Clear IT Consulting - What's happening

    Now that’s a large iPad

    Chris  8 May 2012 09:03:20
    Just wanted to share this one. It's build on IBM Sametime according to Ed Brill.



    Talking about the future of collaboration: Another must-read on Ed's blog is yesterday's item about the Notes/Domino roadmap workshop. Most important quot:

    We had many very good discussions about what a rich client needs to be in the future, with the future being deployments in 2014-2017. We talked about the role of HTML5 vs. an installed client, we talked about iNotes and Connections/"social mail", we talked about mobility, we talked about Eclipse, we even talked about Outlook. On the server side, we talked through the capabilities that have been built for SmartCloud Notes and their applicability to the premises product, we talked about TCO (total cost of ownership), we talked about architectural limitations. We had a great business discussion about ways to improve our offerings in market, including branding, packaging, licensing, bundles, and all those other usual vectors. We had a good discussion about market segmentation and growth opportunities, and our sales and marketing teams provided input on what's working and what isn't.


    It is good to see there's discussion about future releases of Notes/Domino. Although it's still not clear where we are going from here.

    The future is mobile

    Chris  19 April 2012 22:00:32
    At the beginning of this year IBM announced they were acquiring Worklight Inc. Worklight was founded in 2006 and is a big time mobile software vendor from New York/Israel. They offer a suite of mobile tools to build, run and manage mobile applications. The demo on their website tells the whole story, but because you need to register here is another Worklight overview.


    As you can read on Niklas' blog, IBM is finding a way to expand/open up the Worklight solutions to XPages. Both depend and run on top of Eclipse, so this should be relatively easy. I am curious to see how far the integration will go and how all this relates to the mobile controls. What is the best way to go mobile?

    Lotusphere 2012 - Social Software

    Chris  29 January 2012 10:57:49
    It has been almost a week now since we returned from Orlando. Lotusphere 2012 was a rollercoaster in many ways. This blog entry summarizes this year's visit to IBM's leading conference.

    Strange enough it's hard to explain to my 6 and 9 year old that Lotusphere (Disney) is anything but a vacation. Up at 6 AM, quick breakfast, sessions all day until 6 PM. And OK, we had some parties (i.e. @ Kimonos) and Seaworld was nice, but that's not the way I spend a vacation normally. Believe me, it's hard work.

    Lotusphere 2012 was all about Social. OpenSocial 2.0, IBM Connections Next and even Notes/Domino Social Edition were big subjects this year. So main topic was Social Software, but what is Social Software? I found this definition on Niklas Heidloff's blog.

    So here is finally what I think Social Software is. I think of Social Software as the next generation of collaboration which solves fundamental issues collaboration had:
    1) Information scatter issue
    2) Information flood issue
    3) Sharing issue
    4) Integration issue


    Social Software is Collaboration Software on steroids. How does IBM help us to socialize our software applications? With the adoption of open standards like OpenSocial, oAuth and REST throughout their software portfolio IBM enables us to gather and structure information from various sources. Offering our users a combined information/activity stream with updates from both business (e-mail, workflow apps, etc.) and private (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) sources.

    Another important aspect of Social Software is the sharing of information through different devices. That's where the Extension Library and the Mobile Controles come in. In combination with XPages building applications for mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc) has become a lot easier.

    Probably one the most remarkable announcements  this year was the Notes Application Player Plug-in. Classic Notes apps go into the browser, unmodified.

    Though we've occasionally hinted and once demonstrated the plug-in before, today is the first time we've formally announced it and done a public demo. The plug-in runs in Windows browsers -- Firefox and we'll probably do one other -- and allows Notes applications to run unmodified in the browser. The plug-in is a one-time download, much like the Adobe Acrobat model, where once installed, the browser can access Notes applications directly.


    It is still hard to get any details on the plugin, but it might be a game changer.

    2012 will be an exciting year for Notes/Domino, including Lotus Traveler. Release 8.5.4 is scheduled somewhere this summer. Your Notes Client / iNotes might look like this:

    Image:Lotusphere 2012 - Social Software

    LS12 - First impression

    Chris  18 January 2012 00:16:27
    So far so good. After three days of sessions and a lot of discussion it's time for a first review of Lotusphere 2012. First of all go see the Liveblog of the OGS (Opening General Session), it sums up pretty much everything. Summarized Lotusphere 2012 (#LS12) is about Social and about IBM Connections. Because we have more of a Notes Domino/XPage background/interest I will get into further detail on these subjects and leave Connections to the real experts.

    Notes embedded in the browser
    Notes client as a plugin in your browser, how cool is that? All very beta, but we saw some screenshots of the Notes client in the browser. There is not a lot information right now so I will investigate and visit the labs to  see what I can find out. What do we know? The client is a plugin in the browser. The user will have to download up to 100 MB and install the client in IE an FF. Actions will appear under right-click. Client email is not supported. See Ed Brill's blog for more information. See if we can find some answers the next few days.

    Domino/Notes Social Edition
    IBM is really embracing Social in their products. In short notice 8.5.4 will be released (code drop 2 is available). The version following 8.5.4 is called the "Notes/Domino Social Edition". In a session about OpenSocial we saw some nice social capabilities in both the Notes client and iNotes. The so called Activity stream is a good example of social enablement and gives a completely different user experience in the messaging and collaboration area.

    Image:LS12 - First impression


    IBM Docs
    Not too much creativity on picking a new name for Concord/Lotuslive Symphony, but what's in a name? The demo's I saw were pretty impressive. Editing of a single odt document simultaneously by two users in the browser (and even some workflow). Unfortunately you'll need a fully operational Connections environment or Lotuslive, so there's a caveat.  

    All very promissing and more to come. I will keep you posted.