Archive for February, 2011

LotusLive Explained in 4 Minutes

Posted on: February 26th, 2011 by admin No Comments

Great video explaining what LotusLive complete collaboration suite is about by LotusLiveServices.
It does everything you need to make you productive and forget about support and maintenance of your in house IT environment. And it only cost $10 per user per month. Watch the video.

LotusLive Offers BlackBerry Hosted Service

Posted on: February 24th, 2011 by admin No Comments

Photo credit: IBM

Great news for the LotusLive community. As of 2/22/2011 IBM LotusLive Notes 1.3 gets the additional hosted service offering for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, both with and without optional Mobile Data Services from RIM.

LotusLive Notes subscription also supports Traveler application via Apple iPhone and iPad, Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian and Android devices.

Source: IBM

Should Government Migrate IT to the Cloud?

Posted on: February 18th, 2011 by admin No Comments

Do you think our government should migrate IT systems to the cloud? I really don’t think so. I do trust the cloud technology per say but not enough to put the national security in hands of the cloud no matter what company or companies are managing the cloud environment.

When it come to the national security, saving $20 million  or even $20 billion is not a question, on my opinion. The losses might be far greater that any amount the Obama’s government is trying to save for for us.

Photo credit: Whitehouse.gov

Wondering if such a great idea has already come to any other world leaders. Do you think Mr Putin will move Russia’s government IT infrastructure to the cloud any time soon? I am sure you know the answer to this question. Don’t you remember, Russian government is planning to save IT budget by laying off Microsoft and other software companies and utilizing open source platform.

I don’t think it’s a simple question, to go or not to go to the cloud. I think this questions should be debated much more openly and all pros and cons must be considered. After all we are the ones who are still paying for the government IT and salaries to the president and to his CIO.

Is Facebook phone a Reality?

Posted on: February 18th, 2011 by admin No Comments
Photo credit: Phonescoop.com

Who would think that there will be a phone with the Facebook-based operating system?

The UK-based INQ company has unveiled the first Facebook phone that has been designed in conjunction with the team behind the popular social network. The INQ phone is based on the Android platform.

INQ has been making phones that are focused on providing a good Facebook experience for years. The first two generations of devices from INQ ran on Qualcomm’s BREW platform. According to INQ, they decided that they had reached the limitations of what BREW could offer and 18 months ago made the decision to switch to Android. This week, INQ was showing off the first of its Android devices.

Perhaps the most interesting introduction of the week came from Gemalto, a Dutch company that unveiled a SIM card with a Facebook application included. This allows phone owners who do not have access to the mobile Internet to sign up for Facebook and update their status messages using the handset’s text-messaging channel.

Source:
SearchEngineOptimization.ue
New York Times
PhoneScoop.com

Watson Wins Jeopardy

Posted on: February 16th, 2011 by admin No Comments
IBM Watson 1

Photo credit: PCmag.com

Yep, IBM Watson bit two great Jeopardy players today.

IBM’s super computer, named “Watson” after IBM’s founder Thomas J. Watson, finished 3 day tournament winning $77.147.

Ken Jennings who broke the Jeopardy record for the most consecutive games played by winning 74 games in a raw during 2004 – 2005 season came in second winning $24,000.

Brad Rutter who is the biggest all-time Jeopardy money winner with a record of $3.2 million today came in third with $21,600.

IBM has invested 4 straight years on development the Watson technology. The artificial intelligence with Watson IQ can be used in various business applications and I am sure IBM was not spending billions of dollars to just conduct a great marketing event for IBM which is in fact a part of the deal.

“We’re moving beyond Jeopardy!” Dave Ferrucci, the principal engineer behind Watson, said at the event. “With the Watson technology, we’re going to look at creating a commercial offering in the next 24 months that will help empower doctors to do higher quality decision making and diagnoses.”

Ferrucci explained Watson’s strange wagers: “They seem random to us mere mortals. What’s actually going on there is that the team has trained on human betting patterns. It’s considering its confidence. It’s also considering where it is in the game, and how much more there is to go. It’s a very complex calculation, with very precise results. We could have rounded it, but we figured just give the number.”

What IBM does think Watson is good for is data analysis and aiding decision making, which is why the company’s approaching the health care field first. The technology has the ability to scan and analyze data from far more sources than a human ever could in a short period of time, potentially aiding doctors in diagnosing complex but urgent conditions.

Watson was demonstrating its performance at Lotusphere 2011 closing session on February 3, 2011.

Source:
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
Bloomberg
PCmag

Get Certification if You Plan to Resell Lotus Notes

Posted on: February 13th, 2011 by admin No Comments

Based on CRN, IBM will require training and certification for resellers of a number of the vendors’ Lotus messaging and collaboration products, channel partners were  told at Lotusphere 2011 conference in Orlando earlier this month.

Great idea IBM! I’m 100% agree that Lotus messaging resellers need to be competent in what they are reselling. This would save a few customers moving off Notes as a messaging platform in 2010. IBM actually lost near 3% of Lotus Notes revenue in 2010. This number might increase in 2011 if IBM would not make significant changes in the marketing and selling practices of the Lotus messaging platform.

Photo credit: IBM

I think IBM has been loosing the battle on the messaging field and of one of the many reasons is the lack of knowledge of how to market and to sell Lotus Notes as a messaging platform.

I have been working as a Lotus Notes and Domino consultant since 1994 and have not seen very many customers being happy with Lotus Notes messaging.  Many customers are on some level unhappy with Notes and would prefer to use Outlook.  The main reason here (I think) is a lack of knowledge of Lotus Notes email features and capabilities.  Somebody should educate a customer of so many useful features of Lotus Notes mail and the reseller should be at the first line.

The certification requirement for Lotus products will be effective May 1. Some of the products such as LotuLive cloud, Lotus Mobile and Symphony will not require certification.

Source: CRN

What is LotusLive Cloud?

Posted on: February 11th, 2011 by admin No Comments

LotusLive Engage Icon.pngIBM has introduced LotusLive in 2009 and since that has been building its reputation and portfolio. IBM’s LotusLive cloud environment not only competes with Microsoft and Google Cloud  but provides more features in its offerings.

LotusLive is a business networking and collaboration internet-based services hosted by IBM and integrates following services together:

IBM LotusLive Notes service provides Lotus Notes email as a hosted service. The services comes with 25GB mailbox space, Anti-spam and Anti-virus, Instant messaging, Mobile messaging as an optional service.

IBM LotusLive Engage service provides a suite of IBM collaborating services such as Social networking, Project management, Instant meetings, Communities, Extranet collaboration, Online file sharing, Online forms.

IBM LotusLive Symphony service will provide online document, presentation and spreadsheet editing

At Lotusphere 2011 the following pricing has been announced: LotusLive Notes + LotusLive Engage + LotusLive Ttaveler + Symphony for jut $12 per month per seat.

Too many people are asking about how secure LotusLive Cloud environment is. The answer is it’s very secure. IBM has deployed its services with high availability enterprise class data centers, high performance network services and operational capabilities.

Source: wikipedia.org, Lotusphere 2011

Lotusphere 2011: LotusLive is a Direction Small Business Needs to Follow

Posted on: February 6th, 2011 by admin No Comments

The Lotusphere 2011 was closed on 2/3/11 and I am still trying to organize my thoughts on a lot if information presented at the conference.

The first thought that come to my mind is the Lotusphere’s 1 slogan “Go Social. Do Business”. It well defines the latest trend across all industry segments and applies to all size companies.

Products and services that are socially marketed have been outperforming product and services  marketed by the old and conventional methods. Companies that have been taking advantage of the social collaboration strategy are more productive and innovative, they significantly outperform their bigger competitors.

I hope that the IBM’s move in a direction of applying the Social concept to business communications and collaboration will be successful. On my opinion Facebook is a bit behind in  applying its strategy to the Enterprise world as IBM has already delivered the social concepts to the business world.

On my opinion the LotusLive cloud solution is what the small business needs right now.
What it means for a small business?
No need to invest in a software, hardware, backups, antivirus, anti-spam, and email maintenance. All of these will be taken care of by the cloud.  You really will get peace of mind knowing that everything is secured, backed up and is running 24×7.  And on the top of that it will also add some features only large enterprises can afford until know: social networking and collaboration, the world’s first class email and instant messaging, on-line meeting capabilities and Lotus Symphony online. All of these for just around $10 a month per user. You can’t bit that.

PS. Just uploaded a short Kevin Spacey clip from LS 11 at the Opening Session.

Lotusphere 2011 is over

Posted on: February 3rd, 2011 by admin No Comments

The closing session was as usual, a formal thank you for visiting #LS11. The Watson’s demo went for about a half an hour and was very cool. I was able to make a few minute video of it with my iPhone. Sorry if the video quality is a bit low. I will try to resubmit it to YouTube in the HD format later next week.