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I just realized that equation could actually be true. Let me explain:

TUAW covered (rather re-re-covered) a story about DWA/iNotes ultralite for the iPhone. In the article, they mentioned that there are 140 million people using Notes.

Earlier today, I referenced another TUAW article that talked about sales figures for some of the iPhone applications. In this case, they showed that two products from a company called tap tap tap produced revenues of $52,815 in 24 days.

The current iPhone applications that run either parts, or all, of Lotus Notes mail, calendar and contacts functionality range in price from $2.99 to well over $100 plus monthly fees. And all of those apps have some goofy element of them. Either they don’t work with the iPhone’s built in calendar, mail and/or contacts applications; or they require PCs and servers to act as conduits; or they flat-out don’t always work.

So that led me to a crazy idea: why doesn’t IBM/Lotus build their own native iPhone application that integrates Lotus Notes email, calendar and contacts into the iPhone’s application set? I know, crazy isn’t it? In my idea, this would be a true application, not just a website you have to authenticate to, navigate through, etc. via your browser.

Let’s do some unrealistic math. Let’s assume all of the 140 million users bought an iPhone and paid $9.99 for the Notes application. Boom! $1,398,600,000. But that’s a big assumption.

How about some more conservative math. Let’s assume 1% of the 140 million users (1.4 million) get an iPhone and pay a fee for the application. Let’s look at some pricing models:

1.4 million X $9.99 (a low-cost price-point for the software) = $13,986,000
1.4 million X $29.99 (a fair average) = $41,986,000
1.4 million X $99 (the equivalent of GOOD’s license cost) = $138,600,000

Now, to be fair. That’s not instant revenue because you’ve got to tell businesses that the iPhone is now a device that can be supported and that they should ditch their Blackberry for it. Still, those are some big numbers and I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I don’t think it would cost them anywhere near any of those numbers to develop the software.

I could be all wrong, but I enjoy doing math. By the way, these calculations were brought to you by my iPhone.

Kevin Mobile Phones, Notes and a MAC dwa, inotes, iphone, math, ultralite

By complete happenstance, I discovered that you can do a screen capture on the iPhone. (I know, 90% of you reading this probably knew that already; of those people probably only 75% even have an iPhone.)

Simply go to the screen you want to capture, then hold the “home” button and press the top button for a moment. You’ll hear a “click” and see the screen flash. Whatever was on your screen now appears in your photo album and can be downloaded, emailed or as I’ve done, attached to a blog post via the WordPress application.

… and yes, it does look odd to have the WordPress, TwitterFon, Facebook and LinkedIn icons so close together. Many times, I’ve opened the phone to see “W T F” or “F ‘in” at a glance.

Kevin Misc. Info facebook, icons, iphone, linkedin, screen capture, twitter, wordpress

In reality that title should come as Jo surprise. WinXP is the dominate OS on the market. Still seeing the arrival inormation board stuck in a reboot loop this morning felt a bit odd. See for yourself. (Taken at the MSP airport.)

Kevin Misc. Info airport, screens, technology, windows xp

Right off the bat, I’m not going to go through a technical explanation about doing what the title suggests. That would take, like, more than this one post. Instead, I’m going to talk from more of a conceptual perspective.

The problem.

Our organization is no different than probably any other. We have really old systems, really new ones and everything in between. The level of integration that exists between all of them is never enough, despite anyone’s best attempts. We needed to find a way to deliver information to our customers via the web in an easy to use, intuitive way AND to re-consume some of that information along with much, much more for internal use. In short, we needed a one-stop shop that was role based, highly integrated with lots of back-end systems and had direct connectivity to additional detail which resided in the source system, regardless of what that was.

The technical problem.

From a software perspective, we were dealing with AS/400 (or iSeries, or SystemI or “I” – whatever you want to call it today) data in six different software environments; three major Notes applications and a number of other data sources, mostly Notes/Domino based. The data would present information to multiple countries and thus have to support multiple languages. Also, the security structures of most of these systems are unique and not highly integreated. — So… when we first started talking about this project, we often sarcastically said “good luck with all that!”

The solution.

Ext.nd! If you haven’t seen this, go check it out. In short, we’ve been able to ask our AS/400 developers to set up data warehouse tables that help consolidate some of the information across those systems. In the other areas, we’ve worked with them to use LEI activities to directly access the information. The Notes databases have all been “ext.nd enabled” and we’ve used a lot of XML to organize the data exactly how we want it. In short, there were plenty of ways to access the data needed in each unique system – we just had to carefully step through the process, organize it and get it ready for presentation in Ext.js or Ext.nd.

The result.

Ext.js starts (and ends) with a very nice, intuitive user interface. I feel strongly that the UI is part of the secret sauce to the project. We started putting together our application’s interface by looking through the gallery of examples that ext.js and ext.nd had to offer. We printed off many of these examples and drew lots and lots of whiteboard pictures to work on the layout.

The value-add.

Since the products we’re using have an established (and contemporary) UI, even some more boring reports (last screen shot) look really nice and updated. We’re able to show reports that previously printed in a standard AS/400 kind of style, on the web, with colors, and inside a layout that allows the user to turn on/off columns, change the sort behavior and move each column to a new position dynamically. Oh yeah, they can also search and page forward/back with the navigation at the bottom – or jump directly to a specific page in the report.

The icing on the cake.

What really put us over the top was integrating graphics from FusionCharts. These are Adobe Flash based, XML driven graphics which look outstanding. There’s just enough animation and interactiveness to them to make them interesting as they render on the screen. We re-consume the XML we’re presenting in tables and forms into these charts to represent the exact same data into different visuals. In the end, “yes” the data may be on the screen three times, but the three repsentations have very different purposes – and everyone agrees they all have value.

Attached are some screen shots of our new application. We branded it, purchased a logo for $35 from PixelLogo and launched it at our international sales meeting yesterday. The biggest compliement about the success and power of the application was when I overheard someone in the crowd say “this feels like something Steve Jobs would launch!”

… and I wasn’t even wearing a black shirt and jeans!

Kevin IT Management, Notes Development domino, ext.js, ext.nd, fushion charts, old systems

A lot of people who stumble on my blog figure out that I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Lotus products. However, they often incorrectly assume that at any given time, I’m more on the “hate” side of the pendillum.

That’s actually not the case at all. Infact, I’m sort of a self-appointed customer evangelist for Lotus products. To prove my point… I’ve SAVED two companies from jumping ship off Lotus Notes in the last 6 months alone!

I just got a call from a former co-worker who said “hey, I just got back from our planning meetings and the company finally agreed that we need to invest more talent into our Lotus Notes area, not jump ship to Outlook … and the decision was based on the info you armed me with for the meeting, so thank you!”

That’s great news! In this case, it was a company that was on Notes 6.x and had used very few applications. They had lost two developers and never replaced them. I spent some time meeting with their IT team on one occassion and a group of other executives on another to walk through the applications we use at my company. I talked about the power of Notes security, replication and administration tools. But I focused heavily on how we’ve used Lotus Notes to augment our ERP systems and deliver information via the Notes client and/or the web.

For the record, the first company had an install base of 500 users. The second was roughly 15,000. – Hmm… I really should get a cut of something for that, don’t you think?

Now here’s the bad news. JUST yesterday, I met with yet another former co-worker who said “yeah… Lotus Notes might be on the chopping block forus.” I absolutely hate hearing that kind of comment and I’m convinced that the reason the comments is made is because the people using the Notes don’t have a clue how to maximize their investment in it.

And yes, I insisted he set up a time for me to stop by and do a quick demo of what Notes can do for them, too. I’m going for the hat-trick of Notes saves this year!

Kevin IT Management notes

Two statements about mobile Lotus tools caught my attention today (both I found off Paul Mooney’s website):

1. Lotus announced support for Symbian phones in the 8.5 version of the Traveler product. That means that Nokia phones which run that OS can now leverage Traver. I’ve been a Nokia fan for along time (until the iPhone came out) so this is good news. Its also timely since GOOD has no/limited plans to support this OS in future relases (and our company has a number of Nokia devices deployed today that use GOOD software).

2. Paul got his hands on a Lotus/iPhone FAQ (download). In short, it reminds people of the availability of web-based access to Notes calendar, contacts and email in 8.0.2 and a name change of that product to iNotes (good thing I never stoped calling it that in the first place – that’ll be an easy transition for me) in 8.5.

There is also a statement about how IBM understands how important the iPhone is, but they suggest customers contact Apple to express this same thought; use the web based tools; and look at 3rd party solutions to get access to contacts or calendar through NotesCal from the iTunes App Store.

My favorite part of the FAQ was the question asking if IBM recommends companies use the iPhone for enterprise deployment. The answer: “Yes, but be aware…” then there’s a quick comparison to BlackBerry devices and some value-added statements about using that device.

So… my tounge-in-cheek summary of the FAQ is that IBM is saying: “Yes, iPhone is important. Yes, we’re sick of hearing that. The best we can do (for 8.0.2 OR 8.5) is give you support via the web. Please call APPLE and complain, not us. Shouldn’t you be using a BlackBerry anyway? We know we’d like that!”

As for me, I’m just going to take it as a good step forward that IBM released something to address the amount of people who are despriately looking for Notes support as a native app on their iPhone. At least they’re being honest about the whole thing and answering the question. For that, I thank them.

Oh, and hey… now that you’ve got Symbian support built in to Traveler, perhaps those people could refocus their efforts on working on the iPhone – which will probably bring in more new sales revenue than the Nokia business would. Just a thought.

Kevin Mobile Phones iphone, lotus, traveler

One of the challenges of being a centralized IT shop in a global organization is finding business partners in the countries you do business in that are just as strong as the ones you’ve partnered with at your corporate location. Thank goodness, there’s Google and links to business partners on sites like Lenovo’s.

This morning, a couple of us sat down to find a new business partner for our Singapore location. I thought I’d share the journey via my blog. I highly suggest following the links as we go so you can see what we did, first-hand.

First stop, Lenovo’s website where it was easy to zero in on Singapore and get to a listing of their business partners. It struck us as odd to see that most of the places listed were apparently in shopping malls. — I did select “Singapore” and not “Orange County, CA” right?

We opened up a flurry of tabs for companies listed near the bottom of the Lenovo page. First, we went to SiS Technologies, Asia’s Leading Distributor, or so they say. I couldn’t help but notice the … eh… world-class graphics at the top:

Next up, “UIC” at uicacs.com. Notice the use of occassional sound effects on their side menu.

Moving on, we found “JOS” or Jardine OneSolution. They have a nice looking website and a great logo. Only one question though… is this guy wearing a pleather jacket?!

Then we found “SCS” who’s slogan is “living technology.” I don’t know what that is but it both sounds cool and frightens me. I’m having flashbacks of the movie iRobot. Here’s what I love about this company… their charter page shows two interesting items… note #5 and the final thought in green:

We then moved to JK Technology, which I’m not sure if that’s really their name or if they’re trying to set the stage early with the texting shorthand. “JK” as in “just kidding, we really don’t do technology.” Also, talk about setting the bar high… notice how they define what products they have:

Next up was “Whizzwork” which prefers that you think of them as “WE” (Whizzwork Enterprises). I’d really be selling this site short if I didn’t let you see the flash intro first-hand for yourself. Turn up your speakers and enjoy.

I think we should all agree now that flash intros can completely go away and no one would miss them. Finally, we found OPUS who’s very proud of how they came up with their name. The story (”Opportunity” + “Us” — yeah, that’s it) is all over their site. Here’s my favorite part: their “Client testimonails” page has one single testimonial… from someone at IBM, who spun off their PC business to Lenovo; and who still hosts the webpage that got me to OPUS’s site as I triend to find a business partner.

Incase you’re wondering, we sent a request for proposal out to all of these people and I’m anxious to see what kind of response we get from them.

Kevin Misc. Info funny, websites

Last week someone suggested something really simple while we were at an off-site meeting (at a WiFi challenged location): “go open that file on Quickr from your iPhone.”

I have to admit, I hadn’t thought to do that before.

Oddly enough… it works pretty well! The iPhone’s ability to size your browser screen allows you to easily navigate around Quickr’s web interface. The iPhone’s ability to open just about any file type your office uses means that you can drill down to a file, open it, get the info you need and move on (here’s a YouTube video of someone doing exactly that). – How handy!

Of course, as I type this, I’m thinking it would be awesome to have an ultralite mode, but that’s sitting down a ways on my Top 10 list of things I wish Lotus had for the iPhone.

Which reminds me… an email showed up this morning from a person within Lotus (who asked to not be named beyond that) who said I should have looked more closely at the Lotus.com page regarding iPhone/iNotes functionality. My last post mentioned the inability to create calendar entries, and as this emailer mentioned, Lotus was careful to use the words “create” and “view” in a precise manner. As you can see, calendar items are mentioned only as “view” not “create.” As he jokingly wrapped up: “you need to read carefully so as not to get your hopes up.”

Kevin Mobile Phones dwa, inotes, iphone, lotus, quickr

A number of people have emailed me to make sure I saw that Notes 8.0.2 includes the first pass at the iNotes/DWA ultra-lite mode AND that there is now an application available on iTunes called NotesCal that delivers your calendar to the iPhone.

Yes, none of this is the “golden app” us iPhone/Notes fans have been dreaming about; but, do they come close?

DWA ultralite is surprisingly good. I think Lotus did a GREAT job with the UI on this thing. However, the fact of the matter is that you’re just being pushed around web pages. While most of us haven’t had to “go get” our email on a smartphone for some time (it comes to us via Blackberry or GOOD, etc.), once you do it, its not bad to use it. The contacts are also well done with some nice icons to help guide you and take advantage of the fact that the iPhone is a phone after all (I know – it comes as a surprise to a lot of people). The calendar is OK to look at but I’m surprised how frustrating the lack of being able to create a meeting entry has been.

Enter: NotesCal. For $2.99, you can get this app which gives you your Notes calendar on the iPhone. One small catch: some assembly required. There’s an agent you need to create, a txt file you need to paste in, some potential server and ACL work and a decent sized URL you need to program into the settings. Oh, one other problem (for me): it doesn’t work. They have a short test you can do via the browser to make sure you’ve done things correct, and that worked fine for me, but the app itself didn’t.

I’m going to keep trying through… I’m willing to take a few (err… several) extra steps to piece together my Notes/iPhone worlds.

But all of this is a good sign, right? It means others have the same need and are trying to develop a resolution. To those people I say: keep fighting the good fight!

Kevin Mobile Phones dwa, iphone, lotus, notes

I. Can’t. Wait.

I’m not exactly certain, but I’m more excited about Lotusphere (2009) this year than any other year I’ve attended. I think its largely due to the amount of stuff from ‘08 that we’ve NOT yet implemented.

Yeah, you read that right.

My team and I came back from LS08 eager to deploy Notes 8.x; excited about the concept of an “all-in-one” box; anxiously awaiting the promised iPhone compatibility; excited about what looked like a strong update to Quickr; and super excited about the 8.5 beta for the Mac (yes, two of us helped cause the big slow down of that download the evening that was announced).

Nine months later: we’ve just begun testing 8.0.2 in hopes that the performance is finally good enough to launch across the company; DWA ultralite for the iPhone is nice, but not something that we can roll out; Quickr is a good update, but still has some odd quirks (personal folders – please!); and I stopped using the 8.5 beta for the Mac within a month.

Kinda sounds like a swing and a miss to me – and yet, I’m REALLY excited about LS09.

Lotus often does a good job of addressing the comments of their community; and everything I listed above has been talked about, blogged about, twitted (that’s a verb, right?) about, etc. quite a bit in the last year. I really would be shocked if Lotus hasn’t heard (loudly) the comments from all of us and I’m hopeful that LS09 will bring some new announcements on a number of these fronts.

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Here’s the other reason I’m excited: the Lotus community. By far, the most valuable thing to come out of Lotusphere last year was hearing from others in the community about what they are doing with Lotus products. In some cases (being totally honest here) you attend a session, hear a solution that someone put in place and realize: wow, we’re really doing well – that isn’t a problem we have at all! Phew!

In many more cases, you hear (or better yet see and get code examples) about really cool ways that people have used (or stretched) Lotus technology for their applications. This past year, the guys from Snapps put on a solid show (as always) and the amount of information we got (and were instantly able to use) about ext.nd was amazing.

So… while the product announcements may not have brought the value we had hoped (yet), connecting with the Lotus community has given us more tools than we dreamed of. That information has allowed us to deploy three new websites (one for customers, one for supply chain management and one for internal use), two new dashboard/graphing tools and build a toolbox of code that allows us to make application development advancements in 1/3 the time it did before!

And that’s why I’m excited!

Kevin IT Management, Mobile Phones, Notes Development, Notes and a MAC ext.nd, iphone, lotus, lotusphere, quickr