Stu Downes

I speak with many customers who rightly or wrongly approach electronic document repositories with the notion that their use will remove file servers and certainly file volume from their environments.  I’ve blogged about this before but this is becoming increasingly common so I’m going to repeat my views. 

It is very simple now within the windows shell to see document repositories.  In the image in this post you can see SharePoint document libraries and QuickR document libraries within explorer.  This allows us to save documents directly from applications into these repositories.  But will we?  We being the end user.  In order for these solutions to drive down the use of file server and local storage then customer behavior, corporate culture and usage scenarios need to be considered (especially for offline working). 

It is this influence in usage and culture within the organisation which will be interesting.  Once you have influenced the culture and use of these team based document repositories then like me you’ll find them an excellent tool.

This podcast gives an excellent viewpoint on this entire arena and an overview of an open source offering, alfresco.

 

Microsoft produced this humerous marketing video to show unified communications several months ago.  Worth a look if you haven’t seen it:

Video: The Devil wears prada .. and does Unified Comms!

Link to video

 

Well everyone in the UK this week couldn’t have missed the wonderful London 2012 Olympic logo.

There has been quite a lot of debate stimulated, I don’t like it, and I’m not in the minority!  Mihir Bose blog has good coverage.

What I find amazing is why didn’t we have a competition?  Why not use collaboration technology and get the population involved?

Is it difficult?  Well NO!  After the logo was revealed fubra.com promoted a site where anyone could submit and rate a logo, and also vote or comment on the official logo.  So far they have had:

• over 26,000 votes about the official logo
• almost 6,000 comments
• and 180 individuals logos

Social tools in action!!  The best thing is many of the logos developed by individuals are superb.  Check it out here.  Considering the formal logo, branding and some other marketing material and messaging cost £400,000 I think the community efforts on the logo are much better!

 

Tongue in cheek post given this screenshot:

And yes I expect Notes 8 to take less memory when it moves from beta, and I expect Outlook would use more memory if I were using it as my full email client.  My point is that the new products to aid our information workers with collaboration are becoming increasingly resource intensive.  Why Live Writer requires more than 70 MB really astounds me.  Things you see while consuming a sandwich

 

I value the credibility and certification offered by professional bodies.  In the UK the British Computer Society (BCS) is the chartered organisation offering this service.  Products and vendors offer learning and certification paths for collaboration tools but I am coming to the opinion that similar to the TOGAF certification for architecture there should be a similar recognition for collaboration professionals.  I’d be interested in comments from my global readers on this.

I would also welcome comments from UK readers as to whether they would be interested in, or think there is value in setting up a group within the BCS for Collaboration?

 

Microsoft recently announced Surface a new device to allow user interaction with software.  Michael wrote a excellent description and review:

“Microsoft Surface could be used for re-creating the face-to-face dynamic of meeting around a table for a distributed team. Let’s say there are 6 or 7 people spread across three locations, and they are working on a project. Instead of distributing documents by putting them in a shared workspace or sending them out by email, you could sit down at your Surface meeting table and join the team meeting.”

Steve also had thoughts on the solution and the practicalities of this becoming mainstream rather than a niche product:

“However I can’t help but think that Surface is a bit like Telepresence, a technology that will be reserved for a very small number of scenarios.” 

I agree with Michael that this will be a compelling tool for information workers and I also agree with Steve that it is too niche at the moment.  The form factor is difficult to use at present, you can’t sit with your legs under the table for example (see images here).  For me the answer will lie (very long term) with changes in screen technology.  Flexible screens are probably about 10 years or more away and at that point we’ll be able to pull a large screen from our bag in the same way we would take out a notepad today.

I also feel that the form factor may be wrong.  I had a demonstration of a similar technology at the Collaboration Technologies Conference last year.  Two factors were on display there – one table based and one mounted vertically.  The vertically mounted solution won for me.  I think for tables to be useful in large meetings there has to be a way to cope with the usual desk clutter at meetings (phones, laptops, notepads, pens, flip chart sheets etc).  The “clutter” will result in the screen will either become full of clutter, or a separate table to used for the actual meeting.  If it becomes a separate table then you may as well move to a vertically mounted solution and walk to the screen to interact with information when needed leaving the meeting table for the “clutter”.

 

Over the past few weeks there has been much speculating in the blogs on comparison of and migration from Domino to SharePoint.  Karen provided a very good summary in response to a question on cio.com:

“To reiterate what previous commentators have pointed out, it’s very hard to make a blanket statement as to which is better. Part of the problem is that Domino and SharePoint are two different animals with many similar spots. It’s hard to do a point by point comparison of the two.”

Ed responded to another information aimed at Microsoft business partners.  Michael responded to Ed with a very thorough post:

“My analysis is that there is a constellation of drivers that may–depending on the organizational context–accumulate into an overall decision to shift from Notes/Domino to SharePoint. Some of them are trends that are starting to play out, some of them are frustrations that have not had a suitable place for airing for a long time, and some of them are linked to strategic decisions at a high-level in the organization.”

I’d typically like to take an alternative glance through the viewing glass.  I would lean towards Graham’s comments on the old Exchange versus Domino debate (link):

“My advice to them and to anyone else who asks: There is no compelling business reason to switch for email functions.

It’s actually the wrong question for most customers. The right question for most customers is this “I am wanting to move beyond email being the only way my people collaborate how can I facilitate that”. That question would result in a completely different answer and may result in a change of email infrastructure.”

So the debate is really about collaboration benefits of a whole raft of areas:

• email
• instant messaging and presence
• team workspaces
• portal technologies
• web content management
• document management
• electronic meetings
• audio integration
• video integration
• RSS
• …..the list goes on

None of this is answered by one product, there will be several products, several vendors and integration to complete.

So my simplistic graphical take on the migration or implementation for any collaboration platform would be:

And some follow on questions:

• What will the user experience be?
• Will the experience be intuitive, rich, simple to use?
• How will the integration points work both technically and for the user?

Now many readers of this blog will remember that up until about 12 months ago Lotus Collaborative products were my sole focus professionally.  About 12 months ago my role changed and I now focus across the IBM / Microsoft divide in the collaboration arena.  This has given me a good perspective to talk to both Microsoft and IBM customers about what their needs are in addition to digging into both product areas.  By nature of my role and the complexity of the products it means I no longer have a deep engineering knowledge of the products but I do have a better knowledge than most on comparison between the 2 product sets.  What I have been surprised by is the Domino versus SharePoint discussions … they are completely different beasts.  Lets talk more QuickR or Websphere Portal versus SharePoint and have the real debate … but is the debate needed?  Surely the debate is what are my collaboration needs?

 

Well I managed to have

a) change in hosts

b) new host moves data centre

c) stu messes something up on the blog

So for those subscribed to this you got 30 odd duplicate posts over the past 2 weeks.  Well I apologise profusely (again!).  Things should now be working properly !!.. promise.

As for the web version of the blog you may notice is has a theme.  I’ve bundled some google ads on the site only not the RSS feeds … this I am not 100% sure on so I value your feedback.  If feedback is predominantly negative they’ll go!  In the same way that SNAP got the boot earlier in the year!  The community rules!

 

Well I’m quite chuffed with Google Gears.  This new API opens their applications and other web based applications to the world of offline working.  In my case the first and greatest benefit will be an offline capability with Google Reader.  Now the last 2,000 unread articles will be available on the train, on the plane, well anywhere that I’m not connected.

The architecture is neat and simple.

My quick experience of running the product with Google Reader has been good.  I look forward to more of the Google suite of products and other web developers latching on to this new tool.  This is the first major offline web application solution since Lotus released their Domino Offline Services (DOLS) framework.