Month: April 2015

Premier Foods: Goodbye IBM Notes

United Kingdom’s largest food producer and manufacturer, Premier Foods, is dropping IBM Notes and Domino for Google Apps for Business.

… Premier Foods has made a significant investment in Google Apps for Business, dropping Lotus Notes for its 5000 strong user base. The motivation here was to increase the ability to collaborate across multiple sites, including 40 factories spread across the UK. Vickery says:

“The collaboration element grabbed us. We are working better because of the collaboration aspect. We’re using Drive. Choosing it for email was just the way in. Collaboration is changing the way that we work as a business.”

The fact that Notes was replaced by Google apps was exciting in itself and got users to take an interest in the potential of the cloud, he adds:

“The Google thing is interesting. Lotus Notes isn’t the most exciting brand in the world, so when you say, ’I’m going to give you the next release of Lotus Notes’, it’s not that exciting. Google however grabs interest.”

More >

Amazon Web Services and What it Means to IBM

Cringely has used the recent Amazon Web Services announcement of their revenue and expenses and spun it back into IBM ‘s cloud play. Interesting read.

The other way to make money is to sell support services with the cloud.  Of all the cloud providers IBM is best positioned to sell support services with its cloud.  In fact if you look at IBM’s recent cloud signings, services is a big part of them.  While IBM is best positioned to sell services with its cloud, it is simultaneously gutting its services division.  This is an excellent example of how IBM’s short term and long term goals are in horrible conflict.  By gutting services, IBM is upsetting customers and damaging its ability to sell its products and services.

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Michael Sampson: IBM Verse – It’s Here

In arguably the best review of IBM Verse I’ve read to date, Michael Sampson provides his thoughts on the product.

I think IBM Verse – or any email system with in-built intelligence – needs to focus more on changing sender behaviour. We see elementary forms of this with the “encouragement” in Outlook Web Access to send links to files in OneDrive rather than the attachment directly. I would like to see the analytics power of Watson applied to encouraging senders to be more effective in their use of email and other tools.

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Open Mic Webcast: Troubleshooting Domino Policies – 29 April 2015

IBM has an upcoming webcast on troubleshooting Domino Policies.

We’ll take an in-depth look at the methodology and flow for troubleshooting and resolving issues with Domino policies – all types.

After a presentation, attendees will be given an opportunity to ask our panel of experts questions.

Topic: Troubleshooting Domino Policies
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Time: 11:00 AM EDT (15:00 UTC/GMT, UTC-4 hours) for 60 minutes

ICS file, call in numbers, and webcast URL can be found here.

 

IBM Verse: IBM Support Meetings and Verse

I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, as you can well imagine. However, this has to be one of the more interesting things I’ve seen.

As a member of a Collaboration and Messaging Team, I do, on “occasion,” have need to open PMRs with IBM Technical Support. I have found that asking the IBM Tech to do a screen share with me to be a very effective method of troubleshooting issues with them.

Today, the day after provisioning of my IBM Verse Basic account and the day I actually was able to log in to Verse, I needed to do a screen share with IBM on an open PMR. As always, the technician sent me a link to his meeting room.

Nothing unusual about that, it happens all the time when IBM and I are going to work a PMR.

What is unusual is what happened after I clicked the link.

This is what I see on a workstation that has never logged into IBM Verse:

versemeetings1

And this is what I see when I click the link on a workstation that has logged into IBM Verse:

versemeeting2

A “slight” difference in the log in page, which really threw me for a loop.

Yes, I can attend the meeting using my IBM Verse credentials. But that was not the expected behavior.

No, I did not clear my browser cache before attending the meeting (why would I do that?). However, later, after ending the meeting, I did clear the cache, restarted the browser, and saw this:

versemeetings1

 

Weird, right?

 

IBM Verse: Day Two Usage

Yesterday, I reported my experience with IBM Verse after (finally) being provisioned.

Today, I am happy to report that, once I log in to Verse, I see this:

versebasic3

This is the experience in Firefox 37.0.1. Yesterday, I was on an unsupported browser. Today, it’s supported.

What changed?

That is a great question. What I can tell you is that, thanks to either this blog or my tweet, IBM contacted me, asked me a couple of questions (sorry, I didn’t think that the underlying OS was relevant to a browser issue, but I guess I might be wrong. The answer to that question was/is “Windows, BTW), and I was able to successfully log into Verse.

Wow, it is really white. Almost “you have to wear sunglasses to view this page” white.

Now I get to start playing with it.

Thank you, IBM, for granting me access.

IBM Verse: Day One Usage

IBM has (finally) provisioned my Verse Basic account. How did Day One of Verse go for me?

Attempt One to log on to Verse resulted in this:

versebasic1

Hmm, refresh the browser.

Now, I see the login page. Again.

Attempt Two to log on to Verse resulted in this:

versebasic2

This appears in Chrome, version 41.0.2272.118 m, Firefox, version 37.0.1, and IE, version 9.0.36.

Now, I understand Tom’s post:

noverseforyou

*sigh*

This isn’t as easy as I had hoped. Nor is it a “#NewWaytoWork.”

It’s Your Fault Cybercrime is Getting Easier

Interesting article from The Register.

. . . Around one in three (30 per cent) of end-users click through a malicious URL in an email even though they have been warned of the danger. “End users are increasingly desensitised from the warnings, don’t feel responsible and still lack enterprise-driven education,” according to Websense.

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For all the work that enterprise Information Security performs, it certainly appears to me that training the end-users to NOT click on suspicious email is not very high on their list. In fact, I would venture to guess that hardly any of the “Ivory Tower” Info Sec people even think to train their users, let alone send out fake spearfishing mail to see who is actually clicking on those links. Who better to train than the miscreants that continue to blindly infect their own workstations and the network, and who open the enterprise up for attack?