Posts Tagged 'software'



Software Community Day – Update

I wrote about it 2-3 weeks ago, and promised an update. So, here it is.

IBM Israel Software Group Community Day will be held on Wednesday, September 5th, starting at 15:00, at Cinema City, just outside of Tel Aviv. The event will include user groups of all 5 Software Brands: Information Mgmt., Tivoli, WebSphere, Rational and Lotus. Each brand will host a 2 hour session, that would focus on updated offers and solutions.

The Lotus brand session theme is Power 2 the People and it will focus on Lotus Collaboration Strategy for the enterprise. The general concept of our session is to provide you, the end user, with the tools to increase your productivity by providing a set of collaboration tools, in the context of the work you’re doing.

Since Lotus User Group had an event during June 2007, we’ll try to focus our presentations on new offers and solutions, and give you, the end user, the opportunity to explore some of the products first hand, using Lotus Greenhouse. If you want the chance to explore the products, you must register in advance at the website ibm.com/il/news/event/community/ .
We’re still working on allowing free Wi-Fi access for our customers at the event.

As a first step of using the tools we’re talking about, our entire session will be available on Sametime Meeting Center! In order to attend the session online (from home or from the cinema itself), you must have permission to Lotus Greenhouse – so pls register today! All registered participants will receive a user id and password for Lotus Greenhouse, approx. 1 week prior to the event.

Once you have your user id and password to Lotus Greenhouse, simply follow this link to enter SWG Meeting Day meeting. Enter you Greenhouse userid/pass and you’ll see the SWG Meeting Day meeting details, similar to the one screenshoted below. Click ‘Attend Meeting’, enter the meeting password (lotus4u) and you’re in! You’ll have to install a tiny Java plug-in, so permit your firewall as needed.

I’m looking forward to seeing you in 2 weeks time!

If there’s anything in particular you want to see at the Lotus session, comment below and I’ll try to integrate it in my presentation.

Lotus Notes and Domino 8 available now !

On Tuesday August 14th, IBM announced the general availability of Lotus Notes and Domino 8, previously known as Hannover. The sales talk that started that launch was one of the popular slaes talks in Lotus history, as IBMers and Business Partners dialed-in to the e-meetings to hear and see the new features.

I’ve been using Notes 8 Beta 3 for almost 3 months now, on 3 different laptops. In the very few days I had to use Notes 7 (standard on IBM machines), it was as if I went back in time. The new user interface is remarkable. It’s a big leap compared to version 7, and gives the user much more freedom and customization.
Notes 8 is built on the open Eclipse platform, which gives developers the option to extend Lotus platform with plug-ins and extensions. Also worth mentioning the integrated support of RSS Feeds, as well as an embedded Lotus Sametime, IBM’s leading real time collaboration solution.
Ed Brill (who hosted the sales talk on Tuesday) talks extensively on Notes & Domino 8 release in his blog, and you’re most welcome to read.

You can also watch this 10min video on YouTube, of IBM’s Ron Sebastian, Executive Architect for Lotus, showcasing Lotus Notes and Domino 8. (can’t see? click the link)

I commented last month about some of the difficulties we have in Israel, not only from the competition aspect, but also from the language aspect. For those not familiar with developing software for other languages, we’re not talking merely on changing some characters.

Hebrew is written from right to left, so the entire software UI’s needs to be mirrored. So the usual menus you have from the top left (File, View, Edit, etc) should be in Hebrew from the top right. And that’s not easy.

We (IBM SWG) have been doing a wonderful job these past years, working hard to supply as many international languages as possible (Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German, ect), at launch date (like with Quickr and Sametime), but unfortunately, for Hebrew, we’ll have to wait until January 2008. But look at the bright side – we’ll have 4 months to build the buzz, showcase the product and its advanced features. If you want to purchase the English version, you can do that right now.

Meanwhile, read some more insights on Lotus Notes and Domino 8… or attend a birthday party for Notes/Domino 8… or read this Bloomberg article on Notes/Domino 8.

FYI – more comments from Carl Tyler on Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 integration with Office.

Power 2 the People

I’ve been talking a lot this past month – customers, analysts, business partners, friends and family – on how important it is to empower people. Why it is so important to provide people with the right tools so they in turn can perform more effectively. Some of the people I meet acknowledge the fact that the world will rely on real time collaboration in the near future, and that we have to act on empowering people, while others are less reluctant to think so.
It’s hard to belong to the 1st group. It’s not something the IT/CIO can take for granted, being dependent on real time collaboration, which automatically brings public IM softwares to mind, with security issues. And making that step, that giant leap, is hard.

IBM Software Group in Israel will hold a SWG Community Day, on Wed. Sep. 5th, at Cinema City, just outside of Tel Aviv. The community day will be a joined one for all 5 SWG brands – Lotus, Rational, Information Mgmt., WebSphere and Tivoli. The Lotus brand community will focus on how businesses of all sizes can harness the power of their employees, and improve their productivity, performance and eventually – happiness.

Power 2 the People is the chosen theme, and we will present a fraction of Lotus software that enables you to do just that – give Power to your people, your most valuable asset. We will focus on 3 products, 2 of them were announced a month ago: Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections and the veteran Lotus Sametime.

The main attraction in Lotus brand day will be the hands-on session – the audience will have the opportunity to experience, first hand, the mentioned 3 products. All you need is to register and bring your own laptop.

The registration site isn’t ready yet, so I can’t post the link, but will update you asap.
If you have any request for the community day, a unique software you wish to see, product demo, particular subject you’re interested – feel free to post a comment. I’ll do my best to accommodate, but no promises…

See you there.

Top 8 reasons for loving Lotus Notes

Shalom everyone, sorry for the long pause…
I had couple of very long days this past week, as 2 sales managers from Spain visited Israel, in order to familiarize themselves with the local market, our unique business climate, meet some customers and business partners. As you can probably imagine I had very little time to do anything else, even write a post… I’ll comment about the visit at a separate post.

During the many meetings I had this week, with BPs, customers and IBMers the sales manager and myself always stressed the one aspect that differs Lotus brand from the other 4 brands in IBM Software portfolio: Lotus is the people brand. You’re probably wondering why WebSphere Portal is here, it’s not yellow ! But, WebSphere Portal allows people to increase their productivity in the context of the work they do, so it’s ours.. (Lotus).
Lotus brand, which includes 5 families of products – Notes/Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections and WebSphere Portal – is the only brand that appeals to the end-user. We are obviously interested in the IT managers, CIO/CTO, but the person who will eventually use Lotus software is not the IT guy but the every employee the company has. And that require some of us to change the way we do business. At least from my view.

I saw an interesting article this week on w3 (IBM Intranet) – “Top 8 reasons for loving Lotus Notes”. And here they are:

  1. Enjoy working with a new and improved interface
  2. Improved productivity with quick access to your critical business applications in a single interface
  3. Save time with new, easy to use email, contact and calendaring features
  4. Conveniently edit and create office documents without leaving your IBM Lotus client
  5. Make decisions faster with integrated instant messaging and presence awareness
  6. Manage inbox overload with personal and public document libraries and activities
  7. Find information faster with advanced search options built into the IBM Lotus Notes client
  8. Complement the way you work, don’t change it

There’s also a neat article on Lotus website, with Top 10 reasons to choose Lotus Notes for corporate messaging and collaboration.

Do you have another reason? feel free to comment below.

Mental note: not all companies are IBM…

It’s has been an interesting week for me, in my 2nd week as Portal, Lotus and Collaboration Software Sales, for IBM Software Group. I met with customers, business partners, colleagues and drove a lot. But, no complaints. It’s good to see the interest some of my products arose within the industry. I had 3 different meetings this week on Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections and next week I have some more. Not to mention the interest our real-time collaboration (pdf) software has made, Lotus Sametime, with its versatility, set of features, level of security and openness.

As this is my first sales role, I always remind myself that not all companies are IBM. In many ways, not just revenues and global reach. Also in adaptation and implementation of software, especially collaboration software such as Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections and Lotus Sametime. Innovation is more than just a buzz word. It’s a way of doing business, both internal and external. If you don’t sponsor a culture of innovation within your employees, it’s almost impossible to foster such a culture externally.

That’s why I think Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections are the right software at the right time. We’re right at the crossroads, of businesses trying to figure how to “deal” with web 2.0, collaboration and innovation. How can my business grow from those trends? how can I stay ahead of the competition?

I met this week with Blink IT, a web 2.0 consulting company, relatively new (under 12 months), that has good ties with business and corporations. Their business is consulting companies on how to implement web 2.0 technologies in the business. What tools to adopt, where to begin, what is the name of this new department, etc. They told me that many of the customers they meet don’t know where to begin. They want to adopt collaboration, foster innovation, create more business, but not sure how. And we’re not talking about old, traditional businesses, also new and hi-tech businesses – that are simply lost. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections provide a good first step for business wanting to join the collaboration trend, innovate from within and stay ahead. I hope our products and their skills will benefit more and more businesses in Israel, looking to put their feet at the web 2.0 door, just a notch, and continue from there. It’s possible, and some have already done it.

To conclude this post, I thought you might be interested in some articles, published recently by my colleagues from Lotus in the US. I “starred” them for later reading, maybe you’d like to do the same.
Collaboration University (CU): With the first session in Kansas City ending this week, and the second one coming up next week in London, there are amazing responses from participants. There was also a live coverage of several lectures, that you can replay and also tune this week, for CU in London, UK (July 18-20).
Quickr Demos: lots and lots of Quickr Demos (for QSite, QActivities, QContacts, QIssues, QMeeting and QAnnounce) – all courtesy of Rob Novak.
Lotus Sametime: new demo of Sametime 7.5.1 now available, courtesy of Adam G.
Ed Brill came back from Japan Lotus Conference.
and there’s always something interesting over at The Quickr Blog.

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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.