Ed Brill

New Domino CAL pricing is fully in effect as of today

Ed Brill — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 06:29:17 -0500

In October, IBM announced that licensing for Lotus Notes/Domino would be changing. We announced a client access license model for Domino, replacing various software licensing schemes for Lotus Notes, iNotes, Domino Designer, and Notes Traveler. The two client access licenses defined are the Domino Messaging CAL and the Domino Enterprise CAL. Domino Designer became a free/entitled product -- free to download and test, entitled in the Domino CAL to connect to Domino. Lotus Mobile Connect's client became entitled in the Enterprise CAL. Otherwise, the Enterprise CAL pretty much mapped up to the old "...for Collaboration" Notes and iNotes licenses, and the Messaging CAL lined up with the old "...for Messaging" ones.

Today, the Notes and iNotes software part numbers disappear from IBM Passport Advantage. Your entitlements should have been converted; your renewal invoices (except those due in the remaining weeks of February) should reflect the CAL model only. And gloriously, a whole bunch of confusion has disappeared from the IBM software price book. :-)

There is no change (other than the Mobile Connect entitlement) to the Lotus Communications CEO bundle; there is no change as of today to the Domino Express offerings; and the Domino Utility Server continues in its same form.

The impact of this change so far has been positive. We've seen tens of thousands of free Domino Designer 8.5.1 downloads, customers have adopted Lotus Mobile Connect, and a good portion of our Q4 2009 business came in using the simplified CALs (even though the Notes/iNotes licenses were still available). We've also shed the burden of having to track/manage/decide on Notes vs. iNotes; the CAL model looks to a future of seamless movement between client types and access methods. I'm sure there will still be some confusion as 2010 renewal invoices are generated, but it is a one-time change that has lots of net positives as a result.

Lotusphere 2010: Lotus Knows how to help you tell your story

Ed Brill — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 06:14:41 -0500

Somewhere in the myriad of offers, giveaways, and promotions at Lotusphere, I missed one we were running ourselves.

I am a huge fan of sites that allow you to create photo books out of digital images, and mypublisher.com and I are good friends. I've tried Snapfish, iPhoto books, and others. A site that wasn't on my radar until today is panraven.com. IBM partnered with Panraven to help you tell your story from Lotusphere 2010 -- and we'll even buy the book.

Now Lotus knows many of you created excellent photo imagery from Lotusphere 2010. Here's a chance to assemble, share, and even print those memories. For the first 500 Lotusphere attendees, Lotus is paying for your books -- "such a deal"! Would be great pass-arounds at upcoming Lotusphere Comes to You events.

Link: panraven.com: Lotusphere 2010 photo book >

Richard Schwartz: Better Late Than Never, My Take On Lotusphere 2010 And Project Vulcan

Ed Brill — Mon, 8 Feb 2010 13:00:44 -0500

I've read a ton of blog postings on IBM Project Vulcan since Lotusphere a few weeks ago... perhaps because of the iterative thinking in the community, or time to reflect, Richard Schwartz's analysis seems to me to be a good read on the project:

Five years ago, IBM introduced something with the potential to be quite revolutionary, but they saw that potential could not be realized on its own. They melded activity-centric collaboration into their Connections offering in order to tie a revolutionary concept into a larger framework of social collaboration first and foremost, and only secondarily tied it to Notes and Domino, and I think the reason for this is now quite obvious: IBM realized that the people who really see the value in changing the way collaboration happens in their organization were looking at the wide variety of social software offerings, and at all of the innovation happening in that space, and that's where those key trend-setting customers saw the future. My interpretation of Project Vulcan, based on what I've seen so far, is that it is targeting that advanced vision of the future in away that brings the full Lotus customer base along for the ride.

Vulcan fulfills what IBM wanted to do with activity-centric collaboration by presenting users with a FaceBook-like home page drawing on a full-range of social software technologies, aggregating both the explicit activities and information streams that users already know they need to know about along with the ones that they don't know about yet but probably should be aware of. It's the social analytics-driven aggregation that was the missing element in activity-centric collaboration, so that's where I get the idea that Vulcan is the logical continuation of activity-centric collaboration. It is an evolutionary step toward completion of a revolutionary idea that IBM showed us half a decade ago.

And that's what smooth sailing and full speed ahead are all about: being confident that the course you're on is the right one even in a rapidly changing marketplace, confident enough to embrace others' innovations that have found broad acceptance in the market, while continuing to advance your own revolutionary ideas even when customers need change to be evolutionary.

Link: Richard Schwartz: Better Late Than Never, My Take On Lotusphere 2010 And Project Vulcan >

(Update: John Roling posted a similar kind of analysis just a few minutes later, "Why Project Vulcan from IBM Lotus matters" ) >

Symphony 3.0 beta now available

Ed Brill — Thu, 4 Feb 2010 00:15:00 -0500

As promised at Lotusphere, the beta of Lotus Symphony 3.0 is now available on symphony.lotus.com...

Key new features in Symphony 3.0:

VB Macros support
ODF 1.2 support for improved file interoperability
embedded audio/video allows users to add media directly to slides, documents and sheets
autotext support to create "chunks" of text that are used frequently and quickly inserted
digital signatures
redline support --- shows edits made to document
usability enhancements

I know some are asking, "What happened to Symphony 2.0?" The answer is, since this new release is aligned with the OpenOffice 3.x codebase, we chose to move the version number up to alignment. Symphony 3.0 is going to be exciting and further help liberate IT organizations from paying high Microsoft taxes -- get started now by downloading the beta and providing feedback.

Michael Sampson: Lotus roadmap and user adoption surveys

Ed Brill — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:47:22 -0500

Michael Sampson looks to me like he can see the future. Though he was never briefed on what was coming at Lotusphere 2010, in January, he published a white paper on the Lotus roadmap:

Lotus Notes has been around for a long time. Since its release in 1989 it has always been viewed as a "different" piece of technology, loved by some people and reviled by others. It takes a different approach to information management and collaboration tasks, it looks different from the standard Microsoft offering which many people view as being "authoritatively correct", and it offers capability for being used so broadly across an organization that it can be put to use on many tasks, including tasks that it is not well-suited for.
So what do we do with Lotus Notes, and by implication, the other products from Lotus Software? Is there still life left in Lotus? Is it time to move to "greener pastures"? Are the new offerings from other vendors better suited to the information management and collaboration tasks that organizations are using Lotus Notes for? These are the questions addressed in this report.

This is an excellent report and should offer much confidence for anyone considering their future direction with Lotus software, and Notes and Domino specifically. An update with some of the IBM Project Vulcan news from Lotusphere is all that one would need to add to this paper for a high degree of understanding of the future.

Speaking of Michael, he also is looking for some help.

I'm doing some work around user adoption strategies for collaboration tools ... extending the work in SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, learning more for Collaboration Roadmap, and various other things ;-)
So ... I'm looking for people to interview about their work with User Adoption Strategies. Are you doing cool stuff with how to encourage people to adopt new collaboration tools -- SharePoint, Lotus Connections and Quickr, Socialtext, Jive SBS, Yammer, and other such tools? "If yes ... please take my user adoption strategies survey as a first step. Thanks."

Michael's name as an analyst should be familiar to many in the Lotus community for years of understanding our marketplace. He's branched out to other technology providers and solutions, and that makes it all the more impressive that he continues to be able to conduct such a deep, fact-based analysis of what's going on at IBM Lotus. Highly recommended to engage with Michael on either of these opportunities.

From a recent LinkedIn conversation about Notes to Exchange migrations

Ed Brill — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:38:34 -0500

I think I'm not allowed to quote LinkedIn discussions from membership groups in public, but there are some real quotable comments in this thread. The original poster basically asks for experiences with Notes to Exchange migration. Most of the reply comments say, essentially, don't do it -- you won't be successful, it will cost more than you anticipated, and in one case, we decided not to after all our study. The only "dissent", if you can call it that, is a person who shares Microsoft party lines but doesn't actually talk about the experience of such a migration.

If companies that are being seduced actually took a look at a discussion like this, they'd realize that not only is it a bad idea, but there is so much more they can do with their Notes/Domino investment.

Link: LinkedIn: Lotus Notes to Exchange migration > (getting some comments that the link doesn't work, even if you are a member of the "Lotus Professionals" group. Please navigate there directly if you want to read the full discussion)

Robert R Taylor Network: Website and Lotusphere video

Ed Brill — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:33:18 -0500

So I had no idea about this during Lotusphere but it's pretty cool. A group of high school and college interns sponsored by the Robert R Taylor Network were at Lotusphere... and they've built a whole website using Lotus Foundations, the IBM client for Smart Work (Notes+Symphony on Linux), and Virtual Bridges. Another great project to get student populations involved with Lotus software...

This video was recorded at Lotusphere:

and talks about how they are developing RRTN.net. The team came away from Lotusphere energized about their direction and choice of Lotus technologies...it will be interesting to see how their project, and involvement, progresses.

Lotusphere Comes to You: Yo voy a España

Ed Brill — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 14:05:51 -0500

Sí, es la verdad -- yo iré a Lotusphere Comes to You en Madrid y Barcelona en Marzo. Pero, es posible que estoy muy loco. Voy a entregar mi presentación en español. Hablo español como un niño Mexicano, pero tengo seis semanas que practicar.

(Translation: Yes, it's true -- I'm going to "Lotusphere Comes to You in Madrid and Barcelona in March. But it's possible that I'm crazy. I'm going to deliver my presentation in Spanish. I speak Spanish like a Mexican child, but I have six weeks to practice.)

Más detalles en la comunidad ESLUG blog: Última hora: Lotusphere 2010 España contará con la presencia de Mr. Ed Brill >

Phil Simon: Technology Today podcast with Ed Brill

Ed Brill — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 06:41:16 -0500

A few weeks ago, Phil Simon wrote a blog entry called "When it's time to abandon ship", where he discussed the new FewClix plug-in for Notes. His general point -- why would anyone use a plug-in to address "basic features, such as search and performance?"

I am not sure that is how FewClix is positioned -- I met with Synaptris at Lotusphere and thought FewClix was pretty cool. It's not for everyone, but it does have an executive dashboard-like feel about it, and some real clean navigation and categorization tools for Notes mail. It's worth checking out for certain types of "power users".

Anyway, back to Phil. His experience with Notes, and that of those around him, was still Notes 5/6 or earlier, and he had a lot of criticisms of the Notes UI -- to the point of suggesting that IBM "blow up" Notes.

I'm a sucker for a provocative blog, I guess, but in this case, I'm glad that I (and several of you) jumped in. Phil took the comments quite seriously, and the result was a podcast we did yesterday.

Ed sent me some information on the enhancements that Lotus Notes has incorporated into its newest version and, I must admit, I was pretty impressed. I started thinking broadly about some of the challenges that many--if not most--large organizations face in integrating new technologies (such as social media and other collaborative tools) into existing products. I would argue that introducing a new application is fundamentally easier than modifying existing ones.

Well, yes, that's called the Innovator's Dilemma, and we think about it often in the context of a 20-year product history.

Anyway, the target audience for Phil's podcast is outside the Notes community, so our discussion took place under a more general IT banner. Worth a 20-minute-ish listen. Thanks to Phil for the opportunity to talk, and for accommodating a crazy schedule this week.

Link: Phil Simon: Technology Today podcast with Ed Brill >

Lotusphere 2010: An oral history of Lotus Notes / the first 20 years

Ed Brill — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:51:00 -0500

I have been remiss in not posting our slides from this session. While I believe that the presentation was one of those "Lotusphere moments" that are hard to recreate, I will deliver versions of this as part of presentations at upcoming Lotusphere Comes to You events in Munich and Dusseldorf....and maybe other locations. For the rest of you, it's worth sharing what Scott Souder and I did.

Lotusphere 2010: An Oral History Of Ibm Lotus Notes First 20 Years

View more presentations from Ed Brill.

Some of this content isn't self-explanatory. Slides 19 forward were individual stories and anecdotes. Yes, we mentioned the involvement of Sheldon Laube, Mark Cuban, Will Raabe, and Ray Ozzie in the history of Notes. We could have mentioned many, many others (yes, Pags, I'm looking at you). Speaking of Ray, the email there is one he sent me, unprompted, after I blogged about the plan for this session. And Rob Novak picked up slide 23 on his own blog -- saying it was part of why Lotusphere 2010 was his favorite Lotusphere.

I have some thank yous to offer on this session:
Thank you to Martha McGovern for sending along some "Iris R5" badge holders which I gave out in the session at Lotusphere; Chris Reckling and others for photos that we used during the walk-in montage; Will Raabe and David Atwood for videos; John Roling for some great photos from this session, and most importantly to Scott Souder, who took my 5-year-old Notes history presentation and really made it pop. Scott is a quiet giant on my team -- he was part of the original Notes sales team in 1990, and has been around the product ever since. It was great fun to present with him, and I was so grateful in the run-up to Lotusphere that he had done all the legwork on this session. He even brought the visual aids you see in John Roling's photos -- the R5 martini glass, the boxed set of Notes V1 on floppy disk, the "never to be fixed" bug mug, etc.

It was really fun to do this session -- maybe again in another five years. Or maybe I'll write the book first.

Bob Balfe: Free charting in Lotus Notes

Ed Brill — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 08:23:29 -0500

This question came up at "Ask the developers" at Lotusphere 2010 and in a separate customer meeting I had during the week. Customers want to know how to do charting in the Notes client. This is one of the benefits of having moved the Notes client to Eclipse -- there are numerous tools, including the BIRT Eclipse plug-in and Dojo tools, to now easily do charting in Notes.

At the Meet the Developers session someone asked why there isn't charting tools "free" in the Notes client. There actually is, as I have demonstrated integration with Notes views and Symphony in the past (video 1, video 2, video 3), however, there have recently been a lot of up-take using XPages and Dojo charting [Goes into details on both]. ... A third option, because Lotus Notes is Eclipse based, you can also use BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tool).
In short, it looks like you have a few options to get free charting in Lotus Notes. If you do not want to use Symphony, then XPages, Composite Applications, Dojo, or BIRT are alternatives.

Link: Bob Balfe: Free charting in Lotus Notes >

A Bold upgrade

Ed Brill — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:50:00 -0500

Extremely grateful to my friends at RIM for upgrading me to the new Blackberry Bold 9700. I was one of the first Bold 9000 users, and I abused the heck out of that thing. It was finally a Blackberry that became a Crackberry for me...the whole reason I never wanted a Blackberry in the first place. This is, oddly, sort of a good thing. At least professionally it was.

Anyway, my Bold 9000 was a trusted companion for the last 15 months, but it started "white screening" frequently and having the occasional spontaneous reboot. Also the trackball was getting tired of me cleaning it. So, while we were at Lotusphere, RIM provided me with a new Bold 9700.

The verdict? I'm still a very happy Blackberry user. It's a fractional bit smaller, which is nice. The new touchpad that replaced the trackball is a godsend. It is easier to use and hopefully won't get all lint-y. The 9700 also is WAY faster on the 3G network at web page rendering and download, and the keyboard is easier to work with. My main complaint is the new mute/standby "button" -- it's not an actual button but more like a slight toggle rocker, and when a call comes in while in standby mode, the phone seems to be stuck in standby mode. A little weird.

I'm also not digging the fact that they changed to a different micro USB connector, rendering my home and car chargers obsolete, but such is the price of technical progress.

People keep asking me why I haven't gone iPhone. Simply put, I'm afraid of more addiction there. My wife has the "words with friends" Scrabble-like game on her iPhone, and plenty of other distractions. I think I'd never put the thing away. As addicted as I am to the 'berry, I can tell that would only be worse. However, if my friends in Cupertino would like me to be continue to be a mostly-Apple-household, that iPad can head my way....at least with Lotus Notes Traveler available now on iPhone, Nokia, and WinMo, and soon on Android, I have options. I like options.

ibm.com: scalability analysis of Notes and iNotes 8.5.1 on Citrix XenApp 4.5/5.0

Ed Brill — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:33:06 -0500

This white paper was published a few weeks ago but got lost in the pre-Lotusphere shuffle. Since we talked about virtualization in the Notes/Domino keynote at Lotusphere, I heard from many customers that having more details on how we view client virtualization is important. We've come a long way since Notes 8.0, which supported about 14 concurrent sessions on a Citrix box.

Therefore, we present

This white paper provides an overview and recommendations for how to get the most from your IBM Lotus® Notes® 8.5.1 client on the new Citrix XenApp™ 5.0 server. In particular, we show that, by tuning your environment so that you get the most from your applications, you can realize significant improvements in running the Notes client on XenApp. This is true for both the standard and the basic configurations of Lotus Notes.
Moreover, the new support for Microsoft® Windows® 2008 SP2 by Notes 8.5.1 together with memory improvements means we can scale to even higher numbers than before at a much reduced cost.

and look ma, no registration required :-)

Link: ibm.com: scalability analysis of Notes and iNotes 8.5.1 on Citrix XenApp 4.5/5.0 >

New screenshots of Lotus iNotes on IBM.com

Ed Brill — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:26:00 -0500

The ibm.com team is utilizing some new techniques to display product screen shots on our Lotus iNotes web pages. In the past, I've heard complaints that screen shots are hard to find on our website. The new technology makes them easier to find, display, zoom, and interact.

A bug in webkit-based browsers (e.g. Safari) related to image maps means this capability is intermittent, but on Firefox and IE, it works great.

Link: ibm.com: Lotus iNotes >

The Register: IBM attempts Vulcan death grip (and other UK Lotusphere press coverage)

Ed Brill — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:41:53 -0500

More UK press analysis coming out of Lotusphere...

[T]wo questions must be addressed in the days ahead. First, is the matter of whether IBM can actually live up to its promises to create a open and more developer-friendly platform than Microsoft. Microsoft might have the partner and developer ecosystem, but the Exchange and SharePoint code is not open. Big Blue is a major advocate and contributor to open source, so there's definitely hope for it there.

The next is IBM's direction itself. Google scored itself a lot of buzz with the introduction of its permissions-light Google Wave last year, but now many are scratching their heads wondering exactly what to do with it. To be fair, Wave is still at an unstable, preview stage, but Google has seemed satisfied thus far just hoping the platform will evolve naturally as a tool for enterprises once companies like Novell and Salesforce.com have a chance to game around with it.

IBM needs to shore in the free-love attitude of Google's to show some actual value and maturity in the idea. Big Blue may be following Google's lead in the collaboration space, but it must show the world that in the end, it's not too Googly.

Link: The Register UK: IBM attempts Vulcan death grip >

There has been a bunch of other good Lotusphere press coverage/analysis coming out of the UK publications:
V3.co.uk: Lotus Symphony gets Excel-like capabilities >
V3.co.uk: IBM launches LotusLive Labs >
V3.co.uk: Lotus Notes extended to smartphones >
V3.co.uk: IBM adds meeting functionality to Sametime >
V3.co.uk: IBM offers Lotus collaboration consulting services (about Collaboration Agenda) >
ZDNet.co.uk: IBM to release Lotus Notes app for Android >
ZDNet.co.uk: Blackberry gets apps for Lotus Quickr, Connections >
ChannelRegister.co.uk: IBM bakes Lotus Notes for Android >
ComputerWeekly.com: Lotus Notes importance of Android >
Computing.co.uk: IBM hopes Notes will live long and prosper with Project Vulcan >
ComputerWorld UK: IBM Lotus upgrades set for Notes, Domino, other products >