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  • IBM Lotus Brings Connections to the Cloud

    June 30, 2009 Dan Burger

    IBM has the hots for social networking applied to collaboration in the workplace. In the past six weeks or so, IBM announced it will introduce social networking to two of its largest internal groups: the developerWorks and business partner organizations. Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, IBM announced its latest social networking for business tool, LotusLive Connections, which becomes generally available today in a cloud near you.

    A product that combines collaboration and cloud computing, LotusLive Connections is an IBM love child. If there’s one thing Big Blue adores more than social networking, it’s cloud computing. Imagine the smiles of delight on the faces of IBM Lotus executives when the conference selected LotusLive as “The Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Computing Technology Buyers’ Choice Award” winner over Google, EMC, and other vendors’ cloud technologies. The award was based on the votes of conference attendees.

    Before moving to the cloud, Lotus Connections was earthbound. By that I mean it was designed to run inside the firewall–installed, deployed, and maintained by the organization using the software. LotusLive Connections is in the software as a service (SaaS) model. Its availability is not tied to any IBM hardware or software, which means it’s free of any Lotus-related baggage that prevents some people from even considering anything named Lotus.

    Lotus Connections, which has been available for approximately two years, is a Web-based product. It can be used for extranet collaboration, but it is typically deployed inside companies. Sales force collaboration over a wide geography, for instance, is one use. For many uses, companies don’t want the external world into their internal services for a variety of reasons.

    The strength of Connections’ social networking is its increased leveraging of the intelligence within a community. It does this by combining a variety of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, shared libraries, forums, and personal contacts based on common interests within the context of the business.

    The distinction between Lotus Connections and LotusLive Connections is there so companies can decide whether they want to run Connections on premise or to subscribe to it as a hosted application. A benefit that comes with the cloud version–LotusLive Connections–is that it allows a company to be up and running with a program that could connect its business partners in a shorter period of time.

    The terminology is a bit tricky, but LotusLive Connections uses the underlying code base for Lotus Connections, which has its 2.5 release going into production. Because the release dates of the two products are not in synch, some pieces of Lotus Connections will not be available in the LotusLive version. Two of those features are blogging and bookmarking. There are also features in LotusLive that are not available in the software that is run on premise due to the products’ individual production schedules. The two lines will ultimately be converged.

    The price point for LotusLive Connections will be “just under $10 per user per month,” according to Sean Poulley, vice president, business development, online collaboration services. Compared to Lotus Connections, the software product that requires hardware and a time commitment to manage it, Poulley believes the hosted version proves to be an economical choice. He points out that IT budgets are weighted toward people, operations, and administration to the tune of 80 percent, which leaves only 20 percent of the budget for software and hardware.

    Poulley says the Lotus Connections products are the fastest-growing product that we’ve had in software group period, and that the customers are not all coming form the existing customer base.

    “We are changing the definition of what a Lotus customer is,” Poulley says. “Matt Cain, at Gartner, suggested ‘the combination of Lotus Connections and LotusLive was reigniting the Lotus business,’ which it is.”

    RELATED STORIES

    IBM Does Social Networking on New Business Partner Site

    IBM developerWorks Becomes Socially Acceptable

    What’s Next from IBM Lotus?

    SMB Is Going Global, and Collaboration Plays Big Role

    Microsoft Rains on IBM’s Lotusphere Parade

    IBM Sets Sights on Microsoft and SMB with Linux/Domino Combos



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    [Podcast] IBM i DevOps Techtalk : 3-Part Series on Key Git Topics

    Listen in to these 3 short episodes as our experts Jeff Tickner, Ray Bernardi and Alan Ashley share their expertise on GIT, and discuss how best to use Git with the IBM i and its advantages.

    Moving To Git

    The topic of this IBM i DevOps TechTalk is “Moving to Git.”  It features Jeff Tickner, Ray Bernardi and Alan Ashley as they discuss what is Git and how to best use Git with the IBM i. Listen in for tips on:

    • Key Git Advantages
    • Git Considerations for a successful implementation
    • Working with branches and automated merges
    • Getting started and ARCAD’s Centralized approach

    Moving to Git – Gitflow

    Tune into this IBM i DevOps TechTalk on a key Git concept – Gitflow. Jeff Tickner, CTO NA, shares his knowledge and experiences from real-world implementations. Learn:

    • What is Gitflow and the benefits.
    • Bi-directional development with push/pulls and merging conflicts. Why you need this 2-way integration.
    • Flexible Gitflow options.
    • How ARCAD’s tooling elegantly supports Gitflow for the IBM i Developer

    Listen to this episode to get a jump on Git and partner with an expert on your DevOps journey.

    Moving to Git – The Build

    In this episode, we’ll discuss an important Git topic – The Build. If you are not using Git for IBM i source control, you are likely planning for it. A key part of the process you must understand is “The Build”.

    You may ask, why? Isn’t it just a standard IBM i build?

    No! Tune in as Jeff Tickner, CTO NA and Alan Ashley, Sr. Solutions Architect, discuss:

    • The differences between a standard IBM i build and a build with Git.
    • Understanding options and advantages with ARCAD versus Better Object Builder (Bob).
    • What are personal builds?
    • Advantages of automated builds with tools like Jenkins and Azure

    Partner with the leader as you make the DevOps journey to modern, agile IBM i development.

    Listen Now

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Volume 9, Number 26 -- June 30, 2009
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY:

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Table of Contents

  • Infor Sheds More Light on ‘Flex’ Upgrade and Migration Programs
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  • IBM Lotus Brings Connections to the Cloud
  • Truck Routing Software Takes Carbon Emissions Into Account
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  • Computer Guidance Goes SaaS with Construction Industry App
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