Stuart McIntyre is one of the very few people who could get his hands on version 3.0 of IBM Lotus Connections. While the product is still in beta, Stuart is allowed to give you a sneak preview and tell you a couple of things that otherwise cannot yet be revealed.  

He will do his presentation from a more technical view: what has changed since 2.5, what difference to scaling, how will organisations upgrade, what customisation is available and more. This session is quite technical and interesting only for those who have actually seen and 'touched' Lotus Connections before.

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide

A practical hands-on user guide with time saving tips and comprehensive instructions for using Lotus Notes effectively and efficiently

Overview of IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide

• Understand and master the features of Lotus Notes and put them to work in your business quickly
• Contains comprehensive coverage of new Lotus Notes 8.5 features
• Includes easy-to-follow real-world examples with plenty of screenshots to clearly demonstrate how to get the most out of Lotus Notes
• Packed with expert tips and best practices, for using business e-mail, calendars and other Lotus Notes applications for efficient business communication

Approach
A compact Lotus Notes User Guide, this book covers best practices, hints, tips, and tricks of Lotus Notes 8.5. It draws on real-world examples and you will find this book to be an invaluable reference for Lotus Notes. There are significant changes from the earlier versions of Lotus Notes to the current version of 8.5 and this book covers the new features in detail so that you will be able to take advantage of them. However, this book also covers key features from earlier versions, which have stood the test of time.

Who this book is written for
If you are a business user who wants to get the most out of Lotus Notes, then this book is for you. From beginners to seasoned professionals, this book aims to cover the features, best practices, tips, tricks, and tools that enable you to work smarter—almost effortlessly—in Lotus Notes 8.5.

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.2 delivers new features and enhancements for end users and developers

At a glance

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.2 provides enhancements for both the end user (Lotus Notes, Lotus iNotes and Lotus Notes Traveler) and developers (Domino Designer). Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.2:

• Allows Lotus Notes to take advantage of improved instant messaging and unified telephony services provided by Lotus Sametime
• Contains usability and productivity enhancements to the Lotus iNotes mail and calendaring experience
• Supports the Apple iPad and new features of the Apple iPhone with Lotus Notes Traveler
• Has new XPage features and extensibility APIs, as well as Lotus Domino Designer enhancements that provide developers with additional capabilities

Overview

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.2 delivers powerful new features for your messaging and collaboration infrastructure. There are many new features and enhancements that improve the end-user experience, mobile access, and application development capabilities for Lotus Notes and Domino.

The Notes client improves real-time communication by taking advantage of the latest instant messaging and unified telephony services provided by Lotus Sametime 8.5.1. Improved integration with IBM Lotus Quickr means you can more easily store files in Quickr. The Notes client also complies with 2009 Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) requirements.

Lotus iNotes delivers productivity gains with improved performance when creating mail messages, and the ability to create Lotus Sametime meetings from within your calendar invitations. iNotes Ultra-light adds Android support for Nexus One and support for Apple iPhone 4.0.

Mobile users get more device options with the addition of Apple iPad support for Lotus Notes Traveler, and added operating system support for Apple iOS 4, Windows Mobile 6.5, and the Lotus Notes Traveler server for Linux. Additional Traveler enhancements improve security support of HTTPS for push notifications and Apple iPhone and iPad security policy enforcement.

Lotus Domino and Domino Designer 8.5.2 continue to deliver innovation for developers. XPages ships the CKEditor for enhanced rich text editing on the Web including in line images and tables. XPage and Domino Designer extensibility APIs allow developers to add new XPage controls to simplify development and increase the functionality of the collaborative applications they build. Developers can also take advantage of Domino in the cloud through developer and test images on Amazon Web Services.

IBM LotusLive 1.3 adds e-mail services for both new and existing Notes Domino customers

At a glance

LotusLive Notes, as part of IBM LotusLive 1.3, is designed to:

• Enhance the security, integrity, and availability of the messaging system
• Keep costs lower by using automated processes and an integrated platform
• Support a faster implementation with an established infrastructure and a team of subject matter experts

 
Overview

IBM LotusLive 1.3 delivers cloud-based online technologies for business that combines Web conferencing, messaging, and collaboration services with social networking capabilities.

IBM LotusLive Notes, an addition to LotusLive, is a messaging service for both new and existing Notes Domino customers. LotusLive Notes:

• Provides industry-leading messaging, robust calendar and scheduling, and contact management features that are used by the world's top enterprises and is backed by 24x7 monitoring and IBM support.
• Includes both the service and the software via the Lotus Notes client or Web browser (via LotusLive Notes Web).
• Features standardized services that are designed to deliver faster deployment and competitive pricing via a cutting-edge infrastructure built to improve the efficiency and cost containment of your messaging environment.
• Introduces bundle for IBM LotusLive Notes, which includes LotusLive Engage for Enterprise Deployment.
• A team of IBM experts, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and established processes and controls help to create a highly available, security-rich messaging environment, including built-in antivirus and antispam protection.

In addition to LotusLive Notes, you get:

• Enhanced calendaring support in LotusLive iNotes that allows free and busy time lookups when scheduling meetings

Overall, LotusLive offerings (file sharing, e-mail, instant messaging, activities, Web conferences, surveys, and social networking) help companies focus on growing their businesses, and finding and working with the right people by providing essential software for getting the most out of every collaboration in a simple to acquire service.

IBM Collaboration Software to Support the Android Platform

IBM today announced it is delivering a beta version of business-grade collaboration software for use with devices that run the Google Android operating system.

More than ever, businesses are embracing the model of a mobile enterprise. According to analyst firm IDC, there will be more than one billion mobile workers worldwide by year end 2010.

“IBM is committed to supporting the vast array of mobile devices out there including the Android platform,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president, messaging and collaboration, IBM.

Lotus Notes Traveler for Android beta version is no-charge software that can be downloaded by Lotus Notes customers and provides two-way, over-the-air synchronization of information between Lotus Domino and mobile devices.

The software allows Lotus Notes users who synchronize their Domino mail, calendar, and contacts via Lotus Notes Traveler to view that data on the devices that run the Android 2.0 or higher operating system. This includes the Droid, Nexus One and many other devices.



Additionally, the next version of IBM Lotus Connections social software plans to support the Android platform.

According to a recent news report, approximately 100,000 Android based phones are being activated each day, with more than 60 models on the market.

“Employees at Memorial Health System use Lotus Notes Traveler on other devices, and I am now getting many requests for Lotus Notes Traveler on Android devices as well. We look forward to trying out the functionality on the Android platform as participants in the beta program,” said John Cherry, Programmer and DBA Manager, Memorial Health System.

IBM also has Lotus Notes Traveler software that supports Nokia Symbian, Windows Mobile Devices and the Apple iPhone and iPad. “I have seen an increase in the use of enterprises using IBM Lotus software with mobile Apple devices as new support and devices have become available, for example, most recently the iPad.” Employees of General Motors, Hyatt, Roto-Rooter Services and many companies have employees using IBM collaboration software on a variety of mobile devices including Apple's.



More than half of the largest 100 corporations use IBM's flagship collaboration offerings, Lotus Notes and Domino. These companies include the top aerospace and defense organizations; the top nine automotive firms; the top eight banks; the top four makers of consumer products; the top seven electronics firms; the top eight insurance companies; the top seven pharmaceutical organizations; and the top nine telecommunications carriers.

Jive What Matters

Jive What Matters is designed to be the first place for everything users need to see, know, and do. It aggregates relevant information on a single page, enabling faster action taking and decision-making.

Jive What Matters combines information from social business applications, existing enterprise tools and the external social web into a simple, breakthrough user experience. It includes the following functionality:

• 'Now' -- an aggregated view of everything a user needs to know, including activity and critical information from the web, legacy systems and other social sources;
• 'My Communications' -- a single place to go for everything a user needs to see, including relevant comments, direct messages, or anything else that impacts the user; and
• 'My Actions' -- a streamlined summary of everything a user needs to do by prioritizing action items, alerts, and critical project notifications.

"Jive is helping us drive innovation and collaboration across the company," said Greg Lowe, Social Media Strategist, Alcatel-Lucent.  "In less than 60 days, over 10,000 employees have joined Engage, our Jive-powered community.  Managing the information explosion so we can focus on the crucial data is an ongoing challenge and Jive What Matters will help us do just that."

Jive What Matters is powered by Jive Chatter Filter and Jive Genius. Jive Chatter Filter delivers a pure stream of relevant information. It gives each user a personalized view of the information they want and the actions they need to take by intelligently cutting through the noise from a myriad of sources. The Jive Genius proactively recommends useful content based on learned preferences and behaviors of each Jive user.

From within their Jive What Matters page, users can invoke Jive apps. Jive apps are lightweight, powerful applications that deliver critical functionality without the overhead of outdated user interfaces.

Jive Apps Market
Jive Apps Market will function as a gallery of applications, tailored for various industries, business functions and processes. Businesses will be able to select and adopt the most innovative and easy to use applications. They will have a direct line of sight into usage, performance and budget control.

Jive applications can be built by cloud application providers, third party developers and system integrators.

Jive is launching an application developer community in September at JiveWorld 2010 with full API documentation, example applications and tutorials on how to leverage the Jive platform. Developers will be able to combine their knowledge of the Open Social framework with the Jive apps services to build and test apps that reside inside Jive. They will have access to the rich Jive enterprise social graph to develop compelling applications with engaging user experiences that, to date, have not been possible.

As a first step towards Jive Apps Market, Jive is announcing the Jive Widget Studio. The Jive Widget Studio will allow employees to personalize their Jive experience by making and adding popular Open Social widgets such as YouTube videos, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and Flickr streams. The Jive Widget Studio will be available next month to Jive customers with Jive 4.5 and later.

Jive is building the application framework using Open Standards such as OpenSocial and oAuth. This is consistent with Jive's strategy and commitment to pursue and adopt an open strategy.

"Several IBM collaboration products now offer browser based support of the iPad including Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr for social networking and team collaboration and Lotus Sametime for instant messaging," IBM said.

• Why would Notes and Domino suddenly jump from c.130 million seats sold (which is what the general consensus suggests IBM's published number means) to 192 million by the end of this year and to 266 million by the end of 2014?
• The report states that it refers to "on-premise and hosted mailboxes" - one assumes this means Notes/Domino CALs purchased via Passport Advantage and ELAs, plus subscribers to LotusLive Notes (the hosted Notes/Domino solution).  Are they including LotusLive iNotes in this calculation (as this is the cloud-based solution expected to see most growth in the near future - which isn't Notes/Domino based of course)?
• These numbers appear to be pretty optimistic by most accounts.  Sarah Radicati is (ahem) not known as being the biggest fan of Lotus Notes on the planet, why would she change her stance so significantly now?
• Did IBM 'sponsor' the report?