Get Social. Build Apps. But first, Get Educated!

by with No Comment Misc

Some super ‘on demand’ webcasts from IBM.  Definitely worth watching if you want to transfer your development skills to the Social Business arena:

IBM Social Business Application Development Webcasts

Register now to view the webcasts, visit booths and ask questions to the Experts.

  • The Social Application Model- Charlie Hill, Social Business CTO at IBM Collaboration Solutions, describes how social tools integrate with enterprise applications in the social application model.  Learn about the starting points, common technologies, and social integration points that are the building blocks for social business applications.
  • Building Mobile and Social Applications- Philippe Riand, Application Development Architect at IBM Collaboration Solutions will describe how to build mobile and social applications using IBM Web Experience Factory, IBM Rational Application Developer and Domino XPages.
  • Panel discussion on XPages, Web, Mobile and Cloud Applications – Multi-channel Web Experiences, Social Application in the Cloud, Xpages / Social Business Toolkit, Social Business wrap-up / What’s next.

Social Business Application Development webcasts will guide clients and partners in adding social capabilities to their business applications to capitalize on the collective intelligence from people and social networks.

Don’t miss these exciting webcasts created just for application development professionals.

Featuring Charlie Hill, Philippe Riand, Gopal Gupta, Pete Janzen, Adam Ginsburg, Tyler Tribe and Dwight Morse these webcasts are an excellent way to get started with application development for Social Business.

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IBM tidies Collaboration Solutions product line

by with No Comment Announcements

One in a while IBM takes a scalpel to the set of products it sells and adjusts the offerings that are marketed to new customers. That’s just part of the cycle of product management…  The changes haven’t been communicated particularly broadly (though they are mentioned on the Greenhouse), so I thought it was worth a blog post.

This month we’ve seen an announcement of the demise of a couple of products, replaced by others in the line. First up, Mashup Center and Lotus Mashups:

Effective on the dates listed below, IBM® will withdraw from marketing, part numbers from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:

5724-V06 1.0.0 08/07/12 IBM InfoSphere® MashupHub V1.0.0
5724-V06 1.1.0 08/07/12 IBM InfoSphere MashupHub V1.1.0
5724-V06 2.0.0 08/07/12 IBM InfoSphere MashupHub V2.0.0
5724-U69 1.0.0 08/07/12 IBM Lotus® Mashups V1.0.0
5724-U69 1.1.0 08/07/12 IBM Lotus Mashups V1.1.0
5724-U69 2.0.0 08/07/12 IBM Lotus Mashups V2.0.0
5724-V33 2.0.0 08/07/12 IBM Mashup Center V2.0.0
5724-V33 3.0.0 08/07/12 IBM Mashup Center V3.0.0

Mashup Center is not being directly replaced, but the features and functions within it have been subsumed into WebSphere Portal, and hence customers and partners are recommended to purchase that solution instead. MashupHub is replaced by IBM Web Experience Factory Designer.

Secondly, Lotus Forms Turbo:

Effective on the dates listed below, IBM® will withdraw from marketing, part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:

5724-W05 3.5.0 05/08/12 IBM Lotus® Forms Turbo V3.5.0
5724-W05 3.5.1 05/08/12 IBM Lotus Forms Turbo V3.5.1

In this case, the replacement is an almost direct one, with IBM Forms Server, which has always been the more comprehensive offering, albeit at a higher price.

In all cases support for the withdrawn products will continue for a significant period of time, it is just that they won’t be marketed or be available to purchase from IBM. Check the announcement letters for more information.

These changes also see the removal of two more Lotus-branded solutions, leaving just a few remaining, principally Lotus Notes, Domino and Quickr.

Websphere Portal 6.1 will ship this quarter

by with No Comment Misc

IBM has released the following press release this week regarding Portal 6.1:

New IBM Web 2.0 Portal Software Breaks Down Barrier Between Enterprise and Web

LAS VEGAS, NV – 09 Apr 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that its new portal software with Web 2.0 support will ship this quarter. Called IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1, it is designed to securely combine information from both the enterprise and the Web.

A portal is a technology for providing external and internal Web sites which can deliver information, applications, and processes to provide a personalized experience to individuals. Web 2.0 technologies are increasingly being used for business by empowering people with content, social connections and other tools to solve problems.

…
IBM also announced at IMPACT that three of its accelerators and the beta version of a new entry-level forms product will ship this quarter. An accelerator is a software package that can be easily snapped on to IBM WebSphere Portal.

The first two accelerators are designed to help users respond more quickly to new business opportunities. IBM Dashboard Accelerator 6.1 for WebSphere Portal will integrate business intelligence software from IBM-Cognos and several other companies. IBM Dashboard Accelerator is a proven software tool used for rapidly building a dashboard, which is an intuitive visualization of information customized to a specific job role or point of view.

The second, IBM Content Accelerator 6.1 for WebSphere Portal, includes simplified authoring templates used for creating quick content like blogs. It also will have richer in-line editing to enable users to easily create folders, sites or site areas.

The third, IBM Business Process Accelerator, which has just started shipping, is designed to simplify and improve the adoption of business processes by using the role-based, personalized user interface of WebSphere Portal to improve both implementation and user response time for a range of processes. For information about a university’s use of this software, visit http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22719.wss.

I will be really looking forward to sampling the new WCM technology in the Content Accelerator having suffered WCM in older versions of Portal.  Hopefully the user interface will now allow the platform to perform to its potential…