Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:21:19 +0100
]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/ibm-expands-its-software-development-lab-in-ireland ibm Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/ibm-expands-its-software-development-lab-in-ireland?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/ibm-expands-its-software-development-lab-in-ireland investment from IBM into Europe

IBM today announced new investments for its Ireland Development Lab to produce intelligent software, which help lower cost of operations; generate intelligence for quick growth; and build closer business relationships with customers, partners and colleagues. New jobs will be created for high value software engineering work at the lab, which addresses real-world issues such as environment protection projects and maritime affairs.

IBM will have up to 100 new roles in Dublin, Cork and Galway -- including new opportunities for technology graduates -- in an Industrial Development Agency (IDA) Ireland supported investment of up to euro 25 million over the next three years. These software engineers will focus on designing enterprise cloud computing software, as well as Service Management and database software with business analytic capabilities.

"Today's announcement highlights Ireland as an important place to help fulfill our global research, development and business strategy," said Michael Daly, General Manager, IBM Ireland. "The software will be standardized and customized by customer demands."

I particularly like the focus on new Cloud/SaaS technology development:

IBM will expand the lab in three main areas including information development, database and cloud computing software:

-- creating a new cloud computing software development team to work on IBM LotusLive offerings, which is a suite of cloud-delivered online technologies for business. LotusLive provides essential collaboration services to simplify and improve daily business interactions with customers, partners and colleagues. Designed with security in mind, LotusLive Connections and LotusLive Engage provide social networking capabilities such as Web conferencing, file storing and sharing, content management, live chat, and business forms.

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dxcomments/ibm-expands-its-software-development-lab-in-ireland http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/ibm-expands-its-software-development-lab-in-ireland?opendocument&comments

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/linkedin-announce-the-launch-of-sub-groups linkedin Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/linkedin-announce-the-launch-of-sub-groups?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/linkedin-announce-the-launch-of-sub-groups

There are now over 300,000 groups on LinkedIn where professionals are discussing, sharing news and collaborating with each other. We sincerely appreciate your dedication to the LinkedIn group you manage. Your efforts are essential to the continued success of groups. We're happy to announce that later this week we are launching a long-requested feature for group managers: the ability to create subgroups. Subgroups are like a break-out session at a conference. They enable you to create more focused areas than in the main group. Also, by creating and inviting members into subgroups, you can now send additional weekly Announcement emails to focused audiences

I can see this being a really popular addition, and would like to see sub-groups added to both Lotus Connections and LotusLive Engage.

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/mac-users-get-vmware-fusion-at-30-discount vmware Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/mac-users-get-vmware-fusion-at-30-discount?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/mac-users-get-vmware-fusion-at-30-discount

[Enterprise 2.0] will require more and more “knowledge workers” – people who don’t follow an administrative business process to do their jobs but rely on their experiences, professionalism and networks to add value to their organisations – or, as recently described by Thomas A Stewart,  ”someone who gets to decide what he does each morning..”

Organisations need to trust these professionals, they will not be in the office from 9-5 every day. These are exactly the sorts of people who thrive on their personal networks, they are the people who you go to when you need to know what’s going on. Social software brings the same level of productivity increases for these people as type-writers and then word processors did for a previous generation of workers. It takes their natural propensity to connect, to share, to add value and extends it in the same way the internet extends our access to information.

It won’t be enough to hire knowledge workers to survive and thrive in this recession. Organisations will have to change their business practices to take advantage of their abilities, and provide them with the tools to be effective. Word, Outlook and even Sharepoint won’t cut it. They will need custom built social platforms, or products such as Confluence, Jive, Socialtext and Lotus Connections.

This is not a technology driven change. These tools are a response to a new way of organising and operating companies, breaking free from 1950s management theory and production lines to treating people as individuals who get things done by independently and autonomously adding value through their networks. Organisations need to embrace the business change first, and look at the software second. Otherwise the competition will gain a significant competitive edge, whilst you’re worrying about the ROI of the investment in the latest “it’s like Facebook, but…” product.

A collaborative organisation is one that has the following characteristics:

• The values and objectives of employees and management are aligned,
• A climate of mutual trust and respect exists,
• The knowledge of all the staff, customers and suppliers is shared and pooled to optimize the organisation's operations and opportunities,
• Decision making is more decentralised than it is in most current organisations and more stakeholders in the organisation play a role in defining the direction in which the organization moves, and
• Hierarchical structures are kept to a minimum. The company is managed democratically by consensus rather than by command and control.

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/panic twitter Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/panic?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/panic


What should I do?  Ummm. Of course, I need to tweet to tell folks that it's down.  Ah.  Doh!

• What is UKLUG? When? Where?
• What's new for 2009?
• What's the relationship with ILUG?
• How is UKLUG organised? Who's involved?
• Is it scary organising a 500 attendee user group?
• Who pays for the event?
• What about Collaboration University - this is also scheduled for the UK later this year?
• The year so far - how has 2009 been for Lotus technology?
• The Year ahead - what is planned / foreseeable - interesting technologies on the horizon or beyond - Google Wave

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/lotus-technical-information-and-education-community-webcast-june-23rd community Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/lotus-technical-information-and-education-community-webcast-june-23rd?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/lotus-technical-information-and-education-community-webcast-june-23rd Lotus Technical Information and Education Community, and to act as Community Advocates, encouraging others to participate in the Lotus community and to create shared content.

To that end, I'd like to bring your attention to the next community webcasts, taking place on 23rd June at 10AM ET/3PM UK and 8PM ET/1AM UK.  I will be participating in the call and will be sharing my story with the community.

If you'd like to join, add it to your calendar today. Details are below the fold:

	Dear Community Member: Join our June Lotus Technical Information and Education community meeting!   Meeting Agenda Community updates - hear the latest community news Member spotlights - two contributors share their stories Special Topics: IBM Press - learn how to become an IBM Press author IBM Custom Content Assembler demonstration - see a new tool that allows you to assemble only the technical content YOU want to see! For more information about our community, visit our blog, Facebook page, community page in Lotus Greenhouse, or Twitter page.  Audio replays are made available following each meeting. Web Conference Information (URL same for both calls): Launch this URL to attend the meeting - https://apps.lotuslive.com/meetings/join?id=001-637 Enter your name (please include you company name in parentheses) Click the 'Join Meeting' button Phone Conference Information: June 23rd 10:00 AM EASTERN TIME Toll Free  - 888-989-8136 Toll - 517-308-9477 Verbal passcode: Kickoff June 23rd 8:00 PM EASTERN TIME Toll Free - 888-989-8136 Toll - 517-308-9477 Verbal Passcode: Kickoff Global access for both meeting times: Toll Toll Free ARGENTINA                                                 0800-777-0466 AUSTRALIA           ADELAIDE:       61-8-8121-4872           1-800-098-380 AUSTRALIA           BRISBANE:       61-7-3102-0974           1-800-098-380 AUSTRALIA           CANBERRA:       61-2-6100-1974           1-800-098-380 AUSTRALIA           MELBOURNE:     61-3-9010-7743           1-800-098-380 AUSTRALIA           PERTH:         61-8-9467-5253           1-800-098-380 AUSTRALIA           SYDNEY:         61-2-8211-1392           1-800-098-380 AUSTRIA                           43-1-92-86-508           0800-677-286 BELGIUM                           32-2-400-1325             0800-4-9718 BRAZIL                                                     0800-8911991 CHILE                                                     1230-020-0323 CHINA*                             86-400-810-4771           10800-712-1296                                                           10800-120-1296 COLOMBIA                                                   01800-9-156436 CZECH REPUBLIC                     420-2-25-98-56-56         800-700-224 DENMARK                           45-7014-0274             8088-5430 ESTONIA                                                   800-011-1131 FINLAND             Land Line:     106-33-198               0-800-1-12828 FINLAND             Mobile:         09-106-33-198             0-800-1-12828 FRANCE               LYON:           33-4-26-69-12-89         080-510-0983 FRANCE               MARSEILLE:     33-4-86-06-00-89         080-510-0983 FRANCE               PARIS:         33-1-70-70-84-55         080-510-0983 GERMANY                           49-69-2222-3467           0800-101-7055 GREECE                             30-80-1-100-0671         00800-12-6809 HONG KONG                         852-3001-3838             800-908-208 HUNGARY                                                   06-800-17568 INDIA                                                     000-800-852-1228 INDONESIA                                                 001-803-011-3651 IRELAND                           353-1-247-5393           1800-932-053 ISRAEL                                                     1-80-9214710 ITALY                             39-02-3604-7039           800-906-460 JAPAN               OSAKA:         81-6-7739-4773           0034-800-400651 JAPAN               TOKYO:         81-3-5539-5160           0034-800-400651 LATVIA                                                     8000-2927 LUXEMBOURG                         352-27-000-1349           MALAYSIA                                                   1-800-81-2060 MEXICO                                                     001-866-839-3438 NETHERLANDS                       31-20-717-6857           0800-343-4364 NEW ZEALAND                       64-9-970-4656             0800-441-333 NORWAY                             47-21-59-00-47           800-11118 PANAMA                                                     011-001-800-5072132 PERU                                                       0800-53716 PHILIPPINES                       63-2-858-3737             POLAND                                                     00-800-1211774 PORTUGAL                                                   8008-60134 RUSSIA                                                     8-10-8002-0074011 SINGAPORE                         65-6883-9204             800-120-4247 SLOVAK REPUBLIC                   421-2-322-422-29         SOUTH AFRICA                                               080-09-92283 SOUTH KOREA                       82-2-6744-1058           00798-14800-6607 SPAIN                             34-91-414-00-91           800-099-387 SWEDEN                             46-8-505-98-263           0200-893-409 SWITZERLAND                       41-44-580-3896           0800-001-214 TAIWAN                             886-2-2795-7354           00801-137-661 THAILAND                                                   001-800-1206-65426 UNITED KINGDOM       BIRMINGHAM:     44-121-210-9029           0800-279-9630 UNITED KINGDOM       GLASGOW:       44-141-202-3229           0800-279-9630 UNITED KINGDOM       LEEDS:         44-113-301-2129           0800-279-9630 UNITED KINGDOM       LONDON:         44-20-7108-6390           0800-279-9630 UNITED KINGDOM       MANCHESTER:     44-161-601-1429           0800-279-9630 URUGUAY                                                   000-413-598-3416 VENEZUELA                                                 0800-1-00-3211

Foundations offers file storage, advanced backup and recovery, connectivity and security, collaboration and email and application services in one integrated package. Some of the things that set it apart include:

    * Automated installation and configuration; it discovers and maps the network for you, and auto-configures firewall and VPN, so you can deploy it in 30 minutes or less.
    * Automatic data backups, and full system recovery if a disaster should occur.
    * Symphony office productivity tools are bundled with it, so you don't need to buy Microsoft Office software.
    * Under the covers, you get the reliability and cost benefits of Linux and open source technologies (Foundations is priced less than Microsoft SBS servers), but you don't have to know a thing about Linux or these technologies to run it.
    * It has the collaboration power of Lotus Notes and Domino, tailored for small businesses, with Notes clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

As important, IBM has factored in what's often the biggest hurdle to getting momentum for new product: inertia. Outlook users can continue to use Outlook with Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook. And, IBM added VMware virtualization to Foundations, so you can also run Windows applications on it. Customers don't have to give up things they already use—Outlook and Windows apps, such as Intuit QuickBooks. And, I almost forgot—you can also get a 30-day free trial, and it's black and yellow, like a bumble bee.

The small business technology market and the channel partners that serve them are at a turning point. Many businesses are tired of dealing with the cost and complexity of Microsoft products and licensing, and channel partners are deciding that they need another option for serving customers that don't want to deal with these hassles. This time, IBM is in the right place, at the right time, with the right solution, to give them a true alternative.

• What is a Connectr?
• Who was there and what did we discuss?
• Tools versus Enablement & adoption
• What Social tools are people using - injecting Social Software capabilities into the existing application landscape
• Actually using Social tools - asking questions and opening up the Silos
• Do Social Software Best Practices really exist?
• Who is driving social software adoption within organisations?

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/congratulations-are-in-order lotus Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/congratulations-are-in-order?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/congratulations-are-in-order


So congratulations to

200+ Microsoft Partners Per Month Flocking to Sell IBM Lotus Foundations Appliance

ARMONK, N.Y. -- June 4, 2009 -- Facing waning demand for Microsoft products, more than 1,000 Microsoft Business Partners have already signed up to sell IBM Lotus Foundations (www.ibm.com/lotus/foundations) "office-in-a-box" appliance for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the first five months of 2009.  

According to Microsoft Business Partners, sales of Microsoft's Small Business Server (SBS) software bundle have stagnated due to lack of innovation and partner dissatisfaction with their inability to add solutions and services.  Microsoft partners are looking for an alternative that provides SMBs  with more collaboration computing power for less money and more reliability in these challenging economic times.    

"Lotus Foundations is a complete, cost-effective solution that easily scales as a business grows.  When you add users, you know exactly what it will cost and the functionality you'll get," said Bernie Leung of Mesa Technology.   "With Microsoft SBS, you always have to worry about what additional licenses you will have to purchase - the SQL client is just one example."

...

IBM Lotus Foundations provides all the hardware and software needed for a business to get up and running and grow exponentially without incurring any upgrade costs.   The IBM product enables businesses to move to a single platform for all their IT needs, a stark contrast to Microsoft SBS, where additional software from Microsoft, as well as hardware and software from third parties must be purchased.  

"And with Lotus Symphony, we don't have to pay for Microsoft Office.  Most importantly, Lotus Foundations is simple to use and easy maintain.  It eliminates the expense of having a full-time IT expert on staff," said Jose Lopez Gonzalez, CEO, Lopez y Cortina, an insurance provider in Monterrey, Mexico.

...

Business partners too are looking for more effective methods to drive their business and support their customer base, and many have found that Lotus Foundations is the answer.  The following are comments made by a sample of IBM clients and partners who have signed up for Lotus Foundations in the past five months.

...

"Lotus Foundations is like a giant aspirin for the IT headaches that plague business owners every day." -- Greg Gould of GDomino.

"The Lotus Foundations server is a wonderful device – the ease of install and configuration makes getting right to work a quick job. For the money, we could not have come close to finding this functionality anywhere else – enterprise quality in a small business box." -- Robert Thresher, owner, Thresher Enterprise Systems.

Companies Choosing Lotus Collaboration to Work Smarter and Lower Costs

Economy, Web 2.0 Gap Fuel Rising Tide Against Microsoft

ARMONK, N.Y. -- June 4, 2009 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced major enterprise client wins for Lotus collaboration software over Microsoft as businesses seek cost efficiencies in today's economic climate.  Recent wins include The Coca Cola Company, HSBC, ABB, BASF, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Fidelity Investments, Hyundai, Liberty Mutual, Linde Group, Mass Mutual,  Nationwide,  State Bank of India, The Hartford, and Zurich Financial among others.  

Driven by guidance from Microsoft to abandon evaluation of these currently-shipping products, Microsoft customers are choosing IBM Lotus software, driven by the higher return on investment and easier deployment of Lotus software.

At the recent Microsoft Tech Ed conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft executives advised customers to stop testing Vista and move to testing Windows 7.     The same advice was repeated for Microsoft customers who have not yet moved to Exchange 2007; they were told to skip it and wait for 2010. The advice is a marked change from Microsoft's conventional strategy to always upgrade now and then again with the impending release of the new version of a product.

“In this environment of reduced IT budgets, lowered headcounts, geographically distributed teams and mergers and acquisitions, there are several reasons customers are choosing IBM Lotus Notes over Microsoft Exchange, one of which is cost," said Bob Picciano, general manager of IBM Lotus Software.    "Businesses don't have money to waste on high licensing and maintenance fees, nor the patience to deal with ill-conceived, unreliable software."

The economic downturn is causing companies to  consider how to spend their strained information technology (IT) budgets more carefully.  As a result, an increasing number of customers are looking at  IBM Lotus solutions over Microsoft reduce IT spending, and help their employes work more effectively with fewer resources.  Since the release of IBM Lotus Notes 8 in August 2007, IBM has seen the fastest adoption for any release in the history of Notes and IBM Lotus Domino, more than double that of previous releases.    

This rapid market acceptance of Notes and Domino 8 is driven, in part, by the 'green' nature of the products.  IBM Lotus Domino 8 has been proven to lower the cost of ownership for enterprises  by as much as 30 percent as a result of new 'smart' capabilities that allow companies to reduce the number of severs needed;, drive down the hardware required to support mail files and attachments; and minimize administrative overhead.  

Since people want a variety of ways to collaborate with one another, IBM continues to expand Lotus Notes and Domino capabilities well beyond email by tightly integrating instant messaging and presence awareness, enterprise grade social networking tools, and access to team rooms and repositories into the Notes user interface.    In fact, 30 percent of new IBM Lotus Sametime unified communications customers are Microsoft Outlook and Exchange messaging users.  In addition, with over four million downloads of Lotus Symphony, IBM's free office productivity toolset, customers are looking to try alternatives for Microsoft Office based on open standards and lower costs.

"While Microsoft is telling customers they need to wait seven years for major enhancements to Exchange and Windows, IBM Lotus continues to deliver new releases with richer capabilities on time," said Picciano.   "Clients are embracing IBM's holistic view of collaboration as a means of working smarter and more efficiently with powerful Web 2.0 and social software tools.  The net effect is our clients' employees are collaborating at a much deeper, more profound level, gaining insight and productivity while lowering their IT spending."

]]> http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/the-curse-of-knowledge-are-we-a-community-of-tappers knowledge Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/the-curse-of-knowledge-are-we-a-community-of-tappers?opendocument&comments http://blog.collaborationmatters.com/blog/cmblog.nsf/dx/the-curse-of-knowledge-are-we-a-community-of-tappers
However, starting with the online piece.  As is my wont, I listened in on the IBM Think!Thursday call today (a series of sales and technical calls for IBMers and business partners on a varity of topics), and viewed a wonderful presentation on collaboration by Louis Richardson, one of the Lotus Worldwide Sales Executives.  I hope to be able to share the presentation tomorrow, once I have an approved version for the public.  I remarked on the webconference chat how revolutionary the slidedeck was, and also shared a Twitter exchange with Handly Cameron:



This reminded me of my recent post '

You are probably already familiar with this story about the "curse of knowledge", but just in case...it comes from the book "Made to Stick - by Chip and Dan Heath"...and I copied the following excerpt from this web page. It's a story I try to use whenever I have the chance to lead Top Gun sales training sessions:

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: "tappers" or "listeners." Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as "Happy Birthday to You" and "The Star- Spangled Banner." Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener's job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. (By the way, this experiment is fun to try at home if there's a good "listener" candidate nearby.) The listener's job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton's experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120.

But here's what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent.

The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?

When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself-tap out "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can't hear that tune-all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code. In the experiment, tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn't the song obvious? The tappers' expressions, when a listener guesses "Happy Birthday to You" for "The Star-Spangled Banner," are priceless: How could you be so stupid?

It's hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.

We tend to be tappers. We know the technology inside and out. The music plays very clearly in our heads. But we forget that when we are speaking to "line of business" people in say, a manufacturing organization...we forget that these people can tell you the in's and out's of how to mill and produce widgets and the importance of "material safety data sheets", but the concept of REST services, Portal infrastructures, Asynchronous application blah blah blah is like tapping without any reference point.

As we enter our fourth year, Collaboration University is evolving, just like the collaboration software we know and love. With new versions of Sametime and Quickr released in the past 12 months, the release of Lotus Connections 2.5 (which we're covering as well), this is going to be a great year to come to Collaboration University in September. The dates are:

Chicago: September 14-16 at the IBM Innovation Center
London: September 21-23 at IBM South Bank