Duffbert's Random Musings :: Liveblogging the Opening General Session

Category Lotusphere2008

This'll be a bit of an experiment for me, as I've always decided before just to let things wash over me and type later. But let's see if the old dog can learn new tricks here...

Good seating... Far left section on the end, about five rows back with a number of friends. Getting the seating settled for OGS always is my biggest stress. Glad that's over. Good live band to keep us entertained from 7:30 on.

The theme this year is "Emergence"... agenda is:

Emergence Symphony

Live orchestra to accompany the big screen film... Impressive. I missed the name, but the group is teaming up with the live band, and sounds very "Trans-Siberian Orchestra". What a start!

Welcome

Mike Rhodin starts things off... "began the day with a little Symphony". Looking for emerging patterns, instead of being locked into the details... Identifying the "bigger picture". Shipped entire roadmap announced at Lotusphere 2007 by mid-year, with 9% revenue growth.

Guest Speaker

Bob Costas... I recorded that one... posting soon.

Keynote

CEOs are focused on collaboration... Started with documents, second generation was people-centric. Today's generation is community-centric collaboration. The "Facebook" crowd. Mike contrasted his way of settling issues with his daughter's way... face-to-face vs. virtual community. If we don't provide those types of tools to the generation, they'll turn to consumer products that might not be secure.

Cost optimization is squeezed hard. Can't increase profits by doing the same old thing over and over. Collaboration is the key to breaking out and growing revenue. Unlock the knowledge of the workers. Knowledge management tools didn't work the way people worked. Social software shows how software conforms to people, not the other way around. Organic communities form around ideas and interests. Focusing on search is driving by the rear-view mirror, as it's just more data without context. Search gives you what you ask for, discovery gives you what you needed.

The old model was sequential. Today is multi-task oriented. Context is all important, as that's the only way that natural interaction will occur.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Blackberry/RIM and IBM will be entering into a number of agreements to support each other. No details given at this point in the talk... Later?

Command and control systems won't continue to work. Collaboration and access is what and where things are going. Need to move beyond proprietary technology and adapt open technologies to improve profit and flexibility.

CTO of SAP came on stage to talk about the 80% overlap between SAP companies and Lotus companies. ANNOUNCEMENT: "Atlantic" - joint software product between SAP and Lotus, gives SAP Business Suite users access to SAP via Notes. A lot of features "out of the box". A whole laundry list of features and functions were given. I'm sure more will be discussed in later sessions and press coverage. Demo of the software was given. This could be a bit thing for SAP users, and will make Lotus an attractive offering to those shops.

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Alistair Remmie... Jeff Eisen, Russ Holden... both made cases for which group is moving faster. :) Adding Ubuntu Linux after 8.0.1. Mac client beta 8.5 also available now. 30% bandwidth reduction, 35% mail file storage production. DWA optimized for low bandwidth, 45% faster now. Coming up in the client... demo of latest Notes client ... Quickr integration in the Notes client. Dual calendar scheduling for both personal and service oriented Sametime usage. Widget pallette for the Notes client, can select/create them from Google Gadget and other sources. Very nice!

Brief break... lost this locally. :) Lots of talk about DWA in the reduced mode. Showing video of how it'll work on iPhone. Looking forward to that. The "Live Text" feature that connects to widgets and stuff is also good.

Domino 8.5 - better ID management. Can be stored in a central location. Unified directory. New mail store for attachments, can reduce storage by 35%. Clients for Spam/virus security.

Domino Designer 8.5 will offer Web 2.0 design offerings, reskinning apps, etc. Maureen is demo'ing... Ajax built in, using Domino Designer. Uses "XPages". Very Eclipse-type design of Designer. Ajax features can be controls and just dropped in. Can apply new style sheets just by menu selection. Freaking cool! Looks like Eclipse because... It IS based on Eclipse. Whoo-hoo! Class browser for LotusScript and improved JS editing. The client is extensible, too. This is just about everything we've wished for!

IBM Lotus Symphony

Kevin Cavaugh... 400000 downloads. Continued improvement in betas. February 2008 - improvements in programmability. Symphony apps will also be able to run in Notes. This could be interesting. Symphony.lotus.com are upcoming road shows. Lotus is really positioning this as an Office-killer and a platform to build on.

IBM Lotus Sametime and UC2

Bruce Morse.. 10 year anniversary of Sametime. 100 million Sametime customers. 1/3 are converts from "other vendors". Example of Celina Insurance Group using ST to get better agent communication and loyalty. Carestream Health uses ST in Radiology for ad-hoc communication for better diagnosis. Communication to referring physician (chat, voip, image sharing) makes a huge difference. Demo of ST Advanced and ST Unified Messaging. I'll let those who focus in this area expound more here. Even for someone like me who isn't on top of the latest and greatest was impressed, however. ST tie-in to Unified Messaging is sweet.

IBM WebSphere Portal

Larry Bowden... Just a side note from me. It wasn't too long ago when this would have been the lead-off topic. I appreciate seeing Notes/Domino's importance being recognized. Announcements and examples of how Portal is present in many large organizations, as well as some additional focus on industry-specific accelerators and plug-ins. Delivering Portal 6.1 in second half of this year, and over half of the customers are already there.

<down to 17% power... :( >

Web 2.0 Goes to Work

Jeff Schick... This encompassed Quickr and Connections. Quickr 8.1 shipping in March. Integration to FileNet P8 and IBM CMS, and other plug-ins are coming. Good demo of what's coming out in 8.1 as well as future items. I need to get Quickr pushed at work.... :)

Lotus Connections - next release will span "from mobile to global". Embedding language translation and many non-Arabic character sets and languages. Linkages to many different other social networking sites. Version 2.0 will have "attention management" to focus on what's critical to you. Atlas allows visual networking connections so that you can see relationships. Connections will allow replication, and will be viewable via any mobile devices. Demo of this one too.

NEW TOOL! Lotus Mashups! This can be a major advantage. A lightweight mashup creator for multiple platforms, all open. I'll want to dig into this one too!

Just before I turned off... BIG ANNOUNCEMENT... Expanding SMB focus for those with little to no expertise. Lotus Foundations.... software servers shipping later this year. Collaboration with Notes/Domino/Symphony/etc. Nice... Brings in "Express Advantage" features. The Nitix technology plays in here. Foundation server in a manilla envelope (ala Steve Jobs). This could make a huge difference. Bluehouse - software as a service offering for companies of less than 500 employees. No "advertising" model here! I'll be interested to see the technical architecture behind this. Starts managed beta today.

Coda

My own coda (since I'm at 10% power)... From a developer perspective, the Designer Client upgrade is really nice. Mashups? Hot! I'm also impressed that they are taking steps to turn Symphony into a full development platform. I'm sure I'll have other insights and observations. But I better save and close this before my battery completely dies.