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When I was asked to wrote my article about Lotus Notes for theInfoBOOM.com (which was a great success, btw – so THANK YOU for viewing/participating in that with me!) I suggested to a few people at IBM that Ed Brill would be a great person to get to write a column as well.

As Ed pointed out in his blog, it was a bit odd that I ended up writing about Notes while he wrote about social media (those topics ended up being chosen completely independent from one another). Now that his article is posted on theInfoBOOM.com I think Ed was quite right in saying that our selection of topics gave us each a more authentic voice. If Ed would have talked about Notes, it could have been perceived as an ad. Likewise, if I would have talked about blogging/social media – it would have had far less of an impact since my posts come from the perspective of someone outside of Lotus/IBM.

Its a good article and I encourage you to go read it and post a comment.

Oh… and see you at Lotusphere! (If you’re like me, you’re frantically finishing up as many projects as possible to have a clear mind down there … and in anticipation of coming back with hundreds of new ideas!)

Tags: blogging, notes, social media

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry about a conference call of IBM customers (some Notes customers, some not) where one customer on the call said that they felt “Lotus Notes was a tarnished brand.” Many of you ran to the ‘comments’ button to leave your thoughts on that comment – thank you!

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.

Tags: awesomeness, notes

WELCOME to those of you following the link from infoBOOM!

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.

A few weeks ago, I missed out on an event in St. Paul that I was looking forward to attending. (We can blame that on a misunderstanding between me, and my car’s navigation – more on that at another time.) However I was happy to see that presentations from the event (all about social media in the enterprise) were made available on-line (and using SlideShare.net, which let’s face it: if they weren’t there – I’d be a bit concerned, given the topic).

One presentation stuck out as particularly interesting to me, thus the re-link below. Yes, its 112 slides, but it goes quickly. I highly recommend checking it out.

InvestorPlace.com has a report out about how Apple’s iPhone is closing in on RIM/BlackBerry in a number of categories. While the BlackBerry is the defacto standard for mobile business devices, there is a clear trend that even business users are moving to the iPhone.

With the release of Lotus Notes/Traveler support for the iPhone we have seen an amazing amount of interest. We have limited our deployment of iPhones to ensure we do our due diligence of testing it in our environment but continue to have daily inquiries about the status of that testing. I’ve never seen so many people interested in “beta testing” something for our group. I’ve also NEVER seen people offer to pay for the device out of their own pocket if they can simply get one with their company-issued cell phone number attached. I’ve even had a few people who have asked if they can buy the device AND pay the additional monthly service costs, if any.

Hmmm… perhaps I’m sitting on a profit center and don’t even know it?

This report suggests not only that there continues to be a strong migration to the iPhone (although, not necessarily at the expense moving away from RIM) but that the customer satisfaction for using the iPhone continues to be very strong… an item I find interesting in light of a variety of articles suggesting that as many as 30% of iPhone calls are dropped (I’ve never experienced anything anywhere near that number).

Regardless, I find it interesting that a device which has nominally changed in three generations (face it, it hasn’t changed significantly) still has so much interest that people are still wanting to migrate to it; love it when they have it; and willing to pay out of their own pocket so they can have it. Amazing!

Tags: blackberry, iphone, marketing, mobile, notes, traveler

A friend sent me this video on social media. Its worth checking out (even if you get only 1/2 way through). Lots of good stats about social media sites/concepts that help frame the impact it is having in perspective (comparisons to radio, TV, etc.).

And if anyone ever dismisses social media sites … I would argue they aren’t going to be very successful in business very long.

Tags: social media, video

There’s an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal (which I bookmarked weeks ago and FINALLY got around to reading today) about recession strategies and preparing for the economic recovery. Dr. Vijay Govindarajan, a professor of international business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College proposes that companies need to think IN the box… three of them, to be exact.

Box 1: Managing the Present. Items here are all about improving efficiency, productivity, etc. He states that this is the area where most people focus their attention, especially when sales can be off 50-70% in many cases; however he cautions to not spend all of your time there.

Box 2: Selectively forgetting the past. This is where I was instantly drawn to the article. There are so many topics in any organization that just never die. I like the idea of grouping them together and killing them in order to make way for “new.”

Box 3: Creating the future. Here Dr. G. distinguishes between “adjacency innovation,” a less risky type because it often relates to your core business, and “breakout innovation” where you are going multiple steps outside of your core business.

We’ve all been taught to think outside of the box for so long that I found this an interesting way to both do that, yet compartmentalize thoughts into a methodical approach designed to manage your way through today, forget yesterday and look to tomorrow.

Apply to your role as needed.

The presentation below is a great overview of the Quickr product. It covers the need, concept, key features and much more. I especially like how it speaks to the need for a utility like this in organizations that have employees spread across a wide range of experience, age range, etc.

It’s so good that I found myself wishing I would have started to talk about the concept at my company now (since this presentation is available) vs. over a year ago when I actually did begin talking about it.

Tags: lotus, presentations, quickr

Two weeks ago today I was sitting in the Lotusphere 2009 OGS. I was also in much nicer weather, despite the fact that it was the longest cold streak in Orlando in 20 years. Today, I’m still on a sort of Lotusphere-high and I’m really surprised (and pleased) to see my team is applying a lot of what they learned at the event.

One of the things we were most excited about was DAOS. This utility falls under the category of “stuff I never expected IBM/Lotus to come up with, but am REALLY glad they did.” This is a great example of some brilliant thinking on the part of the Lotus development team because it gets at a core problem within nearly every company: huge amounts of redundant file attachments.

Armed with more how-to knowledge about DAOS, we returned to the office with the goal of implementing this as one of the first action items coming out of Lotusphere. Below are stats from just two of our servers:

• Mail server:
  - 171 db’s analyzed
  - 162GB of NSFs
  - 647,001 attachments
  - 368,877 duplicate attachments
  - Disk savings: 64.1GB
• Application server:
  - 158 db’s analyzed
  - 52.6GB of NSFs
  - 410,219 attachments
  - 148,035 duplicate attachments
  - Disk savings: 12GB

Beyond disk savings on those servers, the value of this extends (almost exponentially) to our backup solution. We store a few days of backups on-disk (so that savings is multiplied) and then write to tape (again, multiplying the savings) and finally to archive tapes. When you consider that the Lotus Notes/Domino upgrade that contains this feature is included in our normal maintenance and that the savings extends throughout our infrastructure … it becomes a tool that’s so much more impressive.

Tags: daos, domino, lotusphere

Sort of.

A few weeks ago I talked about an application called NotesCal which looked to be a promising application that would deliver my Notes calendar to my iPhone. However, I ran into a common error that many others did. The developer contacted me to tell me that he was seeding a new update to the AppStore and since then, I’ve been waiting patiently.

Today, it arrived. The application has been renamed to NotesPro and its worthy of the name change! Not only does it deliver calendar information (which now works for me, btw) but it also supports email, contacts and to do’s.

Let me repeat that: iPhone application that displays my Lotus Notes email, calendar, contacts and to do’s.

Now, before I go further, let me just say that I’ve litterally tried each and every iPhone-Notes solution out there and this one, in my opinion, comes closest to being “the app” that’s been missing in the marketplace. AND, I’m plesantly surprised that the upgrade didn’t just fix the calendar issue, but threw in some AWESOME value-added tools in the process!

That being said, I think there are some obvious next steps for the app. No, you’re not going to be able to tell your organization you can now support the iPhone. A few more things need to exist, including:

• Ability to delete emails (right now its view, create and reply)
• Ability to create calendar entries
• Ability to create to-do’s (or at least update them)
• Scrolling of the entire “document” on the iPhone. The app just scrolls the text field, not the whole thing. I thought this was going to be a cool feature but it feels like my HUGE iPhone screen just got limited down to about 1/3 the size.
• Ability to accept calendar invites
• Ability to set email/calender/etc. sync schedules (the whole thing works off an agent you need to build in your mail file, so I’m not even going to beg for push email). And then if I had that, I’d want…
• Icon denoting how many new messages in the inbox at the iPhone application menu

Overall, its still a great app and a very strong release (considering that I didn’t even expect ANYTHING else to be in the release other than a calendar fix). The app is a bit slow, but tolerable (and faster, for me, than using the ultralite thing). My contacts also don’t work and give a generic error – but I haven’t followed up on that yet.

So… if you’re looking for a strong iPhone-to-Notes application, this is worth checking out. I have to say, I’m really hopeful for where this will go based on the HUGE step forward since the last update. Who knows … maybe I’ll get my dream list above and more on the next round!

Tags: appstore, iphone, lotus, notes