iNotes Redirector Cluster Awareness

A primary issue to many customers, related to iNotes, is the lack of cluster awareness in the iNotes Redirector application.

If this is important to you, let IBM know, post a comment here, don't name your employer or clients but numbers are important.

You can also vote for this at the ideajam site here.

I have word from IBM that if this is important enough they will add it to the list.

My iNotes Redirector Session Updates

For those that came to it, there was one Technote which did not make it to the slides as it came out post the freeze date.

It is related to the iNotes reverse proxy which is broken in 8.5.1.

The technote found is #1412267.

My conversations with IBMers found this will be resolved in 8.5.2.

In the meantime you can try this or revert your iNotes server and redirector to 8.5 or earlier.

For all of those who have been asking me what was wrong, this was broken in 8.5.1(some people reported other issues in 8.5 but most of what I hear is about this version.

Morning from Boston and The View ADMIN Conference

Post will get updated during the day.

Saw the Red Sox game last night, they won. Really nice section security people let me sit 6 rows up from the 1st base line, thanks!

Last night sat around with many Lotus bloggers and some customers and it's an exciting time.

This morning, Alistair Rennie is speaking at the Keynote.

The View announced certificate testing is open till 7pm every day because that's what everyone needs. Someone please let the Lotusphere team know to do this as well.

Alistair related about financial executives asking for social computing because they want more integration. Sametime and Unified Communication (UC) is making huge differences in business.

"More compliments on Notes in the last 16 months than previous years." Quote from a client who talked to Alistair this morning.

8.5.2 is about maintenance more than goods, but integration with LotusLive is getting baked in better.

LotusLive Notes, an SaaS version, coming before end of year.
Notes Next details coming at Lotusphere, but ProjectVulcan is a good guide.

My question is "Is LotusLive Notes a lead-in to Vulcan as far as getting people ready for this jump?" I'll find out more details later, if I can post I will.

Web 2.0 plugins for Lotus Notes from Alistair's slide:
Openspan, Tungle, Doodle, Gist, Tripit, Linkedin, viadeo, eproductivity, salesforce.com

Ron's demo will be on mobile (ipad/android etc.), then after Alistair is done, there is a open discussion between Alistair, Russ Holden and Brent Peters.

Ron showing the openntf.org status updates sidebar app. Also the Openntf xpages code for making apps go mobile. That looks good, go try it out.

Android is in beta, connections v3 is due out later this year.

Quickr updates include making both versions consistent and UI consistency, enhance and simplify Quickr controls. Making admin easier, but leveraging Domino more. Integration for ECM on the Quickr Domino side.
More API's coming, YEAH!

Ron is demoing the Quickr Connectors updates. Now get context from the attachments with EML so you can get that little extra info. Threaded views on the web side, able to put into an external file store, not just Quickr. New Links and Lists to be embedded in the Library, calendar got updated with integration to Notes from Quickr. You can use RSS or an iCal feed for Notes. (I wish this was native without it, but appreciate this immensely on behalf of clients). AND we have a trash can so it can be easily undeleted, HUGE thank you for that. And the Quickr browser will now change on the language switch in your browser. Excellent benefit for world wide clients.

Connections 3 gets more analytics about your social data, do the voip integration, SUT.

Sametime 8.5 has a meeting room for calendar entries, if you are not using ST 8.5 you are missing out on some advances that make life so much easier. (From me, Installation however is not as simple, you are warned!)

LotusLive MyNetwork in Sidebar shows who you are connected to. Drag and Drop into the MyNetwork a file to a person and share/file transfer and you know have a truly shared app.

Even Ron has to stumble through defining this as Domino based iNotes, NOT Lotuslive iNotes.

Project Vulcan is about continuity, convergence, innovation and new opportunities.
It's a vision, not necessarily a product, of how people will collaborate in the future.
Vulcan is inside Notes but looks like a cross between Facebook and Connections.
Idea is a simplified UI and ability and filter data and provide it without too much detail.
Browser is the same view.

Adding an app will automatically add the db to your left column gutter of icons. It also can provide all the ST and file details from one spot rather than multiple clients and clicks later.

Q1- When will encryption get updated for ondisk?
Russ- Next release it will be updated, after 852, Q1 2011

Q2- SAML support?
Russ - Used in LotusLive now, will be in Notes some day

Q3- xpages 852 support?
Brent - client will get more and he sees the openntf work as helpful and key on this

LotusLive NOTES Questions

Seems I struck gold with my queries on Lotuslive Notes...not iNotes.

Seen the Wiki? Almost empty.

If this is in production, then I am confused by the references to it being in beta.

I await entry to the LL beta program, asked months ago and again now, especially given our client is going to go to it.

So many questions, but I have asked some internal people at IBM for help.

So for now I leave you with these thoughts as people have asked why we are looking at Notes and not iNotes.

iNotes only provides email and some calendaring but not the robust side of business life clients need, especially in resource and reservations info.

Then there are policies we would like to use too.

We thought about using iNotes and the client employees could use their client of choice, but this led to a support issue since they did not want to support more than 1 client.

Notes will let the employees login via browser and a Notes client. Best of both worlds ideally. Yes, one could do this with iNotes BUT certain functions(iCal for one) will not work properly(fix promised in 852 but yet to be resolved in our testing). So this negates using it, for now.

Also how would you use Out of Office from a Notes client in iNotes?

We want to help the employees realize the client and the browser based look, act and feel the same(I know this is not 100% true, but it is mostly true..90% maybe).

Price is only marginally important, functionality is crucial to them.

More details coming soon. And no, I missed one of the calls about this so anyone who has some details(not the sales talk I have that) let me know. Thank you

A CIO asked about Exchange, so I told him the truth

So we have a meeting in an office at a client which we briefly met 6 months previously. One by one a few other people pop in and out, some get introduced, others do not. Trying to stay focused we did not ask who everyone was, although in retrospect maybe we should have.

Along the way a side conversation started around a feasibility study on moving from Notes to Exchange. Needless to say I was not quiet and I hope none of you would be either.

Not going to get into too many details about the client but they run an iSeries Mail server of Domino and are mostly on R8.x for their dozen or so servers and have run Domino for about 10 years perhaps, 2,000+ employees with 1,000's of temporary/project staff.

Note: While much of this is about Microsoft, one could claim Gmail meets some of this as well, but in truth Gmail has a long way to go for corporate users.

1st question I asked was simple....why?
"Management wants it" was the reply.
"Can you help us" they asked.

I informed them that no, we can not help you move to Exchange, but we can try to provide some details they may not have been thinking about. We have managed some clients Domino infrastructures, for quite some time, during their migration phase because we feel that showing a client how their servers could be running(and still providing them new tools and benefits as well) is important the next time they think about these topics or want to go to the Cloud perhaps or use Lotus Connections. You would be surprised what makes people decide sometimes.

We discussed the real motive is to go to Outlook, not Exchange. They all nodded their heads. Some things never change.

Discussed how their sales/business development people would be missing out on the whole sidebar functionality for researching people. While they are not doing this today, we hope to show them more ways to benefit from it next time we visit.

Had they thought about their Domino apps? Those doc links? Not going to work anymore I informed them. "We are looking to rewrite them" was the reply. I wished them luck and suggested they start small before going whole hog breaking the bank.

What about their connectivity between offices and remote sites which currently do not have a server? They will under this plan OR they could really increase their bandwidth everywhere. Servers are cheaper.

Time. How long did they think, or were told, the migration would take? I suggested they get it in writing and hold firm to the dates and costs if they get that far because so many migrations end up taking way too long to get done, if ever. Oh and the Domino servers? Not going to go away either in time, especially if they are holding your applications. Which leads up to...

Money. Did they realize how much this would cost and, say it with me, "All they would get is email" when it is done. Running a dual universe is an expensive proposition, especially when you really have no idea when the end will be in sight.

What about support calls they asked? Well the truth is support calls will just be different types but not really less. I'd like to hear form anyone with good data on this topic.

Buyers remorse. So you go to Outlook. then you start finding out all the things the people in the company used Notes for and liked and they can't do it in Outlook and that's not fun. Notes may be full of customizations but at least you have the options.

Then we got to hardware/licenses.

In simple terms I outlined the parallel universe they would need to run for some time during the course of their migration (however long that will be). Keep in mind they would likely need a BES, FAX solution, Backup solution for Exchange running in parallel to their existing Domino infrastructure and of course need a full army of servers loaded with Windows/Exchange etc.. Less likely other items could include spam, malware, anti-virus solutions as well.

There is also the reality of their branches having such a small space for data centers that adding 3 or 4 more servers, even in a rack, may not be possible in every case.

The point was also pursued about open options and backwards and future compatibility and upheaval. Notes mail and apps good no matter what version of Notes or Domino running and across an abundance of operating systems. Compared to Exchange which is tied into the Windows server platform exclusively and unable to be upgraded without the whole infrastructure being upgraded at the same time.

The discussion ended with me reminding those in the room that if the boss wants something, you can only discuss it to a point, and retain your job. So think about it before ranting and raving about this being a bad idea.

It is a costly idea, no question. Really hard to justify it from a budget perspective. But we know it is not about budget, or technology, that wins in the end.

Go read the Applicable White Papers on costs for more information from a group which is an IBM and Microsoft Business Partner.

The CIO? He kept his arms folded the whole time he was in our meeting. He's European and very set in his ways and not very comfortable when surrounded by a flock of IBM/Lotus lovers. After the meeting, when we found out who he was, I couldn't stop laughing. Unknowingly I had delivered the pitch which he would never get from anyone in house(and unless we found about it and I got an audience) and he went off to ponder what I said.

Will it change his mind? I knew already money was an issue last time they discussed it, however they saw great revenue in Q1 and he is now thinking they can, spend, I mean waste, the money. With luck we will get another round of discussions from it. We did promise to provide backing details :-)

The option to go to LotusLive was brought up if cost was a reason, but no one could say cost was an issue, if they were prepared to spend so much money to just get email. If it was a public company I would short their stock if they ever make a decision.

This might be a record inbox size

A webmail from an organization we work with appears to have troubles, no wonder, if you had 4.2 BILLION emails in your inbox you might have problems too.