Social Business strategist, podcaster, blogger, founder of Social Connections and conference speaker
A fascinating article by Bill Higgins, the IBM Distinguished Engineer that lead a major project to revolutionise the company’s approach to product development.
This morning’s announcement letter from IBM really made yesterday’s Dilbert hugely appropriate!
(h/t to Gregg Eldred)
Now you can put your heart into it when you like something in Connections Cloud. The new heart icon has universally replaced the word “Like” or, in some places, the happy face icon.
Those that were at IBM Connect or on recent partner calls may have seen versions of this presentation from Jason Roy Gary of IBM. However, I am thrilled to find a video version recorded at last week’s FOSSASIA 2017 event held in Singapore.
They told us at Connect that IBM Connections 6.0 would be made available in Q1, and here’s the announcement that they’ll be sneaking it across the line on the 31st March…
IBM yesterday published a press release previewing the headline features of the upcoming new on-premises release of Connections, Connections 6. I take a look at some of the headline features, and then pick out one specific enhancement that will make a huge difference for community managers!
IBM Sametime is a robust communications offering designed to accelerate your social business by driving faster decisions, with more complete information powered by the business experts in your organization. The suite of tools in Sametime helps unlock the value in your underutilized communications systems by integrating them into a more intuitive system. Sametime tools and services can be accessed from within the applications and business processes that you use every day.
Support for Sametime V9.0.1 is extended to September 2021.
Support for the following associated entitlements is also extended to September 2021:
- IBM Sametime Complete
- IBM Sametime Conference
- IBM Sametime Communicate
It has been obvious for a while that the future for the IBM Sametime brand and product set is not overwhelmingly positive.
As I see it, there are several key drivers for this situation:
All that said, I think IBM is making a good decision to very clearly commit to supporting both Domino and Sametime for the next 4.5 years. This gives its customers a decent runway to plan for the future and to consider their options. Many customers have been using both platforms for a decade or more, and shifting away will not be straightforward.
The challenge for IBM is to develop alternative solutions, whether home-brewed (such as Watson Workspace) or in partnership with Cisco or other similar vendors, that are both forward-looking and also of a quality and scale that can support both medium-sized and enterprise customers.
I’ve been impressed with the Connections Pink announcement in terms of plans to build a dynamic new infrastructure based on modern open-source components and services, with a clear migration path from the old developed-at-IBM heavy duty frameworks. If IBM wants to stay active in the UC space and keep those customers, I fear it would need an effort of similar size and cost to replace Sametime (or at least the components and features that are still relevant today).
Worryingly, IBM is now 2-3 years behind the curve in the area of social and video communications platforms and so those new solutions are needed now, not in a year or two’s time…
I was expecting to hear more of their plans announced (or at least intimated) at the recent IBM Connect conference, but as far as I have seen communicated, nothing has been forthcoming beyond a cementing of the relationship with Cisco and maintaining a holding pattern in terms of detailing plans for the future of Sametime’s feature set. (This extended support announcement is at least helpful in giving reassurance that support will not be withdrawn sooner than 2021.)
If you’re an IBM Sametime customer (or partner), I’d love to hear from you… What are your plans for the future? Do you remain loyal to Sametime for the time being? Are you already in the process of migrating to other solutions? Do let me know via a comment or email!
TechCrunch yesterday reported on Slack’s plans to unveil an enterprise version of it’s service. But then it gets a little bit weird… IBM is named as a reference customer for the new solution.
IBM Connect 2017 takes place later this month in San Francisco, and the last-minute push to increase attendance is already underway. I’m a big fan of the new venue, and the shift from Florida to California, and so really hope that the event is a huge success.
One of the interesting aspects of the registration push has been the unveiling of some information that previously being kept relatively quiet – if not under NDA, certainly out of the limelight
Unfortunately I’ve just missed the actual anniversary, but I thought it worth celebrating that this week marks a decade since the announcement (on 22nd January 2007) of two products that have had an immense impact on my working life, Lotus IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr.
I’ve long been a huge fan of Louis Richardson’s presentation and story-telling style, and therefore it’s no surprise that delivers the most persuasive explanation of how collaboration and communication networks can be infused with cognitive/AI abilities to stimulate learning, mentoring and personal development
IBM has released a series of videos featuring Inhi Cho Suh, inviting us all to IBM Connect 2017. Will you be attending IBM Connect this year?
On the next WTF Tech podcast episode (to be published this week), Darren, Jesse and I spent a fair amount of time discussing Virtual Reality and our personal experiences with using the new technologies. One of the apps available for the Vive system via HTC’s VivePort solution marketplace is IBM’s Watson-based IBM Speech Sandbox.
From the official press release:
Diluted earnings per share from continuing operations were $12.39, down 9 percent compared to the 2015 period. Net income from continuing operations for the twelve months ended December 31, 2016 was $11.9 billion compared with $13.4 billion in the year-ago period, a decrease of 11 percent.
Or, as the register put it, Big Blue’s blues diffuse: IBM’s sales drain now more like a sad trickle:
IBM is touting growth in its cloud and cognitive business units as the enterprise giant wraps up a year of double-digit revenue declines.
Big Blue said that for its fourth quarter of 2016, ended December 31, revenues were nearly flat over the same period last year and net income was up slightly.
There’s no doubt that IBM is still struggling to grow the newer Cognitive and Cloud businesses (up 1.4% and 33% respectively year-on-year in Q4) fast enough to replace the still declining hardware systems and Global Business Services (down 12.1% and 4.1% respectively). Given that there have now been 19 straight quarters of declining revenue, there’s huge and ever-growing pressure on Ginni Rommety and the rest of the leadership team to post a growth quarter early in 2017.
When UBS analyst Steve Milunovich asked Schroeter to put IBM’s turnaround in baseball terms—what inning is IBM in, he asked—Schroeter responded that he didn’t know. Schroeter reiterated the importance of IBM’s strategic imperatives and explained that the company would continue to invest in them.
“I don’t think the transformation of IBM ever ends, quite frankly,” Schroeter said.
On a personal note, I was hoping to compare and contrast IBM’s collaboration solutions revenue with Jive’s upcoming Q4 and 2016 results, but they are now part of the huge Cognitive (Watson) business unit which makes that all but impossible to do.
IBM yesterday announced the launch of Project Toscana as IBM Watson Workspace at the World of Watson event. Here’s the replay.
IBM Bluemix is integrating SoftLayer products and services into its vast catalog of infrastructure, platform, and application services. I take a look at what the impact might be?
Interesting new IBM case study video profiling the University of Zürich’s use of IBM Connections
Like many long-time IBM Connections Cloud users, my muscle memory was to access the site via the lotuslive.com URL (the longest-lasting of the few brands that service has had over the years).
Sadly IBM has now retired this, and so collabserv.com seems to be the way to go (you may remember that my thoughts on that domain have never been particularly positive). This is what you get when you arrive there – see the screenshot for full context:
Maintenance Window
In order to continue providing you quality service, we will be performing planned maintenance to the IBM Connections Cloud services on the following schedule
Now I’m not arguing that IBM doesn’t need to tell users (or at least organisation administrators) that there will be potential downtime in the near future, but it seems very curious to make this the ‘front and centre’ experience that all users see when going to the most obvious service URL. It appears to accentuate the fact that this isn’t an ‘always on’ service, and is something that I cannot imagine Google or Microsoft doing on their primary customer-facing home page for a paid service.
What makes this even more odd is that when the user then clicks on ‘Sign In’ to actually access their Connections Cloud account, they get a pop up that reads as follows (again, see the screenshot for context):
Leaving the IBM Web site
You are now leaving the IBM Web site. IBM makes no representations or warranties about any other Web site which you may access through this one. When you access non-IBM Web sites, even though they might contain the IBM logo and content regarding IBM’s products and services, such Web sites are independent of IBM and IBM has no control over the operation of non-IBM Web sites. In addition, a link to a non-IBM Web site does not mean that IBM endorses that Web site or has any responsibility for the use of such Web site.
Yep, you can’t make this up. This message actually suggests that the login to a customer’s paid Connections Cloud account is in some way untrustworthy. Again, hardly inspiring confidence in the service…
Now, I know there might be a better, more specific URL to use to login (Most likely https://apps.na.collabserv.com/), and some larger customers may have vanity URLs for their own Connections Cloud service. However, for the majority of accounts, including those new to the service, this is not a great customer experience.
Am I missing something? Is there a better route into Connections Cloud for the uninitiated?
Either way, I see no reason why this experience shouldn’t be improved for those that hit that collabserv.com URL themselves.
Peter Presnell of Red Pill on the future of Domino development ‘Beyond XPages‘:
That made me wonder…. why would IBM suddenly only provide a commitment to fix-packs instead of taking the opportunity to remain committed to a new release, something customers and the community continue to push for? I may be wrong, but I suspect that having already gone three years without a release, should IBM decide to have a 9.0.2 release of Notes/Domino, this could potentially reset the clock for how long IBM would be obligated to support Notes/Domino moving forward. I am sure they will ultimately determine an appropriate length of support once it is clear to customers there are no new releases coming, but they probably want to leave as much wiggle room (legally) as they can. After all, they do employ one or two lawyers!
Back in March I suggested that new ICS GM Inhi Cho Suo was likely to make significant changes to the direction of ICS. The Road Map presented at Engage also was missing any reference to Notes/Domino Next. Perhaps a faster end for Notes, Domino, and XPages is part of that change.
Really insightful thoughts on where XPages and Domino stand as technologies, how far they’ve dropped beyond the latest releases of their supported frameworks, and where enterprise customers should invest their development budget for the future. No guarantees that Peter’s assumptions are 100% correct, but I do think he’s barking up the right tree…
Firstly, two extremely well-respected IBM ISVs are forming a strategic alliance:
Specialists from all over the world are preparing themselves for Social Connections 10 – the core event for the IBM Connections community. So did Infoware and panagenda, both sponsors at the event, and formed a strategic alliance to jointly market both parties solutions.
The solutions Infoware DomainPatrol Social for content and user management and panagenda ConnectionsExpert for monitoring, adoption and analytics complement each other perfectly.
I’ve been a strong advocate for Infoware‘s Domain Patrol Social product for a number of years,
feeling that it fills a much-needed hole in a Connections community manager’s toolkit – managing communities, profiles and files in a way that the product itself does not allow.
I have also heard great things about panagenda‘s upcoming ConnectionsExpert product, which is about to be launched at Social Connections 10. This will offer metrics, analytics, realtime monitoring and adoption measurement all in one package. Given Panagenda’s network of partners and their own strong consultancy team (including Femke and Christoph), this is sure to do well.
As the press releases state, these products should prove to be highly complementary, and knowing the two organisations as I do, I think they’ll work tremendously well together.
Secondly, a social collaboration company that I’ve followed for a very long time, nooQ, is now partnering with IBM on adding visualisation features to IBM solutions, including IBM Connections:
We are excited to announce we have entered into a partnership with IBM.
Since we won product awards at Socialnow we have been speaking to IBM on working together. The next logical step for that was to apply for IBM partnership status, which has been approved.
nooQ will work with IBM their customers using IBM Connections to apply our intelligent, machine learning algorithms and visualisation to sit on top of existing IBM Connections data.
There are a lot of features in the IBM product that are not in nooQ such as blogs and wiki’s but now IBM customers will have the added benefit of an alternative interface to surface personalised content. They will be able to use our volume controls to filter and display visually what is important to them.
We will be focussing on IBM’s next generation Social Business products such as IBM Connections and also excited to see what powerful combinations we can complement and improve including their other next generation social business products with machine learning such as IBM Verse, IBM Watson, and Toscana.
I watched nooQ’s presentation at Social Now and it was fascinating to see the response from the audience in terms of being wowed by the potential of their solution, and could almost hear the cogs whirring in terms of the potential for the visualisation techniques and insight to be layered on top of other collaboration platforms – including Connections and Jive. It’s impressive to see that IBM and nooQ have moved so quickly, and I look forward to hearing more about the partnership and roadmap.
Both alliances will be in action next week at Social Connections 10 in Toronto, so if you have the opportunity to attend, you really should! There are still tickets available so register ASAP!
Interesting release from Swedish ISV, EGBS:
CGATE is a delightful and easy to use front end for IBM Connections. It will be customized to your organization and your employees – no need to adapt your processes to the tool, or for your employees to learn a new vocabulary. The users will get started in no time, leveraging the power of collaboration without the need for extensive training or user adoption programs. All content is stored in IBM Connections, so there is no need for an additional system to manage content. You will discover how CGATE will make collaboration a natural part of the work day – powering your intelligent organization.
Look out for more details next week when I get to experience and review the CGate solution in more detail.
I was hugely honoured to once again be nominated as an IBM Champion back in December.
IBM describes Champions as:
Non-IBMers who evangelize IBM solutions, share their knowledge and help grow the community of professionals who are focused on social business and IBM Collaboration Solutions. IBM Champions spend a considerable amount of their own time, energy and resources on community efforts — organizing and leading user group events, answering questions in forums, contributing wiki articles and applications, publishing podcasts, sharing instructional videos and more!
I was delighted on arriving at my office this morning to find out that today was the day that the branded IBM Champion merchandise has arrived:
Given my new role, I had to be a bit more careful this time in terms of the gear that I selected, but I have to say, I’m delighted with the quality and style of the luggage and drinks containers that I received.
Many thanks to Amanda, Oli and everyone else that works on the Champion program. I’m a big fan of brands recognising advocates in their external communities, so I applaud their continued efforts in this area.
I love my job.
Seriously. I know that’s a cliché, but honestly, I love what I do.
Since early 2008 when I started Collaboration Matters (which morphed into Social 365 back in 2012), I’ve been privileged to have the opportunity to consult for some of the most insightful and forward-looking organisations around the globe. 7 straight years of helping companies improve the productivity of their workforces through using social technologies; working with not-for-profit agencies developing online communities (the real meaning of ‘social enterprise’); assisting 600-year old publishing houses to develop internal communications strategies that will take them forward into the next decade or more.
With these projects and many many more besides, I have been lucky enough to have almost constant work to take on, plenty of challenges to get my teeth into, and to be blunt, to continue to put food on my family’s table. That’s not to mention the opportunity to blog, to podcast and even to start a user group that has now met in 8 different countries over the past 4 years.
From Collaboration to Enterprise2.0, through Social Business and ESNs, then onto Working Out Loud and Digital Transformation, the terminology may have changed in those 7 years, but here in 2015 I believe even more strongly in the value of these technologies and approaches to make a real impact on working practices and to help change organisational culture for the better.
I love doing my own thing, feeling as though there are no boundaries to what can be achieved through my own energy, drive and commitment.
So all that said… I’m giving it up.
I am delighted to announce that later this month I will be joining Jive Software as a Senior Strategy Consultant in their Customer Success organisation.
If you’d have asked me 6 months ago whether I’d give up my company to go permanent again, I’d have said ‘no way!’, at least not for the foreseeable future.
However, there have been a few nudges along the way that have convinced me that this is the right next step in my career…
Firstly, at one of my most recent engagements, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to review and analyse more than 30 different platforms in order to create a short list for their procurement process, and then to take those solutions through to final selection. There is no doubt in my mind (both objectively and subjectively) that Jiven emerged as by far the strongest offering in this marketplace. Whilst the analysts might squabble about the final order of their leaders, they unanimously view Jive Software as one of the strongest and most focused vendors in this space. My own personal experience in past customer engagements, and again during this selection process, leave me with no doubt that this is almost certainly the most rounded offering out there, and if there are any weaknesses at all, that Jive Software are driven to resolve them at the first opportunity. In addition, rather than having one offering to fit all organisational scenarios, I love Jive’s approach of having packaged solutions for internal and external communities, plus their focus on different work types and on new solutions for those organisations that need lighter and more mobile-driven apps.
Secondly, I’ve been hugely impressed by everyone I have met in the months since I was first approached. Every single individual has been focused, insightful, passionate about their roles and hugely pumped up about the future of the company. One review of the organisation on GlassDoor said the following:
Jive has flipped the typical corporate ratio of top performers to mediocre performers on its head. At most companies 90% of the workforce has middle of the road performance with 10% being top performers. Jive is just the opposite. 90% of the staff are top performers and 10% are middle of the road. This is truly the most competent and highly skilled group of colleagues I have ever worked with. It makes it a pleasure to come to work.
I’ve been honoured to work with some fantastically talented colleagues over the years, but I am genuinely excited to be joining my new team.
Thirdly, moving to Jive does not undermine the friendships I have built in the wonderfully unique Lotus/ICS community. I consider so many people in the community to be my very best friends in the world, and I will stay in touch with you however and whenever I can. However, this is the right time for me to take a different path, to switch gears, and to embark on a new adventure with an organisation that is 100% focused on making the social collaboration ideal a reality.
So, in summary, you’ll probably have realised that I am really pumped up and excited by this opportunity at Jive. It just feels that the environment, the timing and the role is right. I have no doubt that I’ll miss some of what I have now, but boy, I can’t wait to see what else is out there!
We’ve had the bootleg, now here’s the real McCoy…
Jeff Schick introduces the IBM ConnectED 2015 opening general session, featuring Scott Souder and Luis Benitez:
From January 25-28, 2015 IBM hosted ConnectED. During the conference, digital experience customers and the business partner community heard the latest in successful business strategies and use cases, solution roadmaps, and participated in valuable sessions covering best practices in Cloud, Mobile and Social.
On Monday, January 26, the conference started with the Opening General Session. Some highlights included opening remarks from IBM General Manager Jeff Schick, an IBM Verse demo from Senior Product Manager Scott Souder, an IBM Connections demo from Senior Product Manager Luis Benitez, and several customer success stories.
Sadly guest speaker Philippe Petit is not included in the recording
Timings are approximately as follows:
01:26 Jeff Schick Intro & Agenda
03:52 2014 A year of Big Bets – The year in review
05:34 Notes 25years, IBM Verse
09:17 Gary Dolsen – IBM Digital Experience: Cloud, Mobile & Persuasive content
14:27 Scott Souder – IBM Verse Demo
34:48 Jeff Schick – What’s coming – IBM Verse, IBM Connections, IBM Bluemix
37:40 Luis Benitez – IBM Connections Next Demo
48:25 Jeff Schick – Summarizing
50:08 Rob & Nicole – Digital Experience tool – Demo
1:02:00 Gary – Summarizing the previous demo
1:03:30 Jeff Schick finishing
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJiHkzl5xQo
So glad this was recorded – I had my doubts for a while there!
I adore this montage from IBMConnectED 2015! So many awesome friends and colleagues.
Thanks to Oliver Heinz for taking such great photos and to Panagenda for sharing.
