ZDNet Between the Lines: IBM´s Mills touts managed clients

August 12 2005

IBM's Steve Mills keynoted LinuxWorld today, and he used the opportunity to talk about the IBM Workplace Managed Client...

Steve Mills, IBM's top software executive, sent a clear message during his keynote this afternoon at LinuxWorld that IBM's is ready to take on Microsoft with its Workplace managed client. ...

Next Mills gave a couple of customer case studies that touted the benefits of IBM's Workplace managed client, and then called a colleague on to the stage to demo the software on two screens, one running Red Hat Linux and the other, Windows.  Noteworthy among the plug-ins and functionality was the "Activity Explorer," which changes up the idea of how collaboration is initiated. Rather than centering on e-mail or IM, it puts awareness in context around activities such as shared documents.
The Linux story for the Workplace Managed Client is a strong one...and the one that will put Notes on Linux  (might want to check out Jeff Eisen's comment in that thread).

Link: ZDNet Between the Lines: IBM's Mills touts managed clients >

Ed Brill Las Vegas, NV USA Category:  IBM Workplace  Add/View Comments [6]

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  1. 1  Villi  | 8/12/2005 11:25:08 AM

    How, exactly, does Workplace (Activity Explorer) "put awareness in context around activities such as shared documents" without using IM or email?

  1. 2  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 8/12/2005 11:43:44 AM

    @1 - Activity Explorer { Link }

  1. 3  Villi  | 8/12/2005 12:18:07 PM

    @2 - I understand the theory: "what is the best method for a group of people to communicate and share information".

    The link you sent me, defines "Activity Explorer" as: shared note, persistent chat, shared folder, shared file, shared screen.

    This is old school groupware (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), expanded to include new technology (IM, shared screen etc.).

    What I have found, in my 20 years of working with groups (groupware) is that people really dont want to work together or share information. That is the problem.

    The trick is to stoke the individual ego (like Wikipedia does i.e. I am so smart). When the individual sees an advantage for himself, he might participate - else it is a dog eat dog world out there:)

  1. 4  Mark Hughes  | 8/12/2005 1:21:20 PM

    When will the managed client be released? Is it included in the free 25 user WSE for a year we signed up for?

  1. 5  Randall Shimizu  | 8/13/2005 12:47:06 PM

    I think the activity explorer is a revolutionary collaboration technology. One of the great challenges for IT people and other users is to aggregate & organizize the myriad of information that is available today.

    What would be really cool is if there was some sort of AI or inference engine that would be able to monitor and parse websites that we browse so that we would constantly have to spend time visiting various sites. RSS is a step in the right direction, but it does not do enough parsing.

  1. 6  Hosun Lee  | 8/15/2005 12:33:13 PM

    @3 Thus if you pitch Activity Explorer or data consolidation as a benefit to the individual, it might work.

    I myself may not have any incentive to share my chat logs, emails, etc with you my teammate. However, if the system automatically enabled the sharing, with minimal to no input from me, it would be of value to me. Especially if this held true for everyone in my team.

    I'm so used to searching for that powerpoint file from last week or that e-mail yesterday from that customer, that I stopped thinking about the impact these actions have on my time. I want a tool that allows me to measure the downtime these actions have.....and then turn that time around to my benefit so I can do more meaningful things like surf the web.