Posts Tagged 'יבמ'

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Build your Foundations with IBM

Published June 9, 2008 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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IBM announced last week 2 major releases:
The first is Lotus Symphony 1.0 – IBM’s Office replacement suite, built on OpenOffice, over Eclipse, is out of beta and into the real Software life cycle. Mazal Tov !
The second is the GA (general availability) of Lotus Foundations Start, announced in Lotusphere 08, which serves as IBM’s first Collaboration Server for small and medium businesses (SMB market).

Both announcements will have tremendous impact on our Israeli market, and would improve IBM’s position in the local SMB market, providing an alternative for 5-500 employees companies looking for a complete collaboration solution.

So, what’s Lotus Foundations Start is all about?
Running a small business is a big business, and you want to keep it simple. So, Lotus Foundations Start is basically a combination of HW and SW from IBM, with Services from our Business Partners, wrapped in one package. For more details head over to ibm.com/lotus/foundations.

One of top three questions I answer when visiting customers, especially in the SMB market, is ‘isn’t IBM suited for Enterprise-size only?’ And that’s a valid question, since IBM employs 380,000 people, and our brand is ‘Big Blue’… Still, our software is infrastructure, and as such, suits any business, from a 5 people family business to a mature start-up of 400. IBM Express Advantage (custom-made solutions for SMB) includes all the features and capabilities, in smaller packages, and competitive prices, that fit any budget and any IT system.

You can learn more about IBM solutions (Hardware and Software) for small and medium businesses (SMB) at our local website. If you have any questions or concerns, leave a comment below.

Embracing Social Computing at IBM

Published May 24, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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BusinessWeek has put social media at the heart of its June 2nd issue, titled ‘Beyond Blogs – What Business Needs to Know‘. You can read most of the magazine online, along with videos and photo galleries of Top 100 IT Companies, Top 10 IT Companies in North America and Top 10 IT Companies in Asia.

Big Blue Embraces Social Media is one of the articles features in the magazine, and it provides an overview of how IBM got into social computing and how our customers can benefit from our experience.

Over the past two years, IBM has been busily launching in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits. “We’re trying to see how things that are hot elsewhere can be fit for business.” Irene Greif, IBM Fellow.

Why it’s important for IBM, and business at large, to adopt enterprise social computing solutions? Excellent question! There are many answers, but I’ll mentions the ones BW did:
First, in a global company people are too far away to communicate face-to-face.

These social tools, will provide a substitute for personal connections that flew away with globalization—and help to build and strengthen far-flung teams.

Second, it’s important for recruiting.

Hotshots coming out of universities are accustomed to working across these new networks—and are likely to look at a company that still relies on the standard ’90s fare of e-mail and the phone as slow and backward.

How do IBM employees communicate with one another? I use various methods, with email being one of the last. My first option is instant messaging (Lotus Sametime), followed by twitter (internal), post on beehive, e-mail with link to a file on my web space.

So far, IBM has Dogear, a community-tagging system based on Del.icio.us, Blue Twit, and a rendition of the microblogging sensation, Twitter. It also has a Web page called Many Eyes that permits anyone (including outsiders, at many-eyes.com) to upload any kind of data, visualize it, and then launch discussions about it on blogs and social networks. The biggest success is the nine-month-old social network, Beehive, which is based on the premise of Facebook. It has already attracted 30,000 users, including top executives.

Link: Big Blue Embraces Social Media – BusinessWeek

[pictured: my social network at IBM, as of 3 weeks ago]

Empowering your workforce, browser only

Published May 24, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Earlier this week I met with Menora Insurnace, one of the largest insurance groups in Israel, founded in 1935.
Menora are a veteran customer of Lotus collaboration solutions, featuring Lotus Notes for messaging, Lotus Sametime for instant messaging, Lotus Quickr for team collaboration and WebSphere Portal as their one-stop-shop for doing business, both internal and external.

Arjan Radder and myself met our colleagues at Menora to discuss how they can leverage their existing investments in Lotus solutions, and explore new growth engines for Menora and its customers through implementing social software solutions, such as a blogging platform, or social bookmarking service.

Menora employees are working out of their browsers, no client involved.
Their internal portal uses single sign-on to identify and authenticate the user, which in turn presents a unique homepage for each user, based on his/her permissions and preferences.
Their messaging platform is incorporated within the homepage, and they can access their inbox, calendar, address book and composite applications in a click of a mouse.

I’m always amazed to see the breadth of approaches customers take with their Lotus solutions. Building everything around the internal portal is an innovative concept, but in a SaaS (Software as a Service) era, putting everything online (behind the firewall of course) is the way to go.

You can read additional case studies here.

Sharepoint integrator from Mainsoft

Published May 9, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Mainsoft announced yesterday of a new solution, Sharepoint Integrator for Lotus Notes (free 30-day trial), that enables Lotus Notes users to access Sharepoint content, via an Eclipse plug-in, at Notes 8 sidebar. You can download the solution sheet (PDF file) or watch a demo (WMV file).

The new integrator was previewed at Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando back in January, and Ed Brill already managed to talk about it, on his way to Turkey, couple of hours before the announcement.

Many companies are using Sharepoint Server as ‘content repository’ to store files, but still want to enjoy the benefits of Lotus Notes as a platform, and not ‘just’ another messaging application. This new Sharepoint Integrator for Lotus Notes provides just that. You can keep your Sharepoint content and work with it, inside your Lotus Notes client. For the Israeli market this announcement is big news, since many customers are using Sharepoint Server to store/share files, but are looking at Lotus Notes as a collaboration platform. [click the image for a larger format]

Excerpt from eWeek:

Mainsoft is essentially cozying up to Notes users by letting Notes and SharePoint content coexist, Mainsoft CEO Yaacov Cohen told eWEEK.

“Customers are sick of all these migrations,” Cohen said. “Customers are saying, ‘Show me how I can leverage what I’ve already purchased.'”

Some features of the SharePoint Integrator, which Cohen demoed for eWEEK May 6, include the ability to drag and drop Word documents, Excel worksheets and PowerPoint presentations from a Notes sidebar into Lotus Notes e-mails, calendar appointments and task lists. This is extremely useful for Notes users who need to make SharePoint files actionable through Notes.

Seeing the value of LND in Israel

Published May 3, 2008 Uncategorized 4 Comments
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During the past 2 weeks I met different customers and business partners, discussing how we can better communicate the excellent value of Lotus collaboration solutions. This whole marketing and communication aspect of Lotus Software has been discussed both internally and externally for some time now, and even my friends Alan and Ed across the pond are facing similar customer questions.

Marketing is an issue, not only in Israel. Alex and myself are working hard to change that, in every way imaginable. I hope you will see a difference soon.

The CIO of Israel Securities Authority told me that Lotus Notes/Domino is an excellent platform, stable and secure – I only wish more people would know about it. When I travel to conferences in Europe, everyone are using Lotus Notes. In Israel, only a hand-full of colleagues. ISA are an IBM case study, and we mention them in every customer meeting, and invite them to tell their story when ever possible.

Earlier this week I sat down with the Israel Security Agency, also known as ‘Shabak’ (our FBI).
The last time we met, it was with different people, so I handed the guys (and one lady) my business card. Other than their first names, they were pretty scrimp on details…
Shabak are a veteran Lotus Notes/Domino customer, doing incredible work with the platform. Needless to say security is always an issue and ‘down-time’ is not in their vocabulary.
We met to discuss future collaboration solutions, and understand how those can integrate within their priorities. They were highly impressed with the capabilities of Lotus Sametime Client (they are running Lotus Notes with the embed Sametime client – chat & awareness), especially the VoIP integration and Eclipse as a platform. Lotus Quickr also interest them, particularly since they’re running massive Domino DBs and need to find a better way to share information across teams (store once – share forever), other than email.

Although the high degree of security and classification, Shabak are open to Web 2.0 solutions, as well as Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Only recently they allowed 4 employees to open a public blog, sharing their daily routine with the public. The goal of the initiative is intended more at luring potential employees, but the blog method grants them douze points.

I also met with HSBC Israel this week, a global Lotus account, with roughly 300,000 employees, spread across 10,000 offices in 80+ countries. They use Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime Client, and couldn’t be happier. I even showed the IT manager how we can chat on Sametime, using the BleedYellow community. They are looking into team collaboration and social software solutions, and seeing E2.0 solutions as a business priority – which is very refreshing to hear.

LND is an excellent platform for collaboration, and there are more examples I can share. Lotus Software has grown for the 14th consecutive quarter, we gained market share, over 140 million Lotus Notes customers, 100 million Lotus Sametime corporate users, 850+ developers working on the portfolio, Linux and Mac versions are already available.
Yellow is the new black, haven’t you heard?

Links:
HSBC Israel
Shabak (Israel Security Agency)
Israel Securities Authority
IBM case study – Israel Securities Authority
Sam Lawrence – Why hasn’t marketing duked it out?
Andrew McAfee – The mechanism of online emergence
Ed Brill – Sending a message to management
Alan Lepofsky – Introducing a revolutionary software platform…

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.