Thoughts on IBM Workplace Live I attended yesterday
Tags :Conferences
Here are my thoughts and opinions, based on
statements, comments, statistics and plain theory I gathered. I waited
to write this to review my notes I was taking and to see if my feeling
changed, rather than blog as it went along.
This was a day long event hosted by IBM
that offered three tracks, with three sessions in each one you could mix
and match (technical, competitive strategy and solutions). The goal of
the seminar was to launch the variety of products in the Workplace family
umbrella and clear up more questions. I am not sure all the attendees
asked the right questions to get it cleared up. There were around
40 people at the start of the event. I imagine more trickled in late.
Opening Keynote
All of this was after a general opening
Keynote. The Keynote was provided by sales and marketing with some
live demonstrations.
IBM Workplace represents
a strategy for improving the productivity of people at the front end of
computing
A grid soon showed that Domino 8.0 will
fall into the ability to run as a portlet in the Rich or Managed Client.
This led to some questions and confusion if there was to be a stand-alone
Domino 8 client. The people were assured and the slide reviewed again.
The way ti was placed and stated did look, in all fairness first
impression, that there was no option other than integrated. But,
after seeing it again and reading very slowly, it was an option. But
in the Hot News area, the managed client will run on Linux which means
with the Notes plug-in you now have Notes on Linux!
One other bit snuck under the fence to
confirm exactly what Carl
and I heard at Admin2005. We
spend all our sessions using the old name, every question was referred
under the old name and the darn client still uses the old name on the interface!!!
"Log onto..."
One last bit of the opening. They
showed a Gartner Group video about the theory of the Workplace environment,
loosely relating the product to the need for it. But I loved how
they snuck in "Adhocracy". I hadn't heard that used and
actually looked
it back up to make sure it was
what I thought.
I proceeded to actually split my session
across tracks. One other thing, about 90% of the room said they were
running Notes when a poll was done by the speaker.
IBM Notes/Domino Update Strategy
This session focused more on performance
gains on the server side with canned ScreenCam demonstrations which was
disappointing. The talk of the full Webadmin functionality for Linux
was a great idea, met with little applause though. With the pending
August or so release of 7 (as stated there), people were still asking about
the client future and platform support.
Server performance gains
of 50% on Win32 and AIX; there is 70% on Solaris; an amazing 80%
on iSeries and get this; Linux jumps out with 300%. Across all platforms,
there was testing to show improvement of the number of mail users per box
while reducing CPU usage in current loads. Domino Web Access (DWA)
increased performance anywhere from 25-100% across the platforms.
My general feeling was the statistics were
good, but unclear path for too many in there on whether to turn to the
Managed Client, plug-in or native Notes.
The sessions running at the same time were
a Competitive Landscape for Greater TCO with Workplace and one on Controls
Management with Workplace.
Workplace Services Express
This session had very small attendance,
surprisingly. It was up against a session on Portal and Web Content
Management. I only picked up two things I wanted to share. One
of which I knew before and still eludes me.
- SIP/Simple can be used to link external connectivity to other chat systems
- All mail services are pulled from an external mail source (ie: Domino, Exchange or even a POP system).
Notes/Domino Competitive Update
This was to be a session in the original list as the Competitive Advantages of IBM Workplace - Running a Stable, Flexible, Industrial & Reliable Messaging Infrastructure. Which I presumed to be Workplace Messaging. But it turned out to be about Domino 7 and new functionality in the client and DWA. Amazingly, there was only 5 people in that one including me. Some good info was pass along for the people that had for some reason, not yet even looked at 7.
My overall observations
I was amazed at the number of people there running Domino, but shocked at the number that had not investigated 7 yet. It was nice to see such an interest in Workplace in the morning. But I saw that most people did lose interest and left early, even with two breaks, a quick box lunch and only three total sessions. Something was missing to keep people wanting to see what it could do. I did find that the same slide format for advantages was used in every session and constantly gone over. It seemed to be like a drone by the third session. I understand the consistent message, but with it showing so often and looking the same, I saw people drift in their minds.
More demonstrations and definitely some hands on time would have been a great boost. Maybe some instructions on architecture and scaling would have helped. They mentioned it over and over how scalable it was, yet there was never a diagram shown of how to design and implement such a solution.
We had a follow-up meeting for Business partners only, of which only 3 partners showed including me. Disappointing knowing the range and area that St Louis covers. There is some other partners that would have had a short drive, but the opportunity to get your customers there and then ask questions was too good to pass up. These will be the same that will not be asking questions later like they never got any information on Workplace.
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On Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 by Chris Miller
