Do Social Media Grassroots Campaigns Work? Have I Got a Story For You…

Do Social Media Grassroots Campaigns Work? Have I Got a Story For You…

Since launching this survey on October 14, I’m very proud to say that we’ve hit the 100,000 mark in all 3 categories.  This means that you folks have pledged that if you were to run Connections, Sametime and Lotus Notes Traveler servers, then you would do it ONLY on IBM i.  All together, there is (so far) 100,000 potential licenses in your shops; from 20-user small businesses to 20,000-user giants. For solution providers and ISV’s there’s thousands in your customer’s shops too.  This tells IBM that not only is the IBM i community passionate about their preferred platform (well, they KNEW that), but that we’re more than willing to demonstrate that we won’t “just run insert-product-name-here on a Linux partition.”

If it’s not running on IBM i, many won’t run that product at all.

I know others out there have not moved to Sametime 8.5.2 because you can’t run all components on IBM i.  They’re sitting on Sametime 7.5 waiting for something to happen.

There are a good few of us (myself included) running Domino mail on IBM i and are handcuffed from using new Lotus Notes 8.5.3 social capabilities because we can’t run Connections on IBM i.

There’s 100,000 potential user licenses just waiting to get into the social game, or the mobile game or the audio/video conferencing game.  And I know it won’t stop there.  200,000 potential users was my lofty target before I go to Lotusphere in January.  I figured if I convinced a couple of big guns (5,000-10,000 users is a big gun by my standards…I have 250 users) then I’d have something to work with.  Imagine my surprise.  200,000 doesn’t seem that lofty anymore.  It seems very realistic because it is.

In just 2 weeks, you people have taken the initial steps of a loudmouth Lotus on IBM i advocate and ran with it.  You’ve been tweeting, tweeting and retweeting.  You’ve been emailing each other, discussing it in user group meetings, forums and LinkedIn and even promoting it on webinars.

I believe, based on the feedback I’ve received from IBM, is that they’re now starting to understand.  There is scuttlebutt.  They have noticed.  They are even engaging!

So…

Please continue to keep this going.

I encourage not only IBM i customers, but Lotus customers running software on Linux, AIX or Windows, to get involved if you do want to consider running these products on IBM i.  Imagine the power and simplicity of consolidating everything on IBM i.  More platform options means an extension and greater overall footprint of the IBM Collaboration Solutions (i.e., Lotus) brand.  That makes the brand stronger which in turn makes it better for all of us.

Awesome job everyone.

Breathing New Life – An IBM i “Growth Play” & Full Support for Lotus Connections/Sametime on IBM i

Breathing New Life – An IBM i “Growth Play” & Full Support for Lotus Connections/Sametime on IBM i

There’s an amazing opportunity for IBM here.

In preparation for a full Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) Lite deployment, over the last two weeks I’ve been installing Sametime 8.5.2 components piece by piece.  I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a challenge because of the sheer magnitude of the product suite.  You’ve got a good number of components of the entire solution that run natively on IBM i:

• Domino 8.5.2 server acting as an LDAP server
• Domino 8.5.2 Sametime Community server
• Websphere-based components
  • Sametime System Console
  • Sametime Proxy Server
  • Sametime Meeting Server
  • Sametime Gateway Server

Then, you have the other components that you need to run on either Linux, Windows, Solaris or AIX:

• Sametime Media Manager
• Sametime TURN Server
• Sametime Bandwidth Manager
• SIP Edge Proxy Server

These servers entail deploying either additional hardware or carving out Linux/AIX partitions on the IBM i.  That’s not a huge problem.  A great feature of Power Systems is the ability to run additional operating systems alongside each other.  But what if you are a long time IBM i customer who has no Linux or AIX expertise?  What if you don’t want to extend your business servers to Windows?  In order to partition Linux on my IBM i I will have to IPL (reboot) the IBM i server…not a big in terms of learning curve but it makes installing software more complicated than it has to be.  In order to leverage existing skills, minimize training, cut operating system licensing and maintenance costs…ideally you’d want to run all Sametime components natively on the same IBM i partition.

I’ve also been investigating IBM Connections since the idea of social business is a hot topic.  Sadly, Connections does not run natively on IBM i.  That means a lot to me.  A lot of IBM i customers, when looking for new software, probably ask this as their first question: “Does it run on IBM i?”

Yesterday I was a guest on This Week in Lotus (episode 63) with hosts Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke and fellow guests Lisa Duke and Sharon Bellamy.  They were kind enough to accept my suggestion to discuss deploying IBM Collaboration Solutions (i.e., Lotus) on IBM i.  I spent a little time preparing to do most of the talking on the subject but those folks were not only receptive to the idea of running IBM Collaboration Solutions products on IBM i, they were advocating it as a very valid solution.  Darren and Sharon especially seemed very fond of the IBM i.  We spent a fair bit of time talking about IBM Connections having zero native support on IBM i and Sametime only offering support for a portion of the product.

With the recent success of IBM i and Power Systems, I was still very surprised when I read, and strongly urge you to read, Chris Maxcer’s recent interview with IBM’s Ari Kugler, Director of Business Development and Business Unit Executive for IBM i.  Ari talks about the recent success of the IBM i brand and how he expects “double digit growth for the platform install base this year.”  Phrases like “critical to the Power brand,” “growth play” and a “new renaissance around an integrated platform” inspire consumer confidence of IBM’s commitment to the IBM i.

This quote made my day:  “I really think to a large extent, customers, developers, and even to us, in IBM, we’ve forgotten just how tremendous the platform is and we have kind of reawakened and realized the potential, and we’ve come to the same strategic realization that customers want an integrated platform, that has the ¬performance, security, and some of the new market ¬realizations—these were discovered by IBM, and we have a 20-year lead and a proven platform we can build up on.”

Last month IBM named 50 people in it’s Champion Program for Collaboration solutions.  One of the benefits of the program is direct access to IBM employees who are designers and leaders of the products we all use and advocate the use of.

Given the timing of my Sametime installation and Connections investigation, I immediately took advantage of this.

In the past few weeks I’ve been very fortunate to have some communication with IBM product leaders (Mac Guidera and Marlon Machado via the IBM Champion program) regarding the porting of, respectfully, Connections and Sametime components to IBM i. IBM’s opinion is that the customer demand for IBM i support just hasn’t been that high. Customers haven’t been beating down the doors to run a Connections server on their IBM i. Sametime 8.5.2 customers are willing to use Linux on a partition or a standalone server to handle the audio/video components, while running the base Sametime servers natively.


But that doesn’t mean that customers wouldn’t run it on IBM i.  It also doesn’t mean IBM won’t offer IBM i support.  You’ve got two wallflowers here folks, and they’re both not asking each other to dance.

Perhaps the one avenue that needs to be explored by IBM is the ability for customers, whether existing or potential, to deploy their entire messaging, social business and collaboration infrastructure (including audio/video) on the back of one IBM i partition running on Power Systems.

Think about that.  It’s an unbelievably strong statement and it works from both a marketing and customer satisfaction perspective.   The security, stability, multi-versioning capabilities of Domino, the central point of management (install base Domino code for a release once and upgrade each server in minutes), the minimal licensing costs, the minimal energy costs of using one server, etc., etc., etc., make it a darn good case.  Can you run 99 Domino servers under 1 Linux or AIX partition like you can with IBM i?  Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think so.  What kind of OS licensing costs do customers with brigades of Windows-based Lotus servers have to suffer compared to IBM i?  Lotus and IBM i are a fantastic combination and really should be tied to the hip in all aspects.

Or at the very least, IBM should give us the choice.

If you’re an IBM i or Lotus customer (or both!) then how can you make a difference?

• If you’re an existing or potential IBM i (or existing System i or iSeries) customer and you want to run all components of IBM Connections, IBM Sametime or Lotus Notes Traveler on your system, then click here.
• Speak up when you’re at a Lotus or IBM i user group meeting
• Get an account and use the forums in the Greenhouse
• Join Bleedyellow and voice your concerns
• Tweet, blog or email a link to this article

IBM Wants to Hear from You About Making IBM i Your Social Collaboration Platform

Well folks, IBM wants to hear from you!

If you’re an existing or potential IBM i (or existing System i or iSeries) customer and you want to run all components of IBM Connections, IBM Sametime or Lotus Notes Traveler on your system, then click here.

Your responses will be forwarded to the appropriate product managers at IBM that are responsible for platform support.

Currently IBM i isn’t supported on Connections or Lotus Notes Traveler, and is only partially supported on recent versions of Sametime.  Help us change that.

Domino Replica Analyzer – Clarification

I’m seeing a little bit of confusion from emails.  This utility is platform independent and written entirely in LotusScript.

Cheers.

http://www.stevencpitcher.com/2010/12/replica-analyzer.html

Domino Replica Analyzer

I started playing around with replication of Domino directories a few months ago and came up with an iSeries-only program that essentially does wholesale replication of directories.  I received a couple of downloads (thank you, thank you…diaper money for my twin newborn girls), but what I really wanted to create was something platform independent that did a little more.  I went a little overboard but it fits the bill for what I need.

Here’s what it does:

• Checks for differences between two replicas on different servers
  • Number of documents
  • Access Control List
  • Full Text Index type and last date it was indexed
  • Last Fixup Date
  • Quota
  • On Disk Structure
  • Document compression
  • LZ1 compression
  • Unread marks
  • Transaction logging
  • DAOS status
  • % Whitespace
  • …and a few others.
• Gives you the option to automatically set options based on the results found
  • If your target replica DB quota is different from the source, make the target quota the same as the source, etc.
• Automatically create new replicas if not found on the target server.  This was the premise of my original tool.  A great feature if you have a whole directory you need replicated.  For example, you have an Archive policy and your archive database gets created on new user registration, however you need to manually create the replica, assign the quota, etc.  This utility is scheduled to run every week so that you can be sure your archive directory is always in sync with the replicated directory on another server.
• Customizable setup document that allows you to pick the servers and directories to poll, and what actions you want to automatically happen based on the results you find.

Read more here: http://www.stevencpitcher.com/2010/12/replica-analyzer.html

New Blog Address

I’ll be blogging primarily from a different location now:

ENDJOBABN

You can also reach my on Twitter @stevencpitcher

Give your iSeries a good wash!

Not literally of course.

http://www.mcpressonline.com/system-administration/performance-monitoring-tuning/be-sure-your-spring-cleaning-includes-tidying-up-disk-space.html

Free PDF Generation in V6R1

http://www.mcpressonline.com/application-software/document-management/with-61-pdf-capability-is-pretty-darn-fast.html

Tip of the week: Clearly label and protect your old junk that isn’t junk

I have 3 AS/400′s in my shop.  Last week, I found the backup twinaxial console and keyboard and associated pigtails and cables in the junk heap in the basement.

I would imagine they were thrown down the stairs because they worked perfectly fine a few months ago.  Now they don’t.

Funny because I had put a nice little label on the front that said “Backup AS/400 Console.”  Either someone can’t read or they didn’t care to ask before firing the works of it onto the old concrete floor.

Moral of the story: protect your useful equipment that isn’t shiny and new.  You never know when some knucklehead will take it upon himself to do some spring cleaning for you.

ERP for Free?

Check out a new article I wrote for MC Press called “ERP for Free?”  I’d be interested in hearing your comments on this one.

http://www.mcpressonline.com/application-software/enterprise-resource-planning-financial/erp-for-free.html