Content FeedGreat to see investment from IBM into Europe
IBM today announced new investments for its Ireland Development Lab to produce intelligent software, which help lower cost of operations; generate intelligence for quick growth; and build closer business relationships with customers, partners and colleagues. New jobs will be created for high value software engineering work at the lab, which addresses real-world issues such as environment protection projects and maritime affairs.I particularly like the focus on new Cloud/SaaS technology development:
IBM will have up to 100 new roles in Dublin, Cork and Galway -- including new opportunities for technology graduates -- in an Industrial Development Agency (IDA) Ireland supported investment of up to euro 25 million over the next three years. These software engineers will focus on designing enterprise cloud computing software, as well as Service Management and database software with business analytic capabilities.
"Today's announcement highlights Ireland as an important place to help fulfill our global research, development and business strategy," said Michael Daly, General Manager, IBM Ireland. "The software will be standardized and customized by customer demands."
IBM will expand the lab in three main areas including information development, database and cloud computing software:
-- creating a new cloud computing software development team to work on IBM LotusLive offerings, which is a suite of cloud-delivered online technologies for business. LotusLive provides essential collaboration services to simplify and improve daily business interactions with customers, partners and colleagues. Designed with security in mind, LotusLive Connections and LotusLive Engage provide social networking capabilities such as Web conferencing, file storing and sharing, content management, live chat, and business forms.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 25 June 2009 03:21:19 PM | Tags: ibm lotuslive
An interesting announcement from LinkedIn:
I can see this being a really popular addition, and would like to see sub-groups added to both Lotus Connections and LotusLive Engage.
There are now over 300,000 groups on LinkedIn where professionals are discussing, sharing news and collaborating with each other. We sincerely appreciate your dedication to the LinkedIn group you manage. Your efforts are essential to the continued success of groups. We're happy to announce that later this week we are launching a long-requested feature for group managers: the ability to create subgroups. Subgroups are like a break-out session at a conference. They enable you to create more focused areas than in the main group.
Also, by creating and inviting members into subgroups, you can now send additional weekly Announcement emails to focused audiences
By: Stuart McIntyre | 1 Comments | On: 24 June 2009 01:49:33 PM | Tags: linkedin lotus connections lotuslive
Many of the readers of this blog will have seen Sametime 3D demonstrated in the Innovation Lab at Lotusphere2009, or if not, may have seen a presentation on YouTube - I blogged about it back in March.
Today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, Sametime 3D will be announced as a product available for purchase, Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime (VCS).
VCS was created by IBM Research and developed in its development labs. Organisations in a variety of industries ranging from aerospace and defense, consumer products, staffing, manufacturing, and education, including Manpower, Northeastern University, and Northcentral Technical College of Wisconsin all have participated in Sametime 3D pilots over the last six months.
Using VCS, users can select colleagues from their Lotus Sametime contact list, and then invite them to participate in a virtual meeting. Participants can meet in a boardroom, an auditorium or a collaboration space.
Once they enter the virtual meeting, avatars can use text or voice chat, or both, to communicate. They can then share presentations or other materials, and take notes using virtual flip charts. In the collaboration space, they can share ideas and other information on a brainstorm wall. Participants can then store, update, prioritize and vote on this information. Content can be imported and acted upon both in and out of the virtual meeting space.
This new demo tells us more:
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 24 June 2009 10:35:34 AM | Tags: sametime 3d enterprise2.0
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By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 23 June 2009 04:06:12 PM | Tags: vmware fusion mac
Jon Mell comments on the cultural and organisational change required to truly embrace Enterprise2.0:
[Enterprise 2.0] will require more and more “knowledge workers” – people who don’t follow an administrative business process to do their jobs but rely on their experiences, professionalism and networks to add value to their organisations – or, as recently described by Thomas A Stewart, ”someone who gets to decide what he does each morning..”Absolutely spot on, Jon. That's why no Enterprise2.0 toolset (including Lotus Connections) is a drop-in technology that on its own with radically change an organisation's knowledge sharing and/or working practices. Cultural change must go hand-in-hand with the right tools in order to transform the organisation into one that is truly collaborative in nature.
Organisations need to trust these professionals, they will not be in the office from 9-5 every day. These are exactly the sorts of people who thrive on their personal networks, they are the people who you go to when you need to know what’s going on. Social software brings the same level of productivity increases for these people as type-writers and then word processors did for a previous generation of workers. It takes their natural propensity to connect, to share, to add value and extends it in the same way the internet extends our access to information.
It won’t be enough to hire knowledge workers to survive and thrive in this recession. Organisations will have to change their business practices to take advantage of their abilities, and provide them with the tools to be effective. Word, Outlook and even Sharepoint won’t cut it. They will need custom built social platforms, or products such as Confluence, Jive, Socialtext and Lotus Connections.
This is not a technology driven change. These tools are a response to a new way of organising and operating companies, breaking free from 1950s management theory and production lines to treating people as individuals who get things done by independently and autonomously adding value through their networks. Organisations need to embrace the business change first, and look at the software second. Otherwise the competition will gain a significant competitive edge, whilst you’re worrying about the ROI of the investment in the latest “it’s like Facebook, but…” product.
In presentations, I often quote from a University of Toronto paper that describes the characteristics of a collaborative organisation:
A collaborative organisation is one that has the following characteristics:As you can appreciate, whilst Enterprise2.0 tools will undeniably assist with aspects of the list above (particularly the pooling of knowledge and decision-making), real in-depth and sustained analysis of the organisation's culture, business practices and leadership will be required in order to make any of these desired characteristics into reality.
- The values and objectives of employees and management are aligned,
- A climate of mutual trust and respect exists,
- The knowledge of all the staff, customers and suppliers is shared and pooled to optimize the organisation's operations and opportunities,
- Decision making is more decentralised than it is in most current organisations and more stakeholders in the organisation play a role in defining the direction in which the organization moves, and
- Hierarchical structures are kept to a minimum. The company is managed democratically by consensus rather than by command and control.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 19 June 2009 05:43:24 AM | Tags: enterprise2.0 connections socialtext
Neil Burston and I talk with Warren Elsmore to discuss UKLUG 2009, coming up this autumn. We cover:
- What is UKLUG? When? Where?
- What's new for 2009?
- What's the relationship with ILUG?
- How is UKLUG organised? Who's involved?
- Is it scary organising a 500 attendee user group?
- Who pays for the event?
- What about Collaboration University - this is also scheduled for the UK later this year?
- The year so far - how has 2009 been for Lotus technology?
- The Year ahead - what is planned / foreseeable - interesting technologies on the horizon or beyond - Google Wave
Collaboration Matters 10 - UK Lotus User Group (UKLUG) 2009
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 16 June 2009 09:17:39 PM | Tags: uklug2009 uklug podcast
We at Collaboration Matters are delighted to be part of the Lotus Technical Information and Education Community, and to act as Community Advocates, encouraging others to participate in the Lotus community and to create shared content.
To that end, I'd like to bring your attention to the next community webcasts, taking place on 23rd June at 10AM ET/3PM UK and 8PM ET/1AM UK. I will be participating in the call and will be sharing my story with the community.
If you'd like to join, add it to your calendar today. Details are below the fold:
Continue Reading "Lotus Technical Information and Education Community webcast - June 23rd" »
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 15 June 2009 11:50:31 AM | Tags: community webcast advocate
Great coverage of the Lotus Foundations proposition from Laurie McCabe of Hurwitz & Associates on the IT Analysis site:
Foundations offers file storage, advanced backup and recovery, connectivity and security, collaboration and email and application services in one integrated package. Some of the things that set it apart include:I'm certainly beginning to see a lot of interest from Microsoft customers looking for a valid alternative to increasing costs and difficult to manage solutions. The tide is turning, and Foundations is doing a great job for SMEs...
* Automated installation and configuration; it discovers and maps the network for you, and auto-configures firewall and VPN, so you can deploy it in 30 minutes or less.
* Automatic data backups, and full system recovery if a disaster should occur.
* Symphony office productivity tools are bundled with it, so you don't need to buy Microsoft Office software.
* Under the covers, you get the reliability and cost benefits of Linux and open source technologies (Foundations is priced less than Microsoft SBS servers), but you don't have to know a thing about Linux or these technologies to run it.
* It has the collaboration power of Lotus Notes and Domino, tailored for small businesses, with Notes clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
As important, IBM has factored in what's often the biggest hurdle to getting momentum for new product: inertia. Outlook users can continue to use Outlook with Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook. And, IBM added VMware virtualization to Foundations, so you can also run Windows applications on it. Customers don't have to give up things they already use—Outlook and Windows apps, such as Intuit QuickBooks. And, I almost forgot—you can also get a 30-day free trial, and it's black and yellow, like a bumble bee.
The small business technology market and the channel partners that serve them are at a turning point. Many businesses are tired of dealing with the cost and complexity of Microsoft products and licensing, and channel partners are deciding that they need another option for serving customers that don't want to deal with these hassles. This time, IBM is in the right place, at the right time, with the right solution, to give them a true alternative.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 10 June 2009 11:15:50 AM | Tags: foundations lotus
Neil Burston and I talk once again with Luis Suarez and Luis Benitez to review the Connectr 7 BoF held at Lotusphere 2009. We cover:
- What is a Connectr?
- Who was there and what did we discuss?
- Tools versus Enablement & adoption
- What Social tools are people using - injecting Social Software capabilities into the existing application landscape
- Actually using Social tools - asking questions and opening up the Silos
- Do Social Software Best Practices really exist?
- Who is driving social software adoption within organisations?
This podcast is 41MB and runs for 30 minutes at 192kps. Enjoy!
Collaboration Matters 9 - LS09 Connectr BoF Review
Update: We've been asked for a smaller version of this podcast, so here's a copy published at 64kbps. Hope this helps!
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 8 June 2009 05:15:00 PM | Tags: podcast lotusphere2009 connectr