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Lotus UK ’Power of Business Applications’ conference - 16th June, 2010

Chris Connor  20 May 2010 08:53:38 AM
I am delighted to say that I will be speaking at the Lotus UK 'Power of Business Applications' conference on 16th June 2010.

As mentioned before from a few guys on Planet Lotus this event has a nice balance of technical and business information. However, the emphasis is really on what is possible with Lotus software. As such I will be speaking about how some of our customers are using Lotus based software as the backbone of their business. I will also will be discussing some current initiatives and benefits around xPages applications and other new innovations.

Should be a really interesting day if you can spare a few hours.

Feel free to contact me here if you have any questions (or indeed suggestions!) for specific information or content that you would like to see included in the day.

Future evolution of Notes and the "D" word

Chris Connor  22 April 2010 10:04:19 AM
Thought I would post some brief comments after reading Paul Mooney and others comments on the Lotus platform and it's future prospects. I have read some excellent posts and comments about where we are at just now and interesting suggestions on how the Client and the platform in general can move forward.

I echo Paul's concerns in that by constantly talking about the "D" word and the Lotus platform. Been developing and working with Notes for 15 years and I have heard "the D word" constantly being muttered by competitors more than I could be bothered to count. And yet here we are in 2010.....

This is something that we have to move away from. The battle is not about "saving notes", how Notes is "the D word" or not "the D word". It is about delivering value with xPages, composite applications, RIAs, integration with different platforms, mobile solutions with BES / Traveller, cutting costs with symphony, buying into the vulcan roadmap / vision, a strong partner / customer community, proven applications as the backbone of business, new marketing efforts, OpenNTF, IBM Lotus Q1 turnover being up etc....etc.....etc......

Pause - breathe....

Just as Paul said our customers and competitors are reading and using this. Customers have been listening to "the D word" for as long as we can remember. Lets highlight the shortcomings in our competitors strategies and products and promote where we are now with the product and where we are going.

Let's hear more about the new wins such as Panasonic. Let's blog and talk more about the individual case studies of people using the platform today - there are many out there. These are critical applications that run small, medium and large businesses. We need to talk and promote our collaboration solutions that installed in our multi-national companies. Every application (large or small) we deploy proves a business case for successful investment in Lotus technology - let's get that message out there!!

All my customers that I have spoken to that attended Lotusphere or heard the message from me are impressed with the vision - this has led to M$ doors being closed (admittedly they were not that open anyway - they actually WANTED to hear that message - people were curious though about the whispering "D word").

It is still early days in our new future - I can personally say that this new message IS bringing in new business.

Let's kill "the D word" - we are not helping ourselves when using it!!

Let's start blogging and writing about what we KNOW works well.

 

LotusLive Event in Edinburgh 25th February 2010

Chris Connor  16 February 2010 10:37:24 AM
IBM are hosting an excellent LotusLive / Cloud computing event in Edinburgh on the 25th February if anyone in our area is interested.

Details are as follows

Cloud Computing is the hottest IT topic for some time,  everyone's talking about it and justifiably so, never before has there been the opportunity to reduce cost whilst removing complexity and risk from your business so easily and efficiently .  IBM is already a pioneer and leader in this field with numerous offerings and awards won.  LotusLive, our eMail and Collaborative Cloud based solution is  Winner of the Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Computing  Choice Award by  Technology Buyers and was recently voted CRNs “2009 Best Product for Cloud Computing”.

With prices starting from only £2 per user per month why don't  you find out for yourself what all the fuss is about?  I would like to personally invite you to attend a free Software as a Service (SaaS) seminar to see how IBM's LotusLive Portfolio can help enable your business for online email and collaboration techniques.

Enabling your business to operate smarter by delivering critical business services via cloud computing, IBM offers you a full range of collaboration and communication solutions, with a spectrum of integrated technology capabilities, providing access to resources via the IBM cloud, your private cloud, or an integration of both to suit an on-premise/cloud hybrid model, if preferred.

This workshop introduces LotusLive, IBM’s cloud based portfolio of corporate social networking and collaboration services designed to help simplify and improve your business interactions with customers, partners, suppliers and colleagues both inside and outside your firewall. LotusLive has been designed with your business' security, flexibility and growth in mind and includes business critical features such as e-mail, web conferencing, instant messaging, corporate social networking, activity management, file sharing & control and more, delivered through models that enable your business to work smarter.

Come and see how LotusLive, *IBMs award winning e-mail and collaboration software, can help you to achieve the benefits that cloud based solutions can deliver, such as:
  • A reduction of your IT costs
  • An improvement of your capital utilisation.
  • A reduction in your provisioning cycle time from weeks to minutes
  • A reduction in your end-user support costs

Agenda
09:30 -- 09:40 Registration and coffees
09:40 -- 09:45 Welcome and Introduction
09:45 -- 10:15 IBM's Cloud Strategy
10:15 -- 11:30 LotusLive - e-mail and Collaboration - Overview and Demo
11:30 -- 11:45 Coffee
11:45 -- 13:00 LotusLive Technical Overview
13:00 -- 14:00 Light Lunch
14:00 -- 15:30 Hands on Workshop

Respond to this Blog entry or drop me a note on chris@bssuk.net if interested

Date:                25th February 2010
Location:        Stephenson Room - IBM 21 St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh

Free Sample Help Desk xPages Application

Chris Connor  11 February 2010 08:31:29 AM
At the start of the year I asked a question around the need in the community for free xPages office applications. Thinking of releasing a sample help desk application I have been working as a demo system for some customers that could be used as a simple ticket tracking system.

The system would allow

1. Tickets to be raised, categorised and email routed to appropriate members of staff.
2. Tickets to be tracked according to status
3. Updates / Discussions to be captured during the ticket resolution process.
4. Tickets to be closed and time taken to close and cost captured.
5. Tracking of support Budgets

Depending on feedback etc this would be something I would be willing to invest time into and support (if there is a requirement and need for it).

This system currently uses common xPages / Domino features for forms, workflow, views, security, partial refreshes as well as implementing a basic search function, using jQuery for providing sortable tables (that work in searches - ie Perform a search then sort the results client side) - so it would be a useful working example of how a basic xPages application can be built.

What are your thoughts around this? Is there a requirement for this sort of thing? If so what would be the best approach regarding releasing this?

All your thoughts and feedback would be very much appreciated.

Lotus knows a powerful integrated application platform

Chris Connor  26 January 2010 09:23:39 PM
Some thoughts and experience on a recent project

Recently I have been working on building a browser based time recording system that interfaces with an MS SQL driven clock in time and attendance HR application. My customer had spent many months picking a best of breed time and attendance system and now required to redevelop their time recording application to interface with this to streamline both billing and HR time and attendance processes.

So what do we do? Ask the vendor to extend their application in SQL / .net? Write a "module" in .net to integrate with the application?

Management knew that they had all the systems and information - they just did not talk together. This is where Domino as it stands today is really smart and is something we should be shouting from the rooftops!!

Using Lotus Domino Agents and simple SQL interrogation tools we as a small team working with the customer unpicked the application, understood the tables and logic and built a simple domino web interface to enforce business rules for allocating project time to the time captured by the clock in system

So all the customers consultants (who are required to submit weekly timesheets for billing etc) now do is allocate the projects they were working on for that period of time driven from the time and recording system. And if they were on holiday, off sick or whatever their time sheets entries are automatically done for them!

I know that this was achieved quickly due to the unique capabilities of Domino as a web application platform. Why?

Native security allowed us to quickly develop a multi faced application so that different people input and approve time sheets.
Simple Domino Forms allowed us to quickly develop a friendly user interface for the web.
Domino Agents provided reference information for time clocked and absences where appropriate.

Thing is this sort of architecture can be deployed on any platform (MS, Novell, UNIX whatever) - drop a Domino box into any environment and away we go! Maintenance wise it sort of looks after itself as the Domino Directory (could be any directory) and the "People" SQL tables talk together.

I think there is a real future with these sort of solutions for all sorts of businesses - and this is why I (as a business) must really start ramping up on Lotus Foundations. Now that we have xPages and offerings that extend to mobile clients we are really offering a simple proven architecture for quickly developing applications with a singe UI to all clients - even offline!!

Lotusphere - xPages Tools for Performance

Chris Connor  18 January 2010 07:31:03 PM
Some excellent information on tools for us xPages guys. Coming soon is an xPages profiler - shows

CPU / Memory
Runtime
Variables (such as session scope / application score)
Memory inspection
Hierarchy of all objects on the page

Dump what is going on at a low level to an xml file. Helps to spot issues / bottlenecks / performance areas. Will be available on openNTF - looks like an essential tool.

Learning a lot about performance - what to do (and more importantly what not to do) - will be applying these and blogging about them in the very near future - so watch this space...

Lotusphere - Strategy and Futures session

Chris Connor  18 January 2010 06:00:47 PM
Again might be a bit rough..but here is my look at things

Starts with a review of success of 2009

8.5.1 - More than a "maintenance release"
- Notes client user enhancements
- Domino Designer in eclipse
- New Editors
- Traveller
- changes to licenses
- Free designer
- LotusLive
- Lotus Mobile Connect as part of your entitlement
- DAOS
- Simplifed ID Management
- xPages
- Reduce operating costs by 30% or more

SO - Get onto Notes 8.5.1

Independent TCO Analysis says Notes and Domino 8.5.1 is up to 52% cheaper.

CASE Study

Interesting case study from GM 3000 users moved to 8 and now starting 8.5.1 at 1000 people a day!!

Feedback is that people love
      - Browser based client as well as traditional client
      - Intuitive
      - Calendar side bar
      - Type ahead

Mobility at GM seems to be big thing with iPhone / Traveller - personally it is time for me to get this up and running

Unified communications - Presence awareness, Single phone number for follow me - call the person not the device. Least cost routing.

Improved employee production through "one click" access.

Sharepoint 2010 / Microsoft

Debunking some cost myths - disk savings are better with Domino. IBM internal move to symphony has saved 20 cents a document!!!
Using the right form of collaboration can save time and money and increase productivity - focus is therefore here. This is why the Notes Client is becoming a collaboration desktop.

Lotus Notes and Domino Delivery models

Many choices now with on premise, cloud, appliance, hybrid to suit your plans and priorities.

LotusLive Notes in 2010 - over 18 million users

Cloud based Domino Mail, Calendar, Contact and IM
Seamless transition to the cloud for continuity
Secure, scalable, economical
Tuned for hybrid

BES / Traveller is coming, 5GB limit and sametime IM.

Available loosely speaking - mid year

Lotus Foundations / Office Now / Shoretel

1000 MS partners recruited to sell foundations!!
Exiting OfficeNow offering - works with xerox document applications from device (copiers etc) to Lotus Foundations

Traveller / Mobile
Notes encrypted email from iPhone is coming
Linux support
Optimised client
Partnership with Nokia is underway with good joint marketing.
Excellent demonstration with E72 looks interesting (mail, calender, contacts, sametime, telephony integration)
Andoid support has been announcement

Lotus Protector for Mail Security
Security and compliance services (spam filtering etc) - Integrates with inbox features
Real growth end of 2009
Used internally @ IBM
Grow @ 270%+
Now announcing Protector for Mail encryption - secure internet mail using PGP secure mail technology

Archiving options - with sonian
archiving in the cloud (so on premise or LotusLive Notes)

Alloy for SAP
Plans to align with collaboration agenda via openNTF. More features coming.

Developer Community - OpenNTF
67000 - (8000 new members)
400+ releases ready to use
Traffic up 25%
3million + visit

Cloud Development for Domino
Amazon EC2 based - develop and test in the cloud - no investment in hardware.

Catalog
Need to get our applications listed - priority!!

Lotus Vision 2020 - The 2020 plan!
Project Vulcan will start to be delivered in 2011
Windows and office is dead!!
But vulcan will still continue to support it!!
Symphony 3.0 is coming - beta early next month - so go download. VB support and more!!
Project concorde - web based editing for collaboration via LotusLive (Live secitons, co-editing, contextual commenting, web clipping and more - REAL WEB 2.0)
All Lotus product set will be available via the cloud
The notes interface will be focussed on Web 2.0 - UI will be unified in browser and Notes client - this is the long term goal.
Notes will grow based on its experience 20 years - offline client experience will build on that.It is obvious the game is changing - organisational collaboration is the direction.
Mary Beth Raven is doing new interface of integrated Mail, Contacts / Tasks (such as Linked In, Connections etc federated in a common place), ,Calendars (again Federated) Demo - advanced search and analytics. An amazing demo of the future "Notes Next" (or whatever it is going to be called). Follow the Notes design blog for more information as it evolves. Federation is the key - pulling data from different sources, cognos, connections, email, discussions, opportunities, tasks into one interface - it looks very Web 2.0.

Call to action
Save money - upgrade to 8.5.1
Go beyond email - think web 2.0
Get a strategy on security
Modernise applications with RIA - embrace xPages!
Plan long term - plan for 2020.

    Lotusphere - more whats new in xPages

    Chris Connor  18 January 2010 04:36:10 PM
    New back end classes capability - better integration with Lotusscript and Agents.

    CKEditor - this is really needed and I know people are looking for this as in the past editing options were really poor. New capabilities such as resizing the editor real time by the user, more toolbar features (image uploaders etc).

    Proper documentation of the java APIs. Better design time rendering (themes / styles) and improved repeat rendering.

    Drag and drop of components and controls direct into the source - a real frustration in the past when working day to day with xPages.

    Futures...this is what I call a world class web development platform

    1. xPages stateless mode - HTML without the server side life cycle
    2. More dojo tools (sliders / pretty and simple to build tooltips)
    3. Grid / View integration with multiple level categorisation, responses
    4. Calender control
    5. Better dialog box integration (I personally have had much pain here!!)
    6. A big one this - RELATIONAL DATA ACCESS via JDBC
    7. Mobile device support (themes presentation according to platform)
    8. Integration with other Lotus products (Sametime / Quckr / Connections controls) - the quickr one looks very easy!
    9. Better intergation between calling JS and LS!!





    Lotusphere - What’s new in xPages #1

    Chris Connor  18 January 2010 04:03:54 PM
    Disclaimer - OK this is live so it will be a bit rough so please don't shoot me!

    xPages is the tool for web 2.0 development for browser, mobile client and notes client. Developers in the Domino space now have a roadmap for development with a platform that IBM is committed to and is aligned to web 2.0 features and principles.

    Thats where we are just now. New features include in version 8.5.2 include stability, performance and integrate better with the client (and therefore the wider fantastic portfolio - including aligning with project "vulcan" - you will hear a lot about this game changing direction).

    The immediate goal is to make xPages technology available to the client better "offline" - on all platforms (windows / MAC / Linux - with java based security ECL for real security). I know (and Lotus knows) that this will be a big thing for my clients.

    Web pages will run on the client using and embedded XUL Runner browser which runs closely with xpages runtime. This new feature therefore allows us to intergate better with composite applications - and of course as I keep saying - offline.

    Performance improvements (if you work with xPages you know this has been an issue) include optimizing partial refresh, improving xPages runtime, Javascript interpreter performance, better compressed javascript / css files - and less to download.

    Eg Dojo date picker comes from some 20+files down to 1!!

    XPages Office Applications

    Chris Connor  5 January 2010 12:19:53 PM
    Over the last few years my job as a Domino consultant has taken me into many different areas. One area where I have made a reasonable level of success is in developing some standard Domino templates for common business functions such as Expenses Management, Time Recording and Purchase Order Requisitions.

    These web based applications run on Internet Explorer and part of my plan this year was to consider a rewrite with xPages.

    Now with a couple of real life deployment scenarios (also some product functionality maturity) behind me and some xPages experience I think the time is right to consider the next step.

    I guess what I am asking is....would there be an demand for these applications to be written in xPages - perhaps even based around some open source initiative?

    Business is good at the moment (meaning time is in short supply) so wise use of time on such activities and feedback on if this is an idea that will benefit the domino community and any advice would be very much appreciated.