Lotus Rock Star

Category Sametime
From IBM Channel Comms:

On Tuesday, July 27, IBM announced that IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5.1 would be generally available (GA) for customers and IBM Business Partners to install today, Thursday, July 29.  Unfortunately, we identified an issue during the build process and have opted to delay the GA release by up to two weeks.    

We understand that some Sametime customers will be impacted by this delay and apologize for the inconvenience.  However, IBM takes product quality very seriously.  

We will use the SametimeBlog to provide updates if anything changes.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact one of us here on the blog or your IBM Sales Representative.

Please visit the SametimeBlog for the official communication.  If you have any questions, please contact product management.

Posted by Rob Novak At 5:16 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University
Just a quick reminder to anyone who doesn't receive newsletters or the mailings that Collaboration University 2010, the only conference dedicated to Lotus Quickr and Sametime, will bump its registration fees over the weekend. This is the fifth year and eleventh and twelfth installations of Collaboration University, and we (SNAPPS, Turtle Partnership, Connectria, Epilio, and BE Systems/Bluewave) are thrilled at the prospect of educating and demonstrating techniques, best practices, and features in Sametime and Quickr 8.5.

A little content information has been posted here, and we're working hard on the full agenda (which is no small feat with one of the products still in super secret beta!). But you can expect:

--All new technical content, with all new product releases
--New cross-product sessions for integrated environments (where are those log files again?!)
--The introduction of management, strategy, innovation and collaboration culture topics - critical success factors for any installation

So sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning, we'll bump the fee up $100 to the July rate. Or, it might wait until I've landed in New Hampshire Monday afternoon, as I have to be awake at 4:30 for my flight...hence the "ish" in the title!

Hope to see you there in London or Chicago!

Posted by Rob Novak At 11:30 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category What's Going On
After an intense few weeks of "delivery" on a project whereby a terabyte or so of data moved across the pond and 12,000 users were renamed in LDAP in two shiny new clusters (geek creds...still got it), I am focusing some time on the business of doing business (rather, making it happen), some travel, and upcoming conferences.

Back to the Future
I'm thrilled to be taking the whole technical gang at SNAPPS to IamLUG in St. Louis in August and especially excited about the new "TackItOn" concept whereby attendees can add a day of focused training on XPages, iPhone/IPad, or Domino Optimization. I announced it here, and all IamLUG attendees are welcome to register for the extra day and a discounted rate!

I've also just announced (moments ago, for the three of you in the yellowverse who don't get my newsletters) that Collaboration University 2010 will end its super-early registration savings of $200 on Sunday, July 4th. You can still get alumni discounts of up to $200, plus webinar savings of $297...it adds up, folks...and I've posted and emailed a little more detail on the content as we shape up the agenda. It's not an easy task when one of the products is still in managed beta, but I can guarantee this year will have more "new" to it than any of the ten previous installations!

On the horizon, of course, I am looking at ILUG in Belfast in November, and possibly even Tri-State LUG in October as it has the unique quality of being days away from a wedding that will take me east anyway!

Back to Now
In the near term, I will be spending next week in New Hampshire...both having meetings and substitute-dog-sitting for Carl Tyler's beautiful lab Jessie! I'm looking forward to spending a couple days with Gab and Tim Davis, partners in crime and business (not at the same time, don't read too much into this, beloved customers) and meeting with some folks about Quickr now and future.

The following week, I head to Tampa with Viktor and Jerald for a short training assignment - Dojo and XPages - and of course while there's much to see and do in Tampa, I hope to visit with both our training client and another enterprise customer based there. Afterwards, the guys will come home while I drive 3 hours south to Naples to visit with my dad, stepmom, and 93-year-old grandparents. Every chance I get...

So while I juggle travel schedules, proposals, new clients, and conferences, I'm also managing to get a bit of writing done for my newsletter and have more frequent blogging in mind. There will be some changes to the newsletter this time, as I am broadening its scope outside the two products Sametime and Quickr and into the collaboration and innovation world as a whole. In fact, the next one will feature either one or two guest columns on innovation and collaboration strategy. I'm very excited about this gradual change and hope to be able to appeal to a wider audience while still meeting the geek needs of my fellow technicians.

Back to the Future II
More to come. Oh, and a product announcement in July. Haven't done that in seven years. Should be fun.

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:13 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category SNAPPS Licenses
Over the years, SNAPPS has been primarily a high-end services organization. We started in 1997 as a one-man show, writing commercial and corporate Notes applications. In 1999, we added a bit of hosting (back then it wasn't referred to as cloud computing, not even hosting, one was an ASP - application service provider - a term that fell out of favor a few years later). That has had its ups and downs. But essentially, it's the same idea, plus eleven years. There have been technological innovations and bandwidth improvements year over year that make this model more attractive - for some.

In 2002, before it was cool, we started Giving away Code in Great ways. The idea was to feed into our consulting business. That worked OK, we brought on many enterprise clients based on word of mouth, buzz, and even the occasional movie.

In 2006, we started Collaboration University, which to this day (our 11th and 12th iterations coming in September!) I still believe is a great concept - partners and experts organizing and delivering a focused, small conference on their own. No sponsors, and no intermediaries. And it's a blast.

Two years ago, we got pretty heavily into government business - as subject matter experts, not engineers. While I'm unable to disclose the exact nature of the work, many of you have taken some clues from what I have been able to say here on my blog and at Lotusphere. That has been more fun than I thought it would be, despite the paperwork. And believe me, you think you have paperwork...? I laugh at your paperwork...  Seriously, more than 3,000 US Government solicitations are posted every WEEK. Check it out. fbo.gov.

But the one thing we at SNAPPS have never done, however, is sell licenses for IBM. Or anyone else, for that matter (except ourselves, with the occasional ISV-esque tools we build). Why, as it seems we quite obviously have all the skills to do so? We understand how it works. A deeply embedded and personal disdain for commoditization is the likely culprit. We know the products, and heck, I've taught (preached, evangelized) a sales session to other partners and IBMers at Lotusphere for six years, poking fun at commoditization every chance I get. But at the same time, we've helped IBM reps directly close hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales over the years - likely millions indirectly (by using our code to demo -- exactly 1,187 IBMers have downloaded our Quickr Templates for instance).

There's also the issue of the aforementioned paperwork. Selling licenses isn't difficult from the value proposition, meeting business objectives, or creating innovative solutions to business process issues (that's the benefit of having provided consulting for so long). But actually being part of the "channel," as reported by many a friend in the industry, involves a lot of paper. NDAs, tests, SVI, SVP, GPP, Industry networks, sales "plays," incentives, mastery exams, Partnerworld levels, points, worldwide enterprises, country enterprises, Prometric testing IDs...I could go on - and that's just the IBM side of the equation. To sell software, you also have to have a relationship with a distributor. They're called VADs. To get one of those, you have to pass a credit check, fill out tons of forms, have them hook up numbers that relate back to your Partnerworld IDs, and ultimately, when a customer wants a quote (or they have one prepared by IBM), you ask the distributor for their quote to you. If you're lucky, there will be some margin in there - and of course there is, a little, sometimes a little more depending on things like special bids, special deals, and how much you actually sell. Then you have the client procurement issues to deal with, and the VAD rules and regs, and "registering" the sale so it counts for you in the IBM supercomputers. Say the client pays in 60 days and you get 30 to pay the VAD - that just won't do, so you have to build the same trust relationships (albeit at a different level than senior management) that you do as a high-end services organization.

Sounds like kind of a pain, huh?

Well, I went ahead and did all that last month. So today I'm announcing that to round out the value-laden consulting engagements on which we've always been focused, SNAPPS is officially open for business and can sell licenses, in the US, across the Lotus brand. The number of companies that can say that is about to get much smaller, since IBM is in the process of implementing new rules this year whereby a company needs to be "authorized" to sell a brand - a process of (you guessed it) lots of paperwork, multiple sales and technical certifications, and enrollment in programs designed to track whether you're, well, in the program. Portal's already gone over, Quickr, Sametime and Connections go next month on July 19th, and Domino goes in January 2011. We'll be authorized in all three, ready to help.

Do I have a lot to learn? Sure. But as I find out, I will share our stories (what I can share, anything public) here on LotusRockStar. And, as we get into the world of license sales for our clients, we're planning to really add the "value" bit at the beginning of that acronym.

Now I am going to share a secret. It's not a secret among partners, but is pretty hush-hush in the channel (until the tempest kicks in which is infrequent and shuts down quickly). You know that software maintenance "Quote" you get from IBM every year that looks suspiciously like an invoice? You don't really have to buy directly from IBM. At the bottom right corner in 0.2-point type is the proviso that you can indeed buy from your Business Partner, just reference the quote number. Partners have been dealing with this for years by tracking their clients on calendars and checking in with them to try to keep the business when IBM sends out those quotes. Don't get me wrong, IBM has a good reason for sending them out automated like that. They have no idea if the partner is still in a good client relationship, or for that matter even exists. So they get a pass on that. Sort of. My point is, you can buy from an IBM Lotus Business Partner and realize a lot of benefits that don't come with the dry transactional aspect of the direct renewal.

Guess what happens when you do that? The Business Partner (VAR, SVI, SVP, many other TLAs) can likely (but not always) give you a small discount, because they have a bit of a margin to work with. From our friend and future sage Wikipedia: "Resellers may have pre-negotiated pricing that enables them to discount more than a customer would receive by purchasing directly. This is because a reseller has already qualified for higher-tiered discounting due to previous engagements with other clients, and the strategic partnership between the vendor and VAR inherently brings the vendor more business." They likely (here's where the V and A kick into VAR) can also provide additional advice, services, and support in addition to the support you receive from IBM. Some partners even act as a proxy for their clients, opening support tickets and escalating them faster than possible if the client calls direct, because they add a ton of experience and pre-support diagnostics to the experience. They do more than just computing your PVUs and CALs. Maybe, if they happen to have a mature, value-driven and integrity bound consulting practice, they have the ability to advise you on a strategy level, if that's part of their bag of tricks (hint...it's part of my bag of tricks).

All you have to do, good customer, is be a good customer and pay your reseller on time, preferably a few days early to account for mail, so they can maintain good credit with the distributor.

What could be easier?

Next time you get a quote from IBM, or it's time to renew and your old partner isn't around, you need advice on licensing, computations, or want a software quote, you just like me, or heck if you're one of those 1,200 IBMers who'd like to say thanks for the assist, you may now contact us at licensing@snapps.com. Bring on the paperwork.

Thanks for reading. Back to your work.

Posted by Rob Novak At 2:34 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category SNAPPS Quickr
I would like to invite a select group of Lotus Quickr customers* (8.1, 8.2, and/or 8.5** beta participants) to a special webcast this Wednesday where Viktor Krantz and I will unveil a series of potential extensions to Lotus Quickr being considered by SNAPPS for commercialization. We haven't sold products for a while, and have given away millions in free software, but this stuff is so valuable to so many customers that we want to run it by a small group of customers before making a final investment in development.

We will be demonstrating concepts of extensibility that have never been done in Quickr before, including one of the most often-requested features by Quickr (and all predecessor names) customers. As well, we will solicit input to let you give us ideas for customer-specific (bespoke, my European friends) extensions.

This will not be a sales pitch, and will not be the run-of-the-mill awesomeness that we usually do on stage. This is very early stage stuff, but we don't want to go too far without real customers providing feedback.

This webcast event will be held this Wednesday, June 9 at 10 AM CDT. It will consist of about 20 minutes of demonstration, a quick discussion of our initial goals with the framework, and then we will open it up for questions and your feedback.

*This webcast is by invitation only. To request an invitation, you must be a Lotus Quickr Domino customer or are in active evaluation of Quickr, must have a minimum deployment or planned deployment of 250+ users, and must request an invitation via email to me: rnovak at snapps dot com.

In the email, you must include contact info, let me know your current or planned Quickr deployment size (both servers and users), the name of your Lotus sales representative, and you must use a corporate email address. Of course, your information will not be shared with anyone. Upon confirmation (or if I already know you), you will receive an acknowledgement. On Wednesday morning, one hour before the webinar, you will receive a link. Your identity in the webinar will be visible (we will be using GoToMeeting for integrated audio).

So again, send me:

1. Corporate contact info - customers only - including your country so we can arrange phone service if possible
2. Deployment statistics - number of servers, users
3. IBM sales rep name (specifically Lotus/advanced collab sales rep if you have one, or named account rep if you have that)

If you are an IBM sales rep and would like to have your customer included, please introduce us via email and confirm their availability. Spots are limited by the webinar's capacity.

**We will not be demonstrating anything specific to Quickr 8.5, which is under NDA. What we're working on will have the capability to extend Quickr 8.1, 8.2, or 8.5.

See you online!

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:56 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Case Study Domino Notes
A few months ago, SNAPPS was tasked with the development of some pretty interesting capabilities for a Domino intranet application, and produced some innovations that I thought I would share here. This falls under the category of "I had no idea you could do that," so I'll explain. (P.S. for those of you who think of us just as the Quickr guys, we actually do more high-end Domino and integration work than Quickr, even though that practice is still substantial. Who knew? Deep bench.)

Scenario
The central bank of another country (Americans, think "Federal Reserve") has the task of processing all manner of paperwork for foreign individuals and corporations who seek to invest either in companies or real estate in their country. This information - all standard forms - originates from the individuals or corporations (or their lawyers) and is submitted to one branch of the company's government. From there, the forms are sent to the central bank where they are evaluated, scanned, and stored in perpetuity. Once all the documentation requirements are met, the bank is able to do business with the foreign entity. Pretty straightforward legal stuff, with about 25-30 forms involved. It's all tracked in Lotus Notes with back end connections to a plethora of relational databases and an ECM. Not bad, they had been well organized for years because of this investment.

Problem
The business challenge had always been the handoff from the government to the bank, and communication back to the foreign individual or company about what was still required of them. Couriers, mail, and document shipments were unwieldy and caused human error, lost time, and confusion when coding the forms and associating them with the right entity. Automation and process improvement was necessary, and as the bank was already a Lotus Notes shop, a Domino application seemed the perfect solution.

The devil is always in the details, of course. The new intranet application had to integrate with the current Notes application (no brainer), initiate the same workflow (a little more brains required), produce PDFs on the fly for the web user (head scratcher), automatically notify the foreign entity of the missing documentation (whew), and generate two different kinds of bar codes on the PDFs (whoa).

Solution
Since it's now in place, allow me to switch to present tense. When the government agency fills out the online form indicating which documents they are going to submit, two things happen. For the forms they DO have already, the Domino system spits out "cover pages" with bar codes identifying the documentation. The agency then prints these PDF cover pages, places them in front of the documents to be submitted, and securely scans them directly to an ECM at the bank that is already designed to accept and categorize them based on the bar codes.

What about the forms they DON'T have already, but are still required? For those, an email is sent to the originator (the foreign person or corporation) with the remainder of the PDF cover pages for the missing documents, with instructions on how to submit them. When the documents are ready, they either fax/scan them in themselves or mail them to the government agency who does it for them.

With this application, the central bank now has eliminated human error, has a no-touch paperless (a.k.a. "greener") system for processing the hundreds of pages of documentation required of these individuals and businesses, and the government, bank, and foreign entity all have confidence that the required documentation is processed rapidly and efficiently. All because of Lotus Notes, IBM back end systems, and some toolkit wizardry with PDF generation and bar code printing via the web. Oh yeah, The Amazing Julian figured out those fun toolkit bits.

Customization, Innovation & ROI
This isn't the kind of solution you wake up and architect. It's the kind you figure out when you have a team that's been working with business processes for 15-20 years, applying innovative solutions to challenging problems. It's the kind that, when you look back, is elegant in its simplicity and still produces a great return on the client's investment - one that will last for years while making the client appear (and truly be) cutting-edge. It's what we like to do because the value is clear and the work is fun.

The moral of my story is this. Next time you're faced with a draconian corporate edict of "no customization" think about this case. Think about the environmental impact of your processes, and think about the time and money that the muckety-mucks' supposedly cost-cutting decision can truly cost in the long run. Innovation and customization isn't always the right approach, but sometimes, it's just a no-brainer.

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:37 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category IamLUG


No Brainer:
You are going to IamLUG August 2-3 already, aren't you. Yes, you are. Who would want to miss a great, free, 300 person user group in St. Louis? Beyond that, who would want to miss me, Viktor Krantz, Ed Brill, Troy Reimer, Julian Robichaux, Jerald Mahurin, Matt White, Chris Miller, Kathy Brown, Paul Calhoun, Tom Duff, Marie Scott, Jess Stratton, and more of the Lotus Illuminati on stage? Seriously.

For our session, we're reprising our Lotusphere 2010 session as "Not Too Much, Not Too Little, Just Right! Give Your Users Applications That Fit Their Jobs!" I thought about going with a Goldilocks theme, but Viktor refused to wear the outfit. Which is strange given his propensity to dress up. In this session, we will show you how admins, developers and end users of all kinds can work together to exploit Domino and Notes while giving them just the right tools for them to be productive.

And Viktor, Troy and Jerald are on tap to deliver a session called "Whatever We Can Tell You About Quickr 8.5" - which in reality, if and when the NDA evaporates, will be a deep dive into the serious changes in the Quickr product from an end user, developer, and admin's point of view! This all-encompassing hour of Quickr goodness will be full of surprises, and in fact will be a preview of the kinds of things you'll learn at the September 27-29 Collaboration University conference in Chicago. Oh yes, you are going to that, too. Aren't you?

Last but definitely not least, Julian Robichaux will be joining us at IamLUG from the SNAPPS-lanta office, and has yet to decide what in his bag of tricks he would like to submit for a session. Whatever it is, it will be awesome as usual.

If you're going, and you are, then your travel expenses have already been approved (or you're working on it). So while you are there, why not stay an extra day at the ridiculously low conference hotel rate and get a full day of focused training on August 4th? Why not indeed!

Announcing "Tack It On" - a third day of training in conjunction with IamLUG! You can choose from three seminars, attractively priced with discounts for IamLUG attendees:

XPages 101: Matt White in association with Elguji Software
iPhone Development for Business: Julian Robichaux, Viktor Krantz, Rob Novak from SNAPPS
Domino Optimization Tour-Stop One: Chris Miller, Consultant in Your Pocket

For more details, first register for IamLUG here (you have to be registered to get the promotional code!) then swing on by http://tackiton.com/iamlug to register for the one day seminar of your choice...

See you in St. Louis!

Posted by Rob Novak At 11:24 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category QuickPlace Lotus Quickr
With QuickPlace 7 and its awkwardly-dubbed progenitor Team Workplace 6.5.1 on their death beds counting down seven more days, I've been asked by a number of upgrade-shy (or off-maintenance) companies and individuals for advice on how to move ahead. You see, it doesn't matter to users that the product is 3 years past the introduction of Quickr. If you have not upgraded for whatever reason, the users of that mission-critical document repository, team space, extranet, re-branded, personal, public, CEO-likes-it, "thing" are not about to walk away from their documents. In fact, they will continue to demand a service level similar to what they've received for 4 to 11 years.

Here is where I mention - for those of you who haven't loaded that link out of curiosity - that Notes and Domino 6.5, Lotus Enterprise Integrator 6.5, Lotus Learning Management System 1.0, and Lotus Component Designer 1.0 also meet their untimely ends in a week. That last one's a bit of an odd bird, since I don't think it was never officially released for sale. I know, I wrote the certification exam for it while in beta. Go figure.

What I endeavor to do here is lay out the choices you have as a company next Friday and beyond, and in fact any time a product - IBM or otherwise - reaches end of service. Not every choice applies to every company - in fact you may only have one or two based on your situation - but hopefully by delineating them here I can give you a sense of what is involved for each choice, whether it takes investment or not, and some pros and cons. So, here we go.

Do Nothing
A common approach to old software, Do Nothing is popular among IT shops where there is less governance and more freedom to experiment (which may have gotten you into QuickPlace in the first place), where you have no corporate guidelines dictating that you run only supported software and stay current on maintenance contracts. Of course this is and always has been a risk, since you can no longer call the vendor for support. If Do Nothing and its Siamese twin brother We Don't Have Budget For This is your approach, I strongly suggest you follow my five-step program:

1) Secure a copy of the installation media
2) Record all admin passwords for potential reinstallation, recovery or rebuild
3) Document your directory configuration, Domino settings, QuickPlace settings, configuration settings, SMTP, firewall, etc etc
4) Do backups - even using poor man's backup as Joseph Hoetzl explains in his excellent Lotus wiki article (it works in old versions too)
5) Pray, or whatever it is you do to ensure success

I don't actually expect anyone who is using the Do Nothing approach to follow my program, because by its very nature people who Do Nothing take a more low-intensity approach.

Upgrade Already
Whatever the reason, some companies have a culture of rationalizing lack of momentum. Once you get onto a version of software that generally works and causes few calls to the help desk, it's not uncommon to just hang onto it. Look at Internet Explorer 6, a nine-year-old piece of trash browser that is still the "corporate standard" at a number of companies. Unfortunately that standard is a) buggy, b) full of security risks counter-measured by edge devices because of the risk, c) incredibly less functional than modern browsers, and ... oh never mind, sorry I got off on my IE6 rant again, didn't I .. where was I?

Oh, yes, QuickPlace.

Let's assume for a moment that you either have maintenance on your Lotus software or can reinstate it without chopping down a rainforest for the paperwork, shall we? Upgrade Already. Using old outdated software is counterproductive at best and irresponsible at worst. That's right, I said irresponsible. Handcuffing users with old functionality, bugs, web 0.3, and security risks for the sake of - temporarily - keeping call volume down is no way to support a business.

Here's why this happens. IT departments who are generally in charge of all software (a horrible idea, but the subject of another post later on) live with a scarcity mentality. Their budgets are fixed and squeezed tighter all the time. They want software to just work - and if they find a magical combination, they'll stick with it for as long as possible and longer than reasonable. So you IE6/QuickPlace/Notes 6/Windows 2000 shops, I contend that you need a little introspection and a real housecleaning of the dusty old software. Your job is to enable the business with technology, not hinder it with arbitrary technology decisions and "company standards."

If you're not in IT, and you believe these standards are important, you have been brainwashed. IT departments worldwide have created cultures of lemming-like users by enforcing "standards" based on scare tactics ("Oh, that Notes update will break the central database and fried the matrix," or "Our ERP system specs dictate we must stay with IE6 or nobody will get paid."). A secondary tactic is to implement (or outsource) change management procedures so cumbersome that it takes three months to get a new font for your marketing department to use, meanwhile missing the annual report production deadline by - you guessed it - three months.

Sidebar: I once sat in on of these outsourced IT operations in Detroit looking at an invalid XML file in production, and indicated the one line change necessary to remedy the problem. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that in order to remove the duplicate </server settings> line in that file required my write-up and recommendations on a standard form, a review by the operations committee (next Tuesday), a technical review by an expert (next Thursday), a re-review by the operations committee (following Tuesday) and implementation by another technical expert (my hands could not touch keyboards) the following weekend. I bit my tongue, told them that was ridiculous, that their server was misconfigured, that their technical "expert" was the idiot who had screwed it up, and that they would have to take my word for it as the subject matter expert. I made the change when they went into their next committee meeting.

You'll notice that in all of this, I haven't advocated upgrading to the latest version without thorough testing. You have to be cutting edge, in beta programs, testing and playing with features in order to properly keep your company up with the rest of the world. Three years is plenty of time to let the bugs work their way out, and nine is just ridiculous (and irresponsible). And I've also not said that every upgrade is easy. If you have customizations, QuickPlace can be a bit of a pain to upgrade to Quickr 8.2. You may need help. (Cue IT scare tactic, someone somewhere is quoting me: "Novak says QuickPlace is a pain to upgrade," I bet my Mac on it...). One more thing, my financially-savvy reader, have I mentioned that if you're on maintenance and don't upgrade, you've paid about 50% the original price of your software acquisition to go nowhere? Upgrade Already.

If you're not in IT, it's likely that you don't know what you're missing, so I strongly suggest checking with outside sources. Read a blog, check out the vendor website for feature lists and case studies. It's OK, they aren't looking.

Kill It Softly
There are companies where QuickPlace never really took off. You bought licenses, with all good intentions (or the intent to punch up or preserve your budget - how many of you live in the "if we don't spend it we won't get it next year" world?). Some places were created, but you see more drop off than start up all the time. You neglect it, don't install fixpacks or really officially support it. New PCs are purchased that don't work with the ActiveX controls, or you have issues with your old hardware. Maybe you never trained people or even informed them it's there - the Rogue Server Crowd. And, you've found some whiz-bang new way of collaborating in your organization called electronic mail. Your culture adopted it 20 years ago and while the CEO still types everything in lower case, it works for you.

Alternately, you either don't need (dodging poison darts from IBM) or are unable to justify web-based collaboration. Maybe you bought Portal Extend and got QuickPlace as a bonus, like the cool tattoo at the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks. You installed it and are now using the installation media as a coaster in the break room. To you, the unenlightened, I suggest giving up altogether. It's like pushing a rope and as I don't waste time bending the laws of physics I won't even try. Kill It.

But don't go willy-nilly turning off VMs or servers and repurposing the hard drive for your newfangled Doom 3 network, you need to Kill It Softly. Why? Because there is likely some really important stuff on that server. Stuff that should have been managed, could have been made very useful, and might even remain only there. In fact, the server may contain critical, sensitive information and need to be accessible for years to come. I know of QuickPlace servers where the engineering plans for cars were created and stored, weapons developed, billion-dollar web projects planned, multi-billion dollar mergers discussed, and insurance documents placed for safekeeping.

If you're in IT and considering retirement of QuickPlace (vs. Upgrade Already, Do Nothing, or the others that follow), it is critical that you communicate with ALL users (not just the managers of the places) to ensure that no critical data is left behind or lost. And, you need to ensure that those users have another repository - not their local hard disks - available for any critical information. Note that I say information, this is key. If you've thought of QuickPlace and Quickr as simple document repositories, you're missing that conversations and context behind documents can be as important as the attachments themselves.

One of the great things about web (and Notes, and gMail, etc. etc.) collaboration is that you can visualize context through threads, combine metadata and documents, and complement attachments with rich text and comments. The X-35 prototype attachment saved away in a filing cabinet, or on a hard drive, loses a lot when separated from the thread detailing evolution of its design and the final comment of the nuclear engineer in rich text that says "this thing will never fly" right before plummeting to his death under suspicious circumstances, now, doesn't it?

So if you're in the Kill It camp, make sure you do the right things to make it Softly. Communicate with everyone. Drop places by attrition, managing them on a regular basis during the wind-down. Give users alternatives with proper governance over critical information. Consider using tools, consultants, and programming wizardry to pump the data to somewhere safe. And make sure the death is properly planned and not too fast. If you're in IT, believe me, you do NOT want to the one who made the Kill It Quickly decision and executed it poorly when the CEO can't find her merger documents, midyear reviews or golden parachute PDFs in that Firedog link thing you once helped her set up.

Bottom line, odds are that if you're killing QuickPlace it wasn't properly introduced, and likely wasn't taken care of in the first place. If you're in IT, shame on you, if you're not, and your QuickPlace server is being killed off after years of neglect, what do you think is going to happen to the next collaboration platform your company puts in? The problem is indicative of attitude and culture, which don't change with shiny new software. It'll get old too someday.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx

Be Extorted
One of the most ridiculous things I've seen happen in companies using old software is that instead of Upgrading Already, Killing It Softly, or Doing Nothing, they actually choose to put themselves in a position where they have a critical need for the software and agree to pay a premium for extended support from the original vendor. I've seen it go on for years and years, sticking with the same version of whatever (let's just say Notes 4 or SmartSuite 9.7 or Office 95 or - dammit - IE6 - dammit, for example), keeping some poor people at the vendor on the line for providing development fixes to ten year old software, and paying out the nose. If you're in the Be Extorted crowd, you may as well start attending Be Ashamed group meetings. I hear they have a twelve-step program.

Who benefits from this idiotic behavior? Not the company. Not the vendor, who could be giving their soul-sucked developers something more interesting to do than contemplate the impact of HTML emails on Notes 4 rendering or figure out why Approach won't work with MySQL on Windows 7. Not the customers of the customer, who get email or documents poorly formatted. Not the users who are in the dark ages, growing more and more hateful of the software because it must be the software's fault for being so out of date and hard to use. Not even the sales rep, who might get a pittance on the maintenance extension but would much rather sell modern software than extended warranties. Not product management, to whom said customer is useless for market research and product feature testing. Not business partners, who are so busy ramping up modern skills to compete that they grow disdainful of the dark age customer who pays a vendor for a trouble ticket system instead of planning for the future. Trust me, it's a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.

Oh wait, there's ONE department that benefits. Human resources! They can very easily replace what was once a vibrant, expert-level, high-skills IT workforce with a bank of phones and low-wage helpdesk people. Finally! H.R. can justify its existence to line management through cost reduction wins. In the long run, not so much, since this entire concept is predicated on a culture of apathy. If that is perpetuated, it won't be limited to software. I personally don't want to buy a car, shoes, electricity, or food from a company that neglects its IT infrastructure so long it has to resort to extended support to maintain minimal capabilities in the software afterlife.

But if you're big enough, and you ask, and you pay, you can probably buy your way into another year. Maybe two. Have fun with that.

Business Partners
In the end-of-service situation, lacking internal skills to upgrade, a very reasonable alternative is to contract with a vendor-certified (or at least industry-proven) Business Partner expert who has been around and known, fixed, worked with and built for the dead software version since before its inception. There are plenty of small shops out there perfectly capable of helping, troubleshooting, planning real upgrades, executing, migrating, exporting data, and more because unlike your organization that is stuck on five-year-old software, they have worked with numerous implementations and all versions.

They know the tricks of the trade.

They have the switches and tools.

They are the A-Team.

Many know more about the old version of the software than anyone left at the vendor knows, because they all moved on to new versions or other platforms or other hot new Star Trek assignments years ago. These partners are invaluable, available, and can do the heavy lifting while advising you on a path forward that doesn't involve death, brainwashing, apathy, or zombies (I threw that in because I always wanted to write about zombies on my blog, but never had the opportunity. If you're still reading, thank you for your attention.)

Business Partners can help you cross the dangerous end-of-support to upgrade bridge because they've already performed numerous such operations. They can advise you because they've seen it all, from that one line of XML to the undocumented repair switch to the multi-database search corruption issue (now I'm making things up, but you get the idea). They know more than you do, and might know more than the vendor, about the idiosyncrasies. And most if not all of them are small businesses and happy to work with you, even if it means airing dirty laundry. Feed them and treat them well and they will be loyal and helpful expert-level adjuncts to your organization and help guide you from your current untenable situation to a more enlightened and productive state. Just don't give them too many rules, policies, procedures, or roadblocks, or they'll end up in the same situation as you - just without the obligation to show up.

Bottom line, Business Partners are available to support old versions of software after IBM or the vendor in question has washed their hands of it and moved on. Those partners, like you, cannot open a PMR or trouble ticket, but do present your most likely solution to any problem that might come up. Some are are more willing to let it drag on than others, so be sure you are clear about the length of support you want and plans to upgrade or kill up front. There are partners on all continents save Antarctica, possibly my next home office, so ask your IBM reps, do some searches, remember this stuff is not necessarily regional, and get some help.

Conclusion
There you have it, fair readers, my opinion on old software in one long combination of thought, rant, and sesquipedalian blather. If I've scolded you, I'm sorry (I'm not), and if you need help and guidance, you now have something to think about. Feel free to email me with your own situation and I will happily give you advice on your unique situation. rnovak at snapps dot com.

@Copyright 2010 Rob Novak, All Rights Reserved.

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:20 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category Collaboration University 2010 Quickr Sametime
It's hard to believe we held the 9th and 10th Collaboration University conferences for Lotus Sametime and Quickr last year. This great little conference has had such an impact on the skills of so many people that we often hear back months - and even years - from attendees, with success stories linking back to what they learned from our experts.

So it's with pleasure that I've announced Collaboration University 2010, and opened registration at midnight last night. As a "thank you" to individuals who register in the first week, we have decided to give you a $200 USD incentive. Register by midnight Central Daylight Time US next Wednesday, April 28th, and you'll get the best possible rate. If you've never been to Collaboration University, this is the perfect time (and price) to invest in your skills. If you're a returning CU alumni, welcome back! And, you can once again take $50 off for each year you've attended - up to another $200.

Update: Our first registrations came in just minutes after opening, including a 2-time alumni. Welcome back!

What is Collaboration University? An intense 2 1/2 day learning experience where your instructors - independent IBM Lotus business partner experts doing this without sponsor support - share their years of experience with you in a fast-paced and very accessible manner.

What's new? We listened the past couple years and have made some changes based on your feedback. In 2010, we will spend significant time on the latest versions (Sametime 8.5 and Quickr 8.5, shipping in Q2) but also add new cross-product and collaboration strategy sessions appropriate for management. And, the agenda will be influenced by the early registrants who access the Collaboration University Campus, an online (take a guess!) Quickr and Sametime environment where we will collaborate on topics, share the latest (public) version news, and take your ideas and questions in advance.

After the conference, you remain Collaboration University alumni for life. In 2011 when we produce three more webinars with code examples and recordings, you'll have free access to them. And, you can continue to participate in the Campus as long as you like. As for the math - if you register in the next 168 hours (7 days), are a long-time alumni, and attend the webinars, you're saving $897 USD.

So - to the business of registration! Some important things to note are the dates and locations...and we've gone all backwards this year. That's right, London goes before Chicago for the first time ever! Here are the dates and locations, and of course you can get much more information on the Collaboration University website:

London: Tues-Thurs, September 21-23, IBM South Bank
Chicago: Mon-Weds, September 27-29, IBM Innovation Center

Thank you, and I hope to see you in London or Chicago (wow it feels strange to say them in that order).

-Rob

P.S. For the latest news follow @CollabU on Twitter, our Facebook page and Facebook group!

Posted by Rob Novak At 1:17 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category SnappFiles Quickr FileNet IBM Content Manager Alfresco iPad SNAPPS
The wait is almost over. Tomorrow a few hundred thousand people will be picking up their iPads at Apple Stores or waiting at home for the delivery truck. And quite likely, a few of those will have jobs, where they do work, and use document management systems. Like IBM Lotus Quickr, FileNet P8, IBM Content Manager (CM8), Alfresco Open-Source ECM, or another flavor. Just a couple weeks ago, we announced Julian Robichaux had updated our SnappFiles app for iPhone and iPod touch to support all of these formats with version 1.0.3.

Well if you're one of those lucky ones tomorrow and live at the intersection of coolness and business, you'll want SnappFiles 1.0.4, which was approved last night (!) and is now available on the Apple Store, officially listed as both an "App" and as an "iPad App." In fact, as of today it's the only iPad App listed when you search for "IBM" or any of the supported ECM systems, so it should be easy to find. You can search for it by name, or by any of the supported ECM system names. Julian will eventually go into some technical depth on his blog about the changes he made to be more iPad-friendly (mostly having to do with form factor), but here is a screenshot of SnappFiles in action - all the configured servers, and viewing of a PDF:

Of course, the price remains the same. Free.

Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:49 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (10)