There are enough opening session remarks already blogged.  But here is what I gathered from talking to attendees all week.  Even though we are entering Domino 8.0.1, most have not made the full move to Domino 8 and are here to learn even more about it.  Even with all the press and online info, they still want to see live demonstrations on everything you can think of.

As usual I am not disappointed with the variance of types of issues they face on a daily basis.  From unique requirements to unique issues, they bring it all to the table.  There are happily not many at all they run R5, most are stuck in the 6.5.x and 7.0.x realm.  So the move to 8 is an important step that they are undertaking and by us including the entire Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar (still some cities left to attend) into Admin2008, they more than get their money worth.

The troubleshooting SMTP session I had first was a nice group that needed to understand the finer points of debugging and where to even begin.  After a quick Internet access issue, we were up and moving.  Then the real fun started as the Sametime plug-in and Administration session was up next.  A room full of Sametime 3.1 to 8.0 users and servers.  We dug deep in some areas while giving a glazing on others that I cover in sessions later this week to show them how it all fits together.

Right after a quick lunch I had a packed room for Leveraging the Messaging Enhancements in Domino 8.  The room was rowdy, fun and had great questions about the new features and implementation.  From message recall (booooo) to the new OOO as a service, they got it all.

Lastly was Sametime Gateway, one of my personal favorites as you know.  Smaller group that was already filled to the brim with knowledge, but they all wanted to get it working.  So we went hard through the configuration.  One person stated later that they broke so many rules I was teaching they are startling over.

To finish it was 'beat the geeks' then a sponsor party.  Nothing finer than a hundred geeks crammed into a room late in the evening.

I got this little tidbit in email today and had some thoughts:

Good news for your business! Now, IBM can help you make a splash in the software as a service (SaaS) market. For the first time ever, IBM is offering you the opportunity to sell Web conferencing services to your customers. The IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte Meeting solution - a full feature, easy-to-use service - is now available via Passport Advantage. Come join us to learn how to grow your business by selling Lotus Sametime Unyte through Passport Advantage. We'll also outline the IBM SaaS strategy, and how we hope it will create more business opportunities for you to sell your way into bigger profits and happier customers

Previously, Lotus.IBM attempted this very offering on their own.  Unyte gives them a better exposure and ease of use than the previous Sametime offering, but each partner now competes directly with each other and with IBM in sales.  From what I know learned at Lotusphere, you as the partner are not hosting this offering, simply pushing the business to IBM directly with some markup in there.

So will you go after this market?

I hope you enjoyed the session and gathered something from it.

Hot from the printing presses, get your copy here for free!

IN THIS ISSUE
* From the Editor: Chris' 26.1942 UZS
* Sponsored by BCC
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Is There Really a Pubnames.ntf Fix for Domino 8.0.1?
* Sponsored by EMC
* From LotusUserGroup.org
- Lotusphere Comes To You ONLINE
- Take Jess and Tom's Lotusphere Challenge
- Moderated Topic Forum - Policies in Your Notes & Domino Environment
* Part 3 of 3: Domino Monitoring and Reporting
* Quick Tip: Removing Unwanted Fields From Outbound Domino SMTP Messages
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Is Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Standard Supported on Citrix?
* LotusUserGroup.org Virtual User Group Meeting

Lotusphere2008 photo show set across music from Drop Trio via Magnatune

This is a test of some things I am playing with, let's get some feedback on how it turned out

I ran across a tool called Twist which gives a graph of how many times words or phrases are used in Twitter.  For fun, I did Lotus Notes versus Microsoft Exchange (using just Exchange gave every instance and was to much).



The downside was that many of the Lotus Notes postings were negative.  How about some more positive tweets?

If they happen to be able to know what to do when they see green, yellow and red, then this should be simple.  From the words of one of our customers

Lotus could not have made seeing quota limits any easier and for training users on new features in 8.0.1 as we deploy

When PlanetLotus was down a while ago, l posted a podcast with Kevin Cavanaugh (Vice President Messaging & Collaboration, Lotus Software Group) on Lotus Foundations.

  I will have plenty of things coming out on Lotus Foundations shortly, so I would say take a listen to catch up.

I sent a Twitter yesterday on how I was overlooking the obvious in setting up some secure mail between two sites.  They wanted to use S/MIME.  Did both run Notes? No.  That would have been easy with sharing of public keys and letting them encrypt until they couldn't breathe.  This was a Notes to another email package.  So the theory was creating X.509 certificates, passing them out like Halloween candy treats and hoping everyone nibbled.

Then it hit me.  Why are we going through so much work here?  So we got a common and known Internet certificate for both servers, made sure that the other side could understand it and forced all communication via TLS from SMTP to SMTP.  Their whole point was encrypting data between the Internet flow, not necessarily once it was received since multiple people may need access to the data.

We set Domino 8 to force the TLS conversation and stop if it could not make one.  We made sure the other server understood to start a TLS conversation when asked and off we went.  Secure Internet mail flow between disparate sites at will.

The Lotus Bluehouse homepage shows what is contained as features inside the product.  I even did a great podcast with Martha and Satwik in Episode 49.  Overall the site has performed well with a clean interface.  Past that I can't talk much about what it offers.  My focus here is the idea that business will use Bluehouse as SAAS.

I just don't see the adoption occurring.  With Lotus Foundations floundering in the east; and Bluehouse in the west; with the large Google Apps bringing the cold chill of SMB domination from the north, migrating south to full in house Domino implementations doesn't sound half bad.  I want to see the wrapper of Bluehouse able to integrate with my current infrastructure as an extension point, not  a choice.

Activities integration is cool, online meetings is excellent with the Unyte portfolio, and sharing files always works well.  But with no true email integration it hurts.  You can do Sametime for the chat capabilities, but if Bluehouse is shared, how do they just let me see my co-workers?

I don't know, I might not get "it" just yet, but Lotus has tried SAAS many times over, and as one of their larger hosting providers that has tried every part of it, the attached wings with Domino and SAAS won't fly until things like provisioning, isolation, and proper user management can happen.

LotusUserGroup.org is hosting Lotusphere Comes to You Online. This is an
online event series featuring updated presentations from Lotusphere 2008
and even one or two new sessions. Designed to bring anyone who couldn't get
to Orlando the critical information and the excitement they missed, this
series will help you get more from your existing IT investment and boost
collaboration across your enterprise.

The first of the series is:
April 14, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
Lotus Notes and Domino — The Road Ahead
Presenter: Ed Brill, Business Unit Executive, WW Lotus Notes/Domino Sales
Leader

How do we top Lotus Notes and Domino 8? Learn about the roadmap for 2008
and beyond, giving you a glimpse into planned innovations for upcoming
releases, intended to reduce the cost of managing and storing your email,
offer additional deployment options, and drive continued optimization of
employee productivity. We'll describe important initiatives designed to
reduce the costs of running Lotus Domino in many areas including security,
identity management, directory openness, storage reduction, administration,
quality of service, 64 bit support and web application server. You should
leave this session with a clear understanding of the Lotus Notes and Domino
strategy and future roadmap, to help you plan future deployments.


April 28, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Sametime Strategy and Roadmap: The Future of Unified
Communications and Collaboration
Presented by: Dave Marshak

May 12, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
The Business Value of Web 2.0 and Enterprise Portal Solutions
Presented by: Jon Raslawski

May 19, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Connections and Mashups
Presented by: Suzanne Minassian and Nicole Carrier

May 26, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Domino Designer
Presented by: Maureen Leland

June 23, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
Desktop of the Future
Presented by: Ed Brill and/or Alan Lepofsky

All the Lotusphere Comes to You Online sessions are free but require
pre-registration. Sign up for as many as you like. You have to be a
LotusUserGroup.org member, but membership is free.

One of our customers made a point today with a wonderful comment on something they noticed in their testing of the 8.0.1 administrator client:

Looks half-baked to me for an 8.0.1 client with supposed Sametime 8 integration

Now that is a horrible statement for an isolated icon like this and I promptly responded.  What little things will make people say that everything is wrong for an icon color

Apparently May 13th is the day, they (NotesHater) are even selling merchandise for it.

If you attempt to run the ApplianceWare installer on Linux for Sametime Advanced, you will notice that the plugins for Websphere fail, which in turn breaks the entire install of course.  Some examination shows that line 167 in the installer file refers to a directory with an Uppercase while the actual install file creates it with a lowercase.  So I edited the installer for the ApplianceWare version and the install went off just fine.

Chalk one more up on the wall.

Surprise, disappointment, amazement, laughter.  We got every reaction possible.  Andy and myself fended off countless questions from a fully packed house.  The extra seats we planned open were taken by some last minute drop-ins that registered.  So what did we learn this city?

• 95% of the attendees use Sametime
• 100% were at 6.5.x or higher and wanting to go to Domino 8.0.1
• Not having Citrix support already for the Standard client made more than one of them very disappointed
• Widget policies were a selling point
• Lotus Connections, Lotus Protector and mainly Productivity Tools were not anything they cared about.  Did I mention Productivity Tools?
• Companies in size from 250 users to 40,000 all really use Domino
• Some admins are lucky when they get to go to Brazil for 9 days to install one Domino server
• Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
• Integration of Sametime is awesome
• Integration of Activities is confusing
• The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them
• Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
• Attendees love free tools that we give away
• Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
• People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning

I am sure there is a few other I will add in.  To summarize, the love Domino 8 and wish there was few more things that had made it into the product at the same time.  Social networking over here is not popular, while internal chat is.   They always have very specific and unique questions that we love getting answers to for them.  So excuse me while I collapse, eat a final dinner here and then head home tomorrow .  Check my "Where am I headed" tab to see the cities I have booked up.

While here at the Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, it was the main topic at all the tables over breakfast and then as people came into the room.  What would it mean?  What happens to the desktop?  etc etc.  Google certainly has the buying power for it.

With the Google Android for mobile, what would happen with Windows Mobile?  With the office application space what would happen?  Some funny names were coming up as people were blending them together to make new product names.

Gexcel, Gord, Gowerpoint, Gaccess.  The funniest was Gotmail.  So we will see what it all brings.  They didn't say anything about the relationship MS has with NBC for the cable and such.  But I bet that would be a free cable channel as always.

Ok, back to the feed readers to see what is going on.