IBM introduces the IBM Connections Suite

At the Social Business event in the Netherlands today, IBM announced the new IBM Connections Suite.

The Convergence of Social, Unified Communications, and Content Management

Including IBM Connections, IBM Connections Community document libraries, IBM Sametime Advanced and IBM Sametime Unified Telephony Lite, this new solution is designed to provide an organisation will all the tools to offer its users a cohesive suite of social collaboration tools.  I’m sure that you will hear more from Luis Benitez and others as the day goes on in terms of details – I know that there are some great video demos to look out for too.

From our perspective, this new bundle provides a single part number for a really cohesive bundle of tools: instant messaging, VoIP, microblogging, communities, social profiles, document libraries, instant polls, forums, media galleries and so on.  When you compare the breadth of the solution with anything from Jive, Socialtext, Microsoft or SalesForce.com, it all stacks up tremendously well.  Like for like, there really is no comparison in ‘bang for the buck’.  IBM has done a super job of pulling it all together into one product.

As always though, Social Business is not really about the technology.  It is an enabler to help an organisation and individuals working within it to get to a culture where sharing carries less friction, where information and resources are easier to find and where the organisation is flattened to a point where it becomes about the ‘wirearchy‘ rather than the ‘hierarchy‘…

The Connections Suite will absolutely provide an organisation with the bundle of tools it needs in its’ kit bag.  The next challenge is how to implement them in a way that supports the organisation’s goals and direction.  That’s where IBM’s partners (and internal services team) need to step in, to remove the complexity from this bundle of products, make it into a really cohesive single solution and then to layer ‘the interesting stuff’ (user adoption, customisation, business process alignment, community management etc.) on top.  We can’t wait!

The rise of the Community Manager and the Collaboration Garden: an IBM Social Business Briefing

For our third IBM Social Business Briefing (aka Wicked Wednesdays) on 25th April at Royal Exchange in London, we felt the time was right to move the discourse from thought leadership and education to a more practical footing.

Of course, we still leveraged the superb network of independent thought leaders who we are lucky to have at our events BUT at this latest event we changed / evolved the format.

On this occasion I framed the discussion on the emerging role of the Community Manager (seen by some as the ‘rock star of the Enterprise’) and then actually used a collaboration platform to discuss, collaborate and innovate around the chosen topic.

The objective or rather the output of the debate was not simply to gain a better understanding of this subject (the fastest growing job role in Social Business) but also to create a job description for the role of Community Manager which could then be downloaded and iterated by users.

To help us achieve this we introduced attendees to the Collaboration Garden – a place where the Wicked Wednesday discussion and collaboration goes on in and around the physical events.

Once inside the Garden, users could not only record their opinions and raise questions but they could also examine (through the software) the potential responsibilities and attendant tools on hand to assist a Community Manager with user adoption – e.g. gamification and social media feeds.

The overall sentiment was that this was our best Wicked Wednesday to date and pointed the way forward for future events.  Weaving the use of the collaboration platform into the discussion from the start had a number of important effects:

• It forced us all ‘to drink our own champagne’
• Individuals contributed to the Garden on-premise and remotely (including from Spain and Ireland)
• It highlighted how much was lost when we simply spoke and did not record
• Live collaboration in the platform allowed for multi-threaded conversations which themselves were profoundly different to normal conversation
• Those who were not familiar with a social collaboration platform experienced it in a way that was far more refreshing and natural then the traditional demo mode

Wicked Wednesdays are all about sharing and collaborating with those who attend the latest trends, twists and turns in the Social Business journey. We take risks at this event; we have to in order to keep things fresh and real.  So it was particularly gratifying to hear that the new format was warmly welcomed by those involved.

We are planning our next Wicked Wednesday/Social Business Briefing to take place in June and in keeping with our need to innovate we are experimenting with moving the venue from the Royal Exchange to a comfortable, friendly, coffee shop in the city which should be fun.

For more information, feel free to contact us directly.

Collaboration Matters awarded IBM Platinum Achievement Award

Collaboration Matters were delighted and incredibly honoured to be publicly recognised by IBM last week at the Software Partner Marketing College at IBM South Bank in London.

The ‘IBM Software Platinum Achievement Award – Outstanding Marketing Achievement’ recognised those business partners that have marketed IBM’s and their own solutions in innovative and ground-breaking ways over the past year.  Finalists were Portal, Applicable, Barrachd and Collaboration Matters with Collaboration Matters taking the award.

Activities that were highlighted in considering the award included:

• The Collaboration Diner at UC Expo (breaking the mould for trade show stands, by making the main event the conversation and contribution, not the sales effort)
• Our ongoing series of Social Business Breakfast sessions (combining education and discussion on topics and issues relating to Social Business all through a combination of face-to-face and tool-based collaboration)
• The Collaboration Garden (an exclusive invite-only Social Business platform allowing organisations and individuals to trial, learn, discuss and be educated around the power of Social within Business)

Key to all of these initiatives has been our focus on being ‘refreshingly different‘ – an IBM Business Partner like no other.  It is great to see IBM reward our efforts:

“Collaboration Matters are creating innovative solutions with IBM collaboration technology in response to the Social Business models more and more customers want to pursue.”
Mark Barrett, Business Unit Executive, Partner Sales, Software Business, UK and Ireland

Thanks must go to my colleague Rooven (who was behind the concept for the Collaboration Diner), to the team at Arrow ECS (our VAD) and to all those at IBM UK who have supported our efforts this year.

Different technology, same values

A Lotus Notes ad from the R5 days, circa 1999:

‘I am ready‘, ‘I am connected‘, ‘I am not alone‘, ‘The power to work the way you want‘, ‘Share work and ideas‘ and so on…

This was describing Collaboration, Messaging and Workflow software from 13 years ago, but could so easily be describing the impact of Social Media and Social Business tools (such as IBM Connections) today.

My goodness, Lotus Notes and Domino really was painting a vision of the future…

Warning for IBM Connections admins – change that Plugin keyfile password!

If you are running IBM Connections (any version) and have configured your SSL connect between the HTTP Server and WAS by importing the WAS SSL certificate into the Plugin keyfile (versus creating your own keyfile) and haven’t changed the default password, go do so now!

As this IBM technote states, the default password expires on April 26th, 2012:

The password to the plugin-key.kdb file that is shipped with WebSphere Application Server expires on April 26, 2012 US EDT. On distributed this file is placed in the [Plugin_Home]/config/{webservername} directory when a web server plug-in is configured on an installed web server.

CVE-2012-2162

If you are using the WebSphere Key and Certificate Management generated plug-in key store you are NOT affected. If, however, you are using the key store installed by default with the Web Server Plug-in for WebSphere Application Server and you have NEVER changed the key store’s password, then you must change the plug-in key store’s password, which removes the pending password expiration, to avoid a security exposure. Generally, as a best practice, IBM recommends you always change passwords from the default value to enhance the security of your system.

In reference to this specific security exposure concern, a majority of users do not reference the affected file at runtime and therefore are not impacted. However, a small minority of users must take action and use certificate management tools to remove the password expiration prior to April 26, 2012 to avoid experiencing this issue.

All the instructions for fixing this issue are contained in the technote, so take a read and make sure you’ve got this covered.

For the record, my advice when configuring a new Connections environment is to create a new keyfile with your own password, create a self-signed certificate or request a certified one from Verisign etc, then to import the certificates into WAS.  This is all detailed in the presentation that Rob Wunderlich and I gave at Lotusphere 2011.

Social Connections III – Registration is open, session abstracts invited!

Social Connections (the IBM Connections user group) is back, returning for its third event.

Scheduled for Friday 22nd June 2012 at the IBM Labs in Dublin, this is the best chance you’ll have this year to hear directly from IBM Connections customers, consultants, partners, advocates and developers. Yes, developers too! By the kind invitation of IBM we are going direct to their European development base in Dublin, home to many members of the IBM Connections coding team. We’ll have sessions from IBMers on topics such as customisation, widget development, installation and management of Connections. Given that Connections 4.0 is imminent, you may get a sneak peak of what’s coming up in the future too!

However, this is a User Group rather than an IBM education event, so it won’t just be IBMers speaking. With two tracks (Business and Technical) we’re after the best of the best from around the community to speak at the event. As we’ve had at SocCnx I and II, the event will have a mix of customer case studies, adoption advice, technical show-and-tells, panel Q&As, and a few sessions we just can’t predict right now!

The call for session abstracts is open now, and closes on 30 April 2012, so if you would like to submit an abstract to be considered (for a 30minute session) please register for the event today and submit your idea. We’re particularly keen to hear from those outside the usual ‘bubble’ so if you’ve never spoken at Lotusphere or any of the other LUGs please don’t let that put you off. The Social Connections crowd are a very friendly bunch and we’d love to hear some new voices!  If you have any questions, please contact Sharon or Stuart for more info.

All the details are at SocialConnections.info, so please head over there to register and to submit an abstract.

You can also join the LinkedIn or Facebook groups, or follow all the news on Twitter (@SocCnx).  Hope to see you on June 22nd!

Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows now available

The IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins Microsoft Windows is intended for Microsoft Windows users, adding social networking features and functionality from IBM Connections services, including Activities, Communities, Files, and Profiles.

The IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows provides the following features from Windows Explorer:

• Upload files for personal use or to share with others
• Upload files to a community or attach them to an Activity
• Share existing Connections files with other users or with a community
• Drag and drop files from your desktop to Connections Files or to a community
• View and manage versions of your files
• Add comments to files or recommend files
• Edit and publish local drafts to Connections
• Pin or follow folders and files for easier tracking
• View business cards for people and invite them to your network
• Easily access all Connections features via browser links

The IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins Microsoft Windows supports:

• IBM Connections 3.0.1.1
• Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (32-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit), Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit, 64-bit)

I’ve been looking forward to this plug-in for a very long time, so I’m excited we have it for deployment today.  I know a number of customers that have been holding back on full-scale deployment of Connections until they have native access to Connections Files, so this will make a significant difference.  Hopefully the Mac version won’t be too far behind

The Collaboration Diner – an Introduction

Anyone that follows me on Twitter will have seen that this week has been rather dominated by a single topic, The Collaboration Diner, and was brought to you by the hashtag #cbdiner

So I hear you cry, what is The Collaboration Diner?

Many of you, especially those in North America, will be aware of a rather famous 1942 painting by Edward Hopper known as ‘Nighthawks‘:

Painted soon after the attack at Pearl Harbour, the painting is thought to detail the alienation felt by those in a strange city, and the interaction, consolation and prospective relationships that could be found within the diners that were scattered on street corners throughout New York and other cities.  Diner customers could ‘network’ with the few others in the physical location they inhabited.

In 2003, Wired magazine commissioned comic artist Josh Ellingson to bring the diner situation up to date in the face of the emergence of free wi-fi, ubiquitous mobile devices and laptops:

Once again, the diner or coffee shop had become the place where relaxation and re-connecting could be combined, but this time connections were as likely to be with those hundreds or thousands of miles away.  In 2003, it was likely that this would have been via a relatively small group of friends or colleagues that the individual was in regular contact with.

Now bring the situation up to the modern day. Social and Mobile dominate. Almost every individual carries at least a mobile phone, most a smartphone and many more than one device. Multiple social networks are reachable from these devices, personal, professional and organisational sites provide a constant connection to friends, family, colleagues, customers and partners. Business is as likely to be carried out in a diner in a strange city as at one’s own desk.

However, the diner is still a useful metaphor for the  meeting place, for the clash of cultures, the possibility of accidents and incidents leading to passionate discourse and idea-sparking conversations.

Thus we have seen the birth of The Collaboration Diner brought to you by Collaboration Matters, with its first outing at the UC Expo show in London this past week.

Look out for future posts detailing what was involved, why it was such an innovative concept, and what discussions took place there.  One thing’s for sure, tech trade shows have never seen anything like it!

Learning from competition

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, writes on the correct way to deal with competition:

Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and its shortcomings, and a complete, open-minded understanding of why people might choose your competitors.

They’re not fanboys. They’re not brainwashed by “marketing”. Your competitors’ customers aren’t passing on your product because they’re stupid or irrational.

They’re choosing your competitors for good reasons, and denying the existence of such good reasons will only ensure that your product never overcomes them.

He goes on to discuss why Microsoft’s recent reaction to the threat of iOS is more constructive than Google’s.

It’s a fascinating reflection, and bears great relevance to the way in which we see some Collaboration and Social Business vendors react.

Customers are not irrational, users are not stupid. If you want them to choose to buy your solution, or even more importantly, to desire to use it, you had better go focus your attention and resources on making yours significantly better than the opposition, not on dissing the opposition or those that buy or use their products!

Missed Lotusphere 2012? Some tips on catching up

If you missed Lotusphere this year, you may be wondering how you can catch up on all the news?

Well obviously there’s plenty of blogs (not least EdBrill.com) that you can read.  The presentations are also gradually being uploaded into the Lotusphere community on the Greenhouse.

However, you could also listen to a series of podcasts that cover the topics. As usual, your best bets are IdoNotes, Taking Notes and This Week in Lotus.  Here are some of the recent highlights:

Taking Notes Episode 148: 2012.01.24 – Alistair Rennie on Lotusphere 2012 and Getting Social
Taking Notes Episode 149: 2012.01.27 – Learn about OpenSocial with Ryan Baxter and Mikkel Heisterberg
Taking Notes Episode 150: 2012.02.09 – Activity Streams of the Future, with Alan Lepofsky
This Week in Lotus 086 – Live from Lotusphere 2012
This Week in Lotus 087 – Where’s the ’Do Not Disturb’? (covering IBM Quickr futures)
This Week in Lotus 088 – UltraAJAXersize (featuring Jason Dumont) (covering Lotus Notes, iNotes and Connections Mail)
This Week in Lotus 089 – Lotuslive becomes SmartCloud for Social Business

All are worth listening to if you want to get up to date.