A compendium of thoughts about Web 2.0 (and the more-than-occasional diversion) from across IBM's software group, featuring well-known IBM bloggers from Lotus, Information Management, WebSphere, Rational and Tivoli, as well as interactive commentary from visitors.
Friday April 03, 2009
Cloud Computing - News, offers and insight
Posted by: Mike Harer
Announced at the recent Pulse 2009 conference, new cloud computing offerings and services are resonating exceptionally well with the press and analysts. Read the full story here also, I found the following links helpful and hope you do as well Cloud Computing for a Smarter Planet (Youtube)
Web 2.0 Expo is on and IBM is there! See you at booth #701
Posted by: Mike Harer
As a Diamond sponsor, IBM brings compelling new insight and innovative solutions to this key Web 2.0 event. Come talk with us at booth 701 and attend a series of in-depth sessions on Web 2.0 technologies and how they can help businesses gain new cost efficiencies and a competitive edge.
Wed (Apr 1st) 10:50-11:40am
Smart Work: Embrace Change & Empower Your Teams to Drive Growth and Innovation - A panel discussion
Come learn from and ask questions of our IBM experts that support
enterprise mashups, social media software and Web 2.0 application
development.
Thurs (Apr 2nd) 11:00-11:50am
Maximize your Web 2.0 efforts with Cloud Computing
If you are wondering how to leverage cloud computing to drive cost
efficiency and innovation in your organization, this session is for you.
Fri (Apr 3rd) 11:00-11:50am
Enterprise Mashups Technical Deep Dive
Receive an overview of the key features and architecture of IBM Mashup
Center and watch a comprehensive demonstration of building a mashup,
developing and discovering widgets, wiring widgets together, and
sharing mashups.
Web 2.0 Expo is next week and IBM (Diamond sponsor) will be there sharing compelling new insight and innovative solutions
Posted by: Mike Harer
For those of you that plan on attending this key Web 2.0 Expo event, you'll want to check out the new IBM Web 2.0 solutions (booth # 701) and gain new insights from several compelling sessions:
Wed (Apr 1st) 10:50-11:40am Session: Smart Work: Embrace Change & Empower Your Teams to Drive Growth and Innovation - A panel discussion Abstract: Come learn from and ask questions of our IBM experts that support enterprise mashups, social media software and Web 2.0 application development.
Thurs (Apr 2nd) 11:00-11:50am Session: Maximize your Web2.0 efforts with Cloud Computing Abstract: If you are wondering how to leverage cloud computing to drive cost efficiency and innovation in your organization, this session is for you.
Fri (Apr 3rd) 11:00-11:50am Session: Enterprise Mashups Technical Deep Dive Abstract: Receive an overview of the key features and architecture of IBM Mashup Center and watch a comprehensive demonstration of building a mashup, developing and discovering widgets, wiring widgets together, and sharing mashups.
Insight and accolades -- IBM's Center for Social Software
Posted by: Mike Harer
Director Magazine, a cross-industry business publication in the UK published an interesting article on IBM's Cambridge Massachusetts based Center for Social Software. It includes testimonials from some very credible sources and reinforces IBM's leadership in this space. Read the article here
Many of us can see how the virtual worlds (like Second Life) can provide some new and creative ways for socializing and even doing business. That said, adoption of these virtual worlds hasn't quite rocketed just yet. When I saw an article explaining what our own lab is doing to help promote this, I was intrigued. Imagine, meeting in a virtual world (yes, Avatars that socialize) and sharing ideas verbally, on a shared screen or in a town hall-style meeting using new technologies that make this all possible. Read full article here
I was anxious to post this blog because Elguji's solution is not only a great example of innovation but also another example of how Web 2.0 gives businesses an immediate way to realize value for their company. I had participated in our own IdeaJam and the experience was so compelling and so engaging that you stick around longer than you would have initially imagined. For those of you interested to read more, go here
and yes, it's said to be the industry's first XPages application !!
IBM to Deliver Software via Cloud Computing With Amazon Web Services
Posted by: Mike Harer
Announced this afternoon, IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., will provide a range of IBM software using a new "pay-as-you-go" model. This effectively gives clients access to a range of IBM's software portfolio in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) environment.
for those that made it down to "somewhat" warm Orlando for Lotusphere 2009, the Innovation lab showed off some pretty cool concepts. for example, the 'relevant person suggestion engine' is something unique and is raising some eyebrows. Take a look a what this writer says in his TechCrunchIT article...
We have known SaaS solutions from past years but with Web 2.0 and cloud computing concepts today, the game has changed. For example, announced just this week at Lotusphere, LotusLive is a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business. Full press release here
what's more... IBM Business Partner, Prolifiq Software, has already announced an innovative LotusLive solution (read details here)
Besides having some great weather in Orlando....in contrast to the frozen tundra of the northeast, the collaboration, social networking, web 2.0, cloud computing ...etc. the buzz is 'alive' and well. Lotusphere 2009 is under full swing.
Our (Rob and I) 'Web 2.0 Goes to Work for Business' session was a hit with the partners on Sunday and it's great to talk to more and more business leaders who are looking to extend their business (and their clients business of course) with Web 2.0 technologies.
thanks to many of my colleagues and everyone following our blog (and Twitter web20work identity) for helping to promote our latest Web 2.0 video. We have just surpassed the 1,000 view mark...so we're getting there. thanks all !!
btw: check out lotus.com and the info on LotusLive ! A new offering that provides a SaaS/Cloud delivery platform .
While I obviously don't want to ruin the excitement of the presentation Mike Harer and I will be doing during Business Development Day at Lotusphere, I thought it would be appropriate for me to mention that we'll be 'debuting' a great little Web 2.0 video that Mike's marketing team put together.
Want a sneak peek? Here goes, but don't tell anyone:
The annual gathering of Lotus Notes/Domino developers, administrators and users is just around the corner in Orlando, Florida: Lotusphere 2009. Starting this weekend, roughly 10,000 people will descend on the Swan/Dolphin Hotel Complex at Walt Disney World for a week of learning, sharing and fun. There's even a Lotusphere blog, devoted JUST to Lotusphere.
What's intriguing to me about Notes/Domino is not only the products staying power - this product is 20 years in the market, having first seen the light of day in 1989 - but also its flexibility. When the dawn of the internet hit, suddenly what had been known as the "Notes Server" gained web-server capabilities and was renamed the "Domino Server."
Such is also true with Web 2.0.
The Domino server has proven remarkably capable of being a Web 2.0 platform - and Domino today can deliver web services, AJAX, RSS and a host of other Web 2.0 technologies and techniques.
And, not surprisingly, there are a slew of Web 2.0 sessions at Lotusphere. My fellow blog-author, Mike Harer, and I are doing a "Web 2.0 Goes to Work Primer" at Business Development Day (for partners only, details HERE) on Sunday, and there are a bunch of other sessions as well.
I've posted a quick rundown of some of the sessions below; you can get all the session details HERE. Registration information (hey, it's NEVER too late!) can be found HERE.
Web 2.0 Sessions at Lotusphere 2009
Jumpstart Sessions JMP201 - AJAX and JSON JMP301 - Introduction to "Cloud Computing" JMP306 - IBM Lotus Connections: Up and Running
Futures and Innovations INV101 - From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration, Productivity, and Adoption in the Enterprise INV106 - Lotus Online Collaboration Services: Software as a Service Strategy INV107 - The Future of Enterprise Collaboration INV110 - Going Beyond Office With IBM Lotus Symphony: Future Directions of Collaborative Content Creation INV112 - Connect, Collaborate And Innovate: Using A Virtual Microsoft Desktop Alternative
Application Development Xpages (multiple sessions) Mashups (multiple sessions) AD212 - 10 Web 2.0 User Interface Patterns for IBM Lotus Notes AD103 - Integrate and Extend “Bluehouse” and IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte to Build Better Solutions AD307 - Your Last Mile to SOA and Web 2.0 - Lotus Expeditor for Devices AD408 - Lotus Sametime 8.5: Bringing UC into AJAX and Web 2.0 AD501 - Web 2.0, AJAX and REST for IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1
Best Practices BP105 - Developing World-class Web 2.0 Application w/ Xpages BP111 - Reports, Charts, and Graphs 2.0 BP204 - Enhancing IBM Lotus Quickr for IBM Lotus Domino with Web 2.0 Integration BP404 - Best Practices on Social Software Adoption
Planning and Managing Your Collaboration Infrastructure ID602 - Click to Cloud: How Lotus SaaS Services Integrate with Lotus Software Offerings ID603 - The Silver Lining: Working Together in the Cloud with “Bluehouse” and Lotus Sametime Unyte
Hope that list is helpful - and hope to see you down there. If you DO make it to Lotusphere, please look for me, Mike and the other members of the IBM "Web 2.0 Goes to Work" Team. We'd love to see you there!
Lotus Notes with social computing features for the Mac
Posted by Mike Harer
From Macworld this week, the availability of Lotus Notes 8.5 collaboration software with social computing features for all Mac OS X Leopard-powered computers was announced. So not only is this very cool for Notes to be on the Mac but also for providing social computing features which include new integration with Google, Yahoo and
hundreds of other public Internet calendars.
For more details, the full article titled 'IBM Lotus Delivers New "Social" Notes and Free Symphony Software for Macs' can be accessed here
There's a quote famously attributed to the late Ronald Reagan: "Trust, but verify." I was reminded of it by a sad but sobering story that passed by during the recent holidays: blogging provider JournalSpace is out of business, its users' data wiped out in a metaphorical instant, the most probable cause being a disgruntled employee who deleted the database.
Strictly speaking, though, that was only the proximate cause. The underlying failure was that, by all accounts, JournalSpace had confused "redundancy" with "backups". Their only "backup" was a real-time mirror of their database server. That's great for business continuity -- if the primary drive failed they could switch to the mirror and hardly miss a beat. But it's hopeless for business recovery -- in this case, it appears that somebody or some process erased the database files; and that erasure was of course immediately mirrored on the other drive. A true backup would have allowed them to recover to an earlier point in time; sadly, they appear not to have had any such backup.
(In fairness, a seriously disgruntled employee might have found a way to sabotage the backups, too. A malicious insider is perhaps one of the hardest threats to guard against, especially in a small company where one person may have extremely broad and unsupervised administrative privileges.)
Apart from being a sad story for the founders, employees and users of the service, there's a very important lesson here for anybody using any hosted or cloud service. How much do you really know about the dependability of your provider? If you had asked JournalSpace if they had "backups" they would probably have said "yes", because apparently they didn't know the difference. If your cloud or hosted service provider is promising you certain uptime levels, failover performance, or recovery times, do you take them at their word or do you have some solid evidence? Do they regularly test their ability to perform simple restoration of backups, simulate system failure and recovery or even, in the most business-critical cases, simulate failover to a secondary site?
And most importantly, do you have the in-house expertise to audit and verify their claims that they do?
Lotus Sametime Unyte now has Cloud computing services that will make it easier for virtual team meetings.
Working in a company whose first name is International, I am really looking forward to the added capability in the new version of IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte. Meetings with my colleagues around the globe are a daily occurrence and tools like Lotus Sametime Unyte help the team collaborate and operate more effectively as a virtual team. This also cuts down on the need to travel, saving us time and expense at a time when watching the bottom line is more important than ever.
The Sametime Unyte service has just been updated with expanded capabilities including support for Firefox 3.0, support of open document formats (ODF), such as Lotus Symphony, and portable document format (PDF) files. Another really wonderful addition for global collaboration is it is now available in nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. It virtually is a breeze to use because Lotus Sametime Unyte is a 100% hosted cloud service which doesn't require any software or hardware maintenance on your own computer. Sametime Unyte is being offered as software as a service with different licensing models based on your companies size and needs.
This is one tool I have come to depend on internally leading my global team and I would highly recommend you check it out too. There is a free trial at https://www.webdialogs.com
Web 2.0 Goes to Work
