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IBM Lotus Notes/Domino – the SaaS version

Published September 19, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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It’s coming, soon. Lotus GM, Bob Picciano, announced earlier this week that a hosted version of Lotus Notes will be available, for $8-$18 per user, per month. I’ll elaborate more when possible.

Such an offering would make IBM’s traditionally on-premise collaboration applications, such as Lotus Sametime instant messaging and VOIP, a threat to Microsoft Exchange Online, not to mention a number of small, independent SAAS collaboration providers that want to cater to large customer bases.

and, IBM’s differentiation play (according to eWeek, not me):

Also, because there are hundreds of SAAS collaboration plays out there, I expect IBM to integrate Lotus Connections with the hosted version of Notes, along with 3-D collaboration capabilities, such as having co-workers trigger chats between their avatars.

Interesting…

Link: IBM to offer SaaS version of Lotus Notes – eWeek

Socially connected, all week long…

Published September 18, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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It’s been quite a week for me, which started with army reserve, followed by spending 8 hours with Jeff Schick (IBM VP, Social Software) and Arjan Radder (Social Software Sales Mgr., IBM EMEA) during their visit to Israel and ended up with more army reserve.

The 36 hours Jeff and Arjan spent in Israel were dedicated to customer meetings, analyst and media interviews and some middle-eastern food (aka Falafel and Humus ;-). The first outcome of their visit has already surfaced: Yuval Dror (aka The Globe) published a well-written article in today’s newspaper (Hebrew), on IBM’s internal collaboration tools and our commercial social software solutions. We also met with Ayelet Noff (aka blonde2.0) – a light and fun meeting that summed up Jeff’s visit in Israel. I’m sure Ayelet will post her impressions soon.


And, to finish the ‘social software week’ IBM announced yesterday the opening of a new research/development center in Cambridge, MA – IBM Center for Social Software. Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Center Director elaborated on the center’s mission: The center will provide additional resources to IBM’s global research teams and external organizations so that they can better test social software “in the wild” – within IBM’s enormous employee base or on the public web.

Links:
IBM Center for Social Software
Employer blocks facebook? Yediot Ahronot article
IBM ups investment in social software – 451 Group
Cambridge IBM facility to focus on social links – The Boston Globe

IBM/Lotus User Forum – Summary

Published September 9, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Before heading out to army reserve I wanted to post a quick wrap-up of yesterday’s IBM/Lotus User Forum. We had some 45 participants, customers and consultants, who came to hear two customer stories (which included live demo) and a live demo of IBM’s enterprise social software solution, Lotus Connections. Furthermore, it was great meeting, in person, some of my twitter and facebook friends – with all that social, it’s important to keep a personal touch, and actually, well, touching people and shaking hands.

Publicizing the event using social media only, we didn’t know what to expect in terms of attendance, but we were surprised by the number of people arrived, some registered at the day of the event! I’ll post a separate entry about lessons learned at a later date.

Now, the collateral from the user forum:
Dvir Reznik – Welcome Presentation (slides, Hebrew, downloadable)
Sharon Ben Haim, CTO, Ministry of Finance (slides, Hebrew, downloadable)
IBM enterprise social software solution – live demo (sync.rono.us blog)
Event photos (facebook)
IBM event website (presentations will be posted tomorrow)

Here’s the first presentation, my opening notes, from slideshare:

IBM Lotus User Forum – Welcome Slides (Hebrew)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: lotus collaboration)

IBM/Lotus User Forum – 3 days away

Published September 6, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Been getting a lot of feedback from customers and colleagues about the importance of this user forum, and we definitely plan to host more like it, with 2-3 customer success stories and an IBM demo. The event page at ibm.com/il is also live (4 days), where we’ll upload the slides and some pics from the event. The expected attendance is surprising, with some 110 people (!): over 70 RSVPed at FB, others commented at TheMarker Cafe (here, here and here), dozens have either email/text me, and some registered at friendfeed. Amazing!

This is actually the first event at IBM Israel (that I’m aware of at least) that was advertised using social media only, without the traditional DM (direct marketing) tactics – email, distribution lists, advertising, articles, interactive, phone calls, etc. Sometime next week, after we’ll have time to study and evaluate the outcome, I’ll post my impressions (and lessons learnt) of organizing an event using social media only.

In the meantime, I’ve conculded my intro presentation (first slide above), which will be posted after the event at ibm.com/il/news/events/cm1 and my slideshare space. The presentations of Sharon Ben Haim (Ministry of Finance) and Gabby Shoval (Menora Insurance) will also be available at ibm.com/il.

See you all Monday @ 15:30 !

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