10. Lotus announces Sametime 8.5 before the end of 2009 (despite me being SURE they’d wait to Lotusphere)

9. Disk savings from DAOS was easy to implement and quite beneficial on disk space usage!

8. Began using Google Voice a utility that’s not all “there” yet but potentially a game-changer for managing phone calls & voicemails.

7. Notes turns 20

6. Realized the using an iPhone is more like integrating something into your life than getting a new phone.

5. Realized that people don’t “search” any more, they “Google.”

4. My alter-ego starred in a video all about “conferences at Disney World” which featured Lotusphere 2009.

3. After much debate (and frustration caused largely by SnowLeopard) I abandoned a Mac in favor of a PC.

2. Notes (Traveler) support for the iPhone was released (and it rocks!)

1. I got fed up with hearing things like “notes is a tarnished brand” and one simple thing to try to make my voice heard for a moment by being featured on theInfoBoom.com along with a companion piece on my blog.

And yet this year, they did.

Lotus Sametime 8.5 is schedule to be released next week and it promises to be a BIG upgrade. At the top of my list of favorite new features is the zero-footprint install. That’s been the biggest pain in getting people to use Sametime in our organization (they just don’t “get” why they ask for Sametime and get Java errors).

Of course #2 on the list is the pictured iPhone client. I’m anxious to see how that works! I did a usability lab on it last year at Lotusphere and can already tell they addressed some of the issues I had with it. Well done, Lotus!

A bunch of great links are out about the new version, here’s my roundup:

• What’s new in Sametime 8.5
• Sametime 8.5 Features/Benefits (PDF)
• Lotusphere 2010 Sametime Sessions
• Sametime 8.5. How-To Video

One additional note: the YouTube video above is GREAT. Not only is it a great way to show how the product works but its something I can pass out to other users when we launch it. This is precisely the kind of thing that’s extremely helpful to have (from IBM/Lotus) for our team!

Hearing that comment couldn’t have come at a better time. I was struggling to come up with a topic for an article I was writing for theinfoboom.com and this prompted me to have a clear topic to talk about. In the required “300 words or less” I focused on some of the best real-world examples for how & why our company continues to use Lotus Notes in an attempt to help demonstrate that it is FAR from a tarnished brand; rather a thriving product!

Please take a moment to check out this article and leave a comment. In addition, I’ll be hosting a hour on-line chat session Thursday December 10th at 8am central – please join in on that as well if you can!

Your participation will not only help foster some good discussion, but also help me make a point about the power of getting these types of messages out in the IT community at large, specifically to companies who have dismissed Notes based on some very old misconceptions.

Lotus technologies are the “secret sauce” to the IT dishes our company serves up. And NO, Lotus Notes isn’t just email, there’s so much more! Here are some real-world examples of how and why it is such a powerful component of how we deliver outstanding IT systems…

Mobility & Flexibility
The entire Lotus Notes client can run off a USB memory stick! Simply plug in the USB stick into any computer and an icon appears on the desktop allowing the user to access the full Lotus Notes client experience without installing any software to that computer! Our users can now access Lotus Notes at home or from another computer if they ever have a hardware failure on their primary machine. For users who simply need email access, each email file includes an “iNotes” version which can be accessed via the web. The web interface is nearly identical to their Notes client, so there’s no learning curve!

Operating system agnostic
We have a mix of Windows XP, Vista, 7, Linux and even Mac users in our organization. ALL of these users are able to have the exact same email and application experience by using the Lotus Notes client. The only differences between these operating systems are found in core components (title bars, scroll bars, etc.).

iPhone
Apple’s wonder-phone is closing in quickly on RIM’s BlackBerry devices. With Lotus’ Traveler utility running on your Lotus Domino server your users can use a variety of mobile devices (Windows Mobile, Symbian and many more) including the iPhone! Traveler integrates directly into the iPhone’s mail, calendar and contacts applications and the result is a fast, easy and secure way to access your information … when you’re not playing games, of course.

Getting business done!
Have an ERP or legacy system you need to connect Notes to? No problem. The Lotus Enterprise Integrator (LEI)  is a low-cost solution that is easy to use. Simply point it to your data, establish the type of data link and BOOM your systems are integrated giving Notes a powerful connection to your other key business systems.

Application Development – Easy and Free
Development in Lotus Notes is easy and free with the recent announcement of no additional cost for the Lotus Designer client. Just about anyone can easily design a Notes application in a short period of time – its that easy. However, don’t think that means its “limited” – its not. With support for JavaScript, Java, Lotuscript, XML and much more, Lotus Notes is as powerful as you need it to be!

Cost Cutting
There are many different types of Lotus licensing available making it a cost-effective product for just about anyone. Small/Medium organizations might want to look into Lotus Foundations an all-in-one server solution that is an integrated email, VPN, firewall and file/print solution that’s self-healing, easy to setup and even backed-up all within the one device. Think of it as an “IT department in a box!”

Powerful Web Tools
Notes has progressively become a better web-friendly system. The addition of Xpages allows developers to build powerful, web 2.0 applications within the Notes Designer. There’s even built-in Ajax functionality alongside tools that support CSS, XML, etc. (etc. is not a web standard – didn’t want you to think you had something new to learn).

What’s more, the developer community for Notes is building their own cool applications – many of which you can download for free. The ext.nd project is based on ExtJS and gives you an easy jump-start to web enabling databases with a very contemporary, intuitive user interface that instantly gives users lots of dynamic functionality on the web. There’s also plenty of applications to download from OpenNTF.org, a community of web developers who produce fantastic Notes apps (many web-enabled) for free download.

Project Management & Collaboration
Lotus Quickr offers a web based project management & collaboration system. The result is an easy-to-use, highly configurable utility for managing project teams. Quickr “places” (project sites in Quickr) allow users to control access/security, store files in a library, create/manage gantt charts, calendars and even write their own custom forms.

Quickr also includes “Connectors” – software integration that works with Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes and many more. Connectors allow you to check in/out documents from a Quickr place without having to leave the software you’ll use to view/edit the document.

Like much of the Lotus software there’s a strong community around Quickr – and that community is so passionate about the power of the software that they provide free stuff! Quickrtemplates.com offers a number of free Quickr place types (customized Quickr site types for specific uses, like wiki’s, contact management and corporate communications) that will let you quickly download, install and launch great Quickr functionality in your organization.

Lotus software offers so much more than I’m able to type out – or you’re willing to read. The bottom line is this: people who hear “Lotus” and think “Lotus Notes – that old email system” are missing out. Lotus software offers some amazing software and has a community around it that makes the software even more powerful. With systems like Notes, Quickr, etc. you’ll be able to easily, quickly, and cost-effectively make a dramatic change in your IT application landscape. Before you know it, you’ll suddenly realize why its the secret sauce behind powerful applications.

I then went into my home email account to find two emails from people who tried to comment on my last post and had problems doing so – both later said the blog design didn’t clearly show where/how to comment (again proving, interface is important — and prompting the design change you see now).

So yes, interface matters.

One other really important announcement buried in the full announcement:

THE complaint of our users who have been using Lotus Traveler (on non-iPhone devices) has been the lack of a corporate address book. This statement suggests that the new release of Traveler addresses it for at least the iPhone (probably others as well).

Other BIG news included the announcement that Designer and Lotus Mobile Connect are now free (see your specific license details for exact details). Both are huge announcements as it further shows that Lotus Notes is a complete solution that addresses a wide variety of business needs – not just “that other” email platform.

Big news indeed!

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!

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.

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!

I’m also always impressed at how well they manage to focus on the true high points of what’s going on in the world of IBM/Lotus. Quickr, Connections and Notes 8 – its all in the agenda!

The only suggestion I have for the event (which I have given to Lotus) is that these events really miss out on the hype that exists at Lotusphere. You leave Lotusphere completely excited about Lotus products, energized and ready to get back to work applying what you learned. You leave LCTY a bit more informed but also feeling like something was missing (the hype).

You also miss out (at the LCTY events) on the polished, cohesive presentations. When you’re at Lotusphere, you feel like every detail has been thought of; everyone rehearsed their part of the “show;” and someone was keeping tabs on the entire event to make sure that overlapping content appeared to be intentional (example: slides at the end that say “Other sessions you might want to see are…”).

At the Minneapolis event, it was clear that a few of the presenters didn’t review what they were going to talk about with each other ahead of time (which, honestly shocked me). The result sends a disconnected message to the audience and feels like a waste of time.

So there you go… the good, the bad and the acronym of this event in MPLS.

Before the call even started, it was weird. He informed me that he’s bring in a local IBM/Lotus business partner to the discussion – a guy I’ve know for a long time but hadn’t talked to recently. I realized that my IBM/Lotus rep’s “system” must have had this other business partner listed somewhere because many years ago we talked with him about the same product. Our IBM/Lotus rep assumed it was appropriate for him to be in the discussion – without asking about the dynamic of how that worked out last time.

That was a flaw in his logic, which I tried to point out ahead of time stating that there were people in our company who felt strongly that the project never got off the ground the first time as a function of some bad information and direction from other local business partners that were brought in to talk about the product. Regardless, the call went on.

The timer on my phone said 22 minutes had gone by before someone mentioned “Domino.Doc” (the purpose of having the meeting) and the only reason it was mentioned was because someone said “I thought we were going to talk about Domino.Doc, not Quickr.”

All that aside, its clear to me how Quickr really could be a better fit for us. Its also clear that IBM wants to use Filenet to provide the backbone to Quickr for people who need some seriously powerful document management utilities. Now that we have the latest verison of Quickr installed, we’re going to get more serious about evaluating it (the first time we tried, all of us ran into odd bugs within the first 5 minutes of using it — that’s been MUCH improved).

At about 45 minutes into the call, the IBM guys said “Quickr is really the perfect tool for shops using Notes 8.0.1.” That’s true! But we’re not adopting 8.0.1 any time soon because of the performance issues we’ve seen in testing. We mentioned this on the conference call, to their surprise. They said (and while this isn’t truly a quote … its a pretty close paraphrase):

‘Really?! You’re the first place that has EVER said anything like that! We’ve seen NO performance issues with Notes 8.0.1. Of course, you could use the “-sa”‘ switch run it without Eclipse, ’cause that’s the thing that slows it down. Eclipse is slow. Notes isn’t. I mean, anyone that has 2GB of RAM is going to see no problems with Notes 8.0.1 whatsoever!’

My problem? 95% of our systems don’t have 2GB of RAM. 65% of them don’t have ONE GB of RAM. And, oh yeah, the coolest part of 8.0.1 is the functionality that Eclipse brings to the table (side shelf, etc.) … so I just can’t justify the amount of time an upgrade would take when some of the biggest payoffs aren’t there.

___________

While this may seem like a vent, its not intended to be. Its intended to be feedback. I see a lot of IBM/Lotus blogs where people enlist the “what do you, the customer, want?” type of question. I think its important that blogs, like mine, exist to provide everyday insight into a sort of moment-by-moment recap of the challenges and thoughts we have about using the software that supports our business.