Sametime Meeting Center (I always presumed this database name won't change since it is hard to type Lotus Web Conferencing Meeting Center onto a desktop icon). This new template has some changes for the adapter, but of course will wipe out any customizations you might have made to your own template. So, as always, back it up first before the install.
- Next is a catch with the Sametime Meeting Room Client (MRC651). This downloadable piece that gets installed when you participate in meetings (remember the nice grey screen as you wait for a server, that is this downloading). Well if the user does not have permission to install or this gets blocked then the meeting won't work either.
Now if you play with this new feature and don't like it or want to turn it off there are two simple steps you must perform. Yeah simple, right.
1. Open the stconfig.nsf database and edit the MeetingServices document. Set the Audio Bridge Services field value to "false."
2. Run the "regedit" command and change the following registry setting to "0":
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Lotus\Sametime\MeetingServer\ServiceAudioBridgeServer\Enabled
So we are playing with this new piece and will let you know as the test goes on.
by Chris Miller at 01:06:00 PM on Friday, February 4th, 2005
It seems that just because you remove/delete/disable
a mail rule in a mailfile, it still can function as if it was enabled.
I did some searching and amazingly Lotus has issued some technical
information on this.
So they go on to provide two scenarios where this might occur. If you actually delete the rule, it might still be hidden. They show steps to see the hidden rules that I wanted to pass on.
Now there is a ton of resolution scenarios that are listed in the technote (#1088058) but this was the most important thing to pass on right away.
So make sure you disable the rule before removing it. Seems to make a world of difference until this get sorted out in a future release.
You may observe that a deleted mail rule continues to function, even though it no longer appears in the Rules folder. You may also observe that an enabled mail rule does not run.
So they go on to provide two scenarios where this might occur. If you actually delete the rule, it might still be hidden. They show steps to see the hidden rules that I wanted to pass on.
Look at the Calendar Profile using NotesPeek or LotusScript and you will still see the corresponding $FilterFormula_x field present.
Now there is a ton of resolution scenarios that are listed in the technote (#1088058) but this was the most important thing to pass on right away.
This occurs when a rule was deleted while it was still enabled. This causes the rule entry in the Calendar Profile to not be removed. In order to avoid this issue in the future you should be sure to always disable a mail rule prior to deleting it. Ways to workaround this issue (and remove the rule entry from the Calendar Profile) are listed further below.
So make sure you disable the rule before removing it. Seems to make a world of difference until this get sorted out in a future release.
by Chris Miller at 03:23:32 PM on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
So here is the scenario:
ACT 1
Place: Data Center with smiling sales rep and customer
Customer has a server for some time and adds a domain for web and mail as they merge with another company. Following easy DNS we make a new DNS zone and create MX and A records for the new domain. Wow, the world of the web and email is great
ACT 2
Place: Data Center and Customer Site (flip back and forth) with smiling people
Customer goes for years with awesome performance and no issues
ACT 3
Place: Customer site and Data Center with people running around and banging on keyboards
Customer fails to renew one of their original domains. This domain was used in the reference for the CNAME and MX records for the merger. Suddenly mail and the website cannot be found and no apparent reason. After much troubleshooting we tracked it backwards and made the appropriate changes to get it back in line.
ACT 4
Place: Cubical with people with missing hair in patches
Closing scene with customer. Phone conference explaining to them that they let one of their original domains expire. This in turn broke the other domains that referred to it through CNAME and MX.
Writer summary: For gosh sakes check your DNS tables and make sure you are current on domain registrations
ACT 1
Place: Data Center with smiling sales rep and customer
Customer has a server for some time and adds a domain for web and mail as they merge with another company. Following easy DNS we make a new DNS zone and create MX and A records for the new domain. Wow, the world of the web and email is great
ACT 2
Place: Data Center and Customer Site (flip back and forth) with smiling people
Customer goes for years with awesome performance and no issues
ACT 3
Place: Customer site and Data Center with people running around and banging on keyboards
Customer fails to renew one of their original domains. This domain was used in the reference for the CNAME and MX records for the merger. Suddenly mail and the website cannot be found and no apparent reason. After much troubleshooting we tracked it backwards and made the appropriate changes to get it back in line.
ACT 4
Place: Cubical with people with missing hair in patches
Closing scene with customer. Phone conference explaining to them that they let one of their original domains expire. This in turn broke the other domains that referred to it through CNAME and MX.
Writer summary: For gosh sakes check your DNS tables and make sure you are current on domain registrations
by Chris Miller at 11:08:43 AM on Tuesday, February 1st, 2005
I originally made
a posting early January about
the decline and fall of Lotus Authorized Education Centers (LAEC) across
the US for sure. Not sure about internationally. But at Lotusphere,
I attended Certified Lotus Instructor (CLI) day on Friday after most people
had left. I made my trek back to the Yacht & Beach early in the
morning to join in on breakfast and presentations. There was not
that many people there. After talking to a few of them on a break
and during breakfast I found that quite a few were independent just due
to the fact that they were then free to move around and even create custom
courses.
The idea of the one course fits all approach doesn't seem to work anymore. Customers want custom courses maybe even spanning multiple levels of classes or even products. I did run into a company (ElementK) that lets you go on-line and grab lessons from different courses and build your own Table of Contents. That is a great business model. I had some discussions with them on pricing and the minimum required books purchased, but you can even toss your own graphic onto the cover.
But back to the topic. A couple of the LAEC's had a thriving business with continued incoming students. Why they did became immediately apparent. They are cross-branding certification and training initiatives to offer a broader range to a broader audience. Great move on their part as one gentleman there was able to teach Lotus, Websphere, Portal and even DB2. Which walks him right into Workplace offerings. Another woman goes to every enablement session and will travel anywhere. She is opening new doors that other LAEC's thought would survive forever on Lotus.
I was already in process of getting my 'official' Websphere certifications and instructor evaluations, but this just prompted me to speed up the process. So I now know my earlier posting was correct, but there is a world of opportunity available for those that really make the necessary moves toward it.
The idea of the one course fits all approach doesn't seem to work anymore. Customers want custom courses maybe even spanning multiple levels of classes or even products. I did run into a company (ElementK) that lets you go on-line and grab lessons from different courses and build your own Table of Contents. That is a great business model. I had some discussions with them on pricing and the minimum required books purchased, but you can even toss your own graphic onto the cover.
But back to the topic. A couple of the LAEC's had a thriving business with continued incoming students. Why they did became immediately apparent. They are cross-branding certification and training initiatives to offer a broader range to a broader audience. Great move on their part as one gentleman there was able to teach Lotus, Websphere, Portal and even DB2. Which walks him right into Workplace offerings. Another woman goes to every enablement session and will travel anywhere. She is opening new doors that other LAEC's thought would survive forever on Lotus.
I was already in process of getting my 'official' Websphere certifications and instructor evaluations, but this just prompted me to speed up the process. So I now know my earlier posting was correct, but there is a world of opportunity available for those that really make the necessary moves toward it.
| Comments? Comments? (5)
Category: Conferences Lotusphere Travel Tags :Conferences |
Location: St. Louis, MO |
Entries by Month
- September 2010 (5)
- August 2010 (21)
- July 2010 (16)
- June 2010 (16)
- May 2010 (23)
- April 2010 (14)
- March 2010 (10)
- February 2010 (13)
- January 2010 (35)
- December 2009 (21)
- November 2009 (16)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (11)
- August 2009 (16)
- July 2009 (4)
- June 2009 (5)
- May 2009 (13)
- April 2009 (9)
- March 2009 (6)
- February 2009 (11)
- January 2009 (36)
- December 2008 (6)
- November 2008 (6)
- October 2008 (8)
- September 2008 (11)
- August 2008 (18)
- July 2008 (7)
- June 2008 (12)
- May 2008 (14)
- April 2008 (16)
- March 2008 (24)
- February 2008 (23)
- January 2008 (35)
- December 2007 (22)
- November 2007 (19)
- October 2007 (18)
- September 2007 (19)
- August 2007 (31)
- July 2007 (27)
- June 2007 (33)
- May 2007 (25)
- April 2007 (31)
- March 2007 (25)
- February 2007 (29)
- January 2007 (38)
- December 2006 (26)
- November 2006 (21)
- October 2006 (19)
- September 2006 (19)
- August 2006 (28)
- July 2006 (22)
- June 2006 (13)
- May 2006 (24)
- April 2006 (23)
- March 2006 (26)
- February 2006 (25)
- January 2006 (31)
- December 2005 (21)
- November 2005 (18)
- October 2005 (17)
- September 2005 (19)
- August 2005 (22)
- July 2005 (22)
- June 2005 (20)
- May 2005 (20)
- April 2005 (15)
- March 2005 (18)
- February 2005 (15)
- January 2005 (19)
- December 2004 (17)
- November 2004 (17)
- October 2004 (23)
- September 2004 (19)
- August 2004 (25)
- July 2004 (22)
- June 2004 (23)
- May 2004 (23)
- April 2004 (24)
- March 2004 (27)
- February 2004 (25)
- January 2004 (19)
- December 2003 (17)
- November 2003 (16)
- October 2003 (17)
- September 2003 (21)
- August 2003 (16)
- July 2003 (20)
- June 2003 (16)
- May 2003 (19)
- April 2003 (17)
- March 2003 (19)
- February 2003 (10)
- October 2002 (2)
Entries by Category
- Announcement (393)
- AS/400 (2)
- Blackberry (32) RSS
- Book Reviews (9)
- Conferences (172)
- Domino 7 (147) RSS
- Domino 8 (154) RSS
- DST (12) RSS
- E-Pro Articles (14)
- Games (2)
- Geek Toys (26)
- General (119)
- Hosting (3)
- Humor (61)
- IamLUG (9) RSS
- ILWWCM (9)
- iSeries (4)
- LDAP (7)
- Lotus Connections (47) RSS
- Lotus Foundations (8) RSS
- Lotus Protector (7) RSS
- Lotus Symphony (3)
- Lotus Workplace (34) RSS
- LotusLive (19) RSS
- Lotusphere (161) RSS
- Microsoft Exchange (13) RSS
- Rant (155) RSS
- Replication (8)
- Sametime (273) RSS
- Security (6) RSS
- Show-N-Tell Thursday (5) RSS
- SIP (5)
- Social Networking (7) RSS
- Technical (408)
- Technology (93)
- Travel (113)
- Websphere (2)
- Websphere Portal (2)
Conference/Article Materials
Not My Files
Links by Category
Connectria Hosted Blogs
Blogs I read
Domino Blogs
- 3cInterop
- Alan Bell
- Alan Lepofsky
- Andrew Kelly
- Andrew Pollack
- Andy Donaldson
- Ben Langhinrichs
- Ben Poole
- Ben Rose
- Bill Buchan
- Blue Fish
- Bob Obringer
- Breaking Par
- Colin Pretorius
- David Schaffer
- Domino Guru
- Domino Unplugged
- Eric Mack
- Ferdy Christant
- Gregg Eldred
- Henning Heinz
- Jack Dausman
- John "Starfish" Head
- Jon Johnston
- Jonvon.net
- Ken Yee
- Luc Van Steen
- MadJunk (Edward Falcon)
- Matthew White
- Maurice Verhagen (Lotus Workflow)
- Michael Braly
- Michael Sobczak
- Nathan Freeman
- Patrick Corey
- Philip Storry
- Simon Barratt
- Spanky's Place
- Stephan H. Wissel
- Stephan Smolnik
- Tony Kelleran
- Turtle Partnership
- Viktor Krantz
Notes Tip Sites
Just for Fun
Possible Dead Blogs
Exchange Crap Blogs
Tools
Music Sites
Recent Comments
- Comment Link by Stephan H. Wissel
- Comment Link by Bernd Webster
- Comment Link by Chris Miller
- Comment Link by Keith Brooks
- Comment Link by Glen
Yes this is a blatant theft of the outline that Jess uses on her page, but I asked permission. Why?? Because I am a hardcore admin and can make ugly tables to make you developers frustrated, but this was too nice to pass up.
Also Known As: Chris Miller (when awake)
Boring Certifications: (only because someone asked twice)
- Domino 7 Certified Security Administrator
- PCLP ND8
- PCLP ND7
- PCLP ND6
- PCLP R5
- PCLP R4
- Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5 - Team Collab and Messaging (retired)
- CLP Collaboration (soon to be retired Aug 2006)
- random former R4 exams
- CLI for numerous admin areas including Domino, Sametime and Workplace
- CLP Insane
Yes, I write some of those dreaded admin cert exams you take. I won't say which ones so you don't come looking for me, but I will say they are the real good recent ones that have been coming out.
Weapons/Equipment:
- At work an IBM thing
- At home a plethera of 6 machines with various Windows versions and Red Hat on a wired/wireless LAN
- A Wii
- An 8830 Blackberry
- A Toshiba E740 with 802.11b (yes geek toy)
- An Apple 40GB iPod that is filled to the brim
- I cannot even list all of the items I carry I found
- Compaq RioPort MP3 player (now in storage)
- An EBook (REB1100) also for travel (Love that darn thing)
- Verizon and they always seem to know how to find me, damn cell
Animals:
One dog, a Puggle. He eats anything that includes stuffing. Anything
Music:
Non-stop. At my desk, in my car, walking to work and back to my car downtown. In the house there is a crazy zoned set-up for you home automation geeks.
I am a self-proclaimed MP3 fiend, to which I have tried rehab 4 billion times to no avail. Next is the MP3 hard-drive for the car that I found. Now what kind of music you ask? I will never tell.
Languages:
- Incredibly fast English
- Very slow Spanish
- Emoticon-ese
- Learning Korean
- HTML
- Advanced Sarcasm
Geek class special abilities:
- Notes/Domino overdrive
- Workplace
- Sametime
- Active Directory (huh? kidding)
- Quickplace
- LMS, LVC and the other L's of elearning
- Windoze junk
- MS Exchange versions
- LAN
- TCPIP
- Server Iron
- Yeah, yeah it goes on some
Skills:
Get back to you here
Spells:
Hershey’s Stomach of Holding: Jess and I are fighting over who eats more chocolate.
Character Bio:
This will take far more time than I have today. I will start with I was born and still live in St. Louis, MO. Even though for a couple years I was never, ever here and always on the road, this is smack in the middle of the US. Everything is just a few hour flight. That part is nice. No beach/ocean/coast isn't the best. But with the travel I make up for it.
Looking to find me in person? Here is where I am and will be.
This blog is hosted by
Copyright © 2004, IdoNotes
Designed by Sean Burgess
Designed by Sean Burgess
Comments? Queries?Contact the webmaster
Powered by DominoBlog, ver. 3.0.2
Powered by DominoBlog, ver. 3.0.2