Our Collabsphere Session about O365 from the viewpoint of an Admin and a User

Hogne Pettersen and I gave this session today at Collabpshere.

It is a mix of good, bad, bewildering, and impressive views about the whole O365 story, solution, and parts within it.

We could spend all day discussing this and are happy to do so if anyone wishes to ask for our help.

For more details, follow us on our Twitter accounts at @LotusEvangelist and @NordicCUG

Shoot me NOW! The Life and Death of an O365 Admin and User from Keith Brooks

Thursday Tips - Sametime Installations Gone Awry?

I recently inherited a failed Sametime Complete 9.0 Installation that was stuck on the proxy server.

This would be the 3rd time in the last 2 years I have had the same exact circumstance.

Thank you all for bringing these to me. The commonality in each case was a reliance on the Zero to Hero 900+ slide deck. While it is a great guide to follow, especially if internally you need screen shot by screen shot directions, it lacks a few things that are kind of important.

It makes it very clear everything is on one server, if anyone read the slides, this is not very feasible for the average installation.Why is this an issue? Websphere needs to be installed on each machine but is not mentioned anywhere. SSO is not mentioned. Creating the services, and dependencies for those services is only partially mentioned.Naming everything sametime.org.com is not going to work either.

There are many more items to consider and think about, in short, if you don't know enough about what is missing, don't start down this path.

So for those getting stuck along the way, and have yet to call me for help, here are some pieces of information which may help you along the way. None of this is new but sometimes you just need a bunch of help all in one place.

I will presume you know enough to download any updates from IBM's Fix Central, how to install Websphere and the Installation manager and all the other components. If not, call me.

In no particular order:
SSO import, export of the LTPA token to/from Websphere and the Community Server details can be found here.

Keep in mind the token name must be syntax correct and the same name used throughout the process.
You may want some more details from this post:

When you need to create the Domino SSO Configuration, use this guide.

You can have multiple Domino SSO Configuration documents, just name them differently.

We needed to do this in 2 of the 3 cases because we used the same Domino domain for Community servers and :LDAP servers. This is one case where creating a new OU inside your domain may help you, check with your trusted advisor.

Need to create a Windows Service, and Dependencies so on startup it loads all the WAS and server items properly? You need the sc.exe command tool .

The syntax is not fun, and be very careful with the CAPS letters and lower case ones as any diffrences will not let this work, see this for a massive example.

Here is an example of how I did a few. You start at the bin directory (I used a D Drive) and then enter the text starting with "sc config " after the ">" remember long names and spaces in between words need the quotation marks:

Proxy Server itself and has a dependency of starting AFTER the local nodeagent:

D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\con-stproSTPPNProfile1\bin>

sc config "IBMWAS

85Service - STProxyServer" depend= "IBMWAS85Service - con-stproSTPPNProfile1_nod
eagent"

 For the Sametime System Console (SSC) the Nodeagent has to start AFTER the Deployment Manager

sc config "IBMWAS
85Service - STConsoleServer_NA" depend= "IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.5 - STConsoleServer_DM"

If you need to remember the order of starting and stopping the Websphere Sametime Servers read this note.

Lastly, document that installation using my excel spreadsheet which you can get from this post of mine.

Peek a Boo with O365 and Bits

Collaboration means different things to different people. Business collaboration is about sharing of
information, ideas, details, actions, and presuming everyone does the same in return so you truly reach that 1+1=3 world.

I am spending sometime on a side project with a company that is leveraging O365. On the outside looking in, it seems to be just what one wants for work. Online shared space for files, email, IM, ESN(Enterprise Social Network), team/group space, Office tools, and much more all wrapped up in one price and available only in the Cloud.

The first thing I experienced, and keep in mind I am accustomed to being the admin usually, was my name was spelled incorrectly. In general, not the end of the world, however, in some cases, my logins were correct, but it appears not in AD. When I asked IT to correct it, they told me it would take most of a day to do this because they would now have to go change all the other systems that I have logins for and fix them as well. SSO is not available in O365? And to rename an ID takes hours? As an admin, I am bemused at the discussions.

Normal users probably just shrug it off as IT time and plans.

My login aside, the quirks of O365, as some of my friends call them, are more a skewed view based on other products and our own expectations.

It seems one can not change the colors on screen for Outlook (2010 edition they use here). The choice is limited to 3 colors, none of which are even remotely exciting, Blue, Silver, Black. Cowboys and Raiders colors? What about us Dolphin fans that want orange or green? Or just set to Windows Desktop theme colors? Evidently 2013 is no better about this.

I will post this next bit, as it is important, but want to point out it is not unique to Microsoft. The multiple profiles, pictures, details issue is a major PITA to employees. Why can't the entry in AD cover the basics of the person (name, photo, phone, location, email, etc..) and have that, via LDAP, or AD itself, pushed out to any other system connected to it for user accounts? Instead there is Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer, and whatever the O365 bit itself is called all not sharing ANY details, in the case here, not even my login and password for the domain. Yes, WTF indeed.

Off I went to create profiles, about me docs, upload photos, enter office details because this is posted on the Yammer home page:

When signing up to Yammer can you please add a recognisable photo of yourself, so people can easily identify you in the office. Also add your phone number(s) and where you are located, including which floor you are on.

As it turns out SharePoint is not connected to O365 here, so I understand that...as an IT person. As an employee it would make me wonder why, if I cared enough, which maybe no one does anymore. Thus why adoption of an ESN is not an easy task inside companies and why I try to help it best I can.

Before some friends jump on this, as some have, be careful, IBM in this case does not handle it any better. Sametime vs. Connections profiles/photos vs. Domino data/profile/photos. Same problem, no solution. I understand why, in both companies products this exists. Simply put, if they have no way to know what "solution" you are installing, they have no way to provide the details efficiently. My argument has always been it should reside in the Directory (AD, Domino, whatever) and let everything else pull it from there. Whatever, live with it, do not slam either for this shortcoming.

The login and password thing is more bewildering to me. My Windows Domain login and password do not match my Outlook or Yammer ones but does SharePoint. A hybrid model that works as designed I guess but SSO or SPNEGO or even Oauth, anything/something would be a better solution.

On the plus side, the Yammer mobile client looks good and works well albeit in a multi step process just to message someone. I wait for the "Skype will rule it all" day coming soon, but for now, tick the box, they did mobile. You need to flip back and forth to the option menu to read group messages or the "stream" and to message someone takes 4 steps but it is a simple UI and easy to respond to posts in the stream or groups.

Yammer desktop, in short, does not exist. This is a frustrating thing for someone like myself so used to just sending IMs easily for the last 17+ years from a list in my tray. While one gets notified when there is a message, if you want to send someone a message you have to login (or keep a browser window open) just to then get to your list and try to message the person. I say try because I have not found a way for the web client to sort people by online status or even by alphabetical order. The Skype transition/integration can not come fast enough in my opinion.

Yammer Desktop Notifier is mostly a waste of time since it does NOTHING. To be fair, it has 3 options, (Inbox, Notifications, My feed) that when clicked take you to a browser and the messages. And if something is waiting for you, it has color codes to let you know in the little icon in your tray. But lookup people? Send an IM? No and No. In a corporate desktop world, this is frustrating. In a mobile, non desktop world, this is fine presumably, I have not loaded it yet on my iPad so I have no direct knowledge at this time.

The discussion around dropping SharePoint in favor of Jira is a conversation which I have not gotten into previously but would seem to be a major question/issue for companies that are using SharePoint or any ESN as a project management workflow tool. I may write more on this in a future blog after some further research.

Overall I can't say anything has blown me away that I must have it, aside from Skype. Perhaps Microsoft and other companies providing Enterprise solutions now find themselves in an unusual situation, big ugly/heavy clients that we use 10% of the benefits have passed their sale dates. When you really have better apps on your phone than your office, we are no longer on the "when will we get updates" discussion, but on the "why can't we use this app" or just doing it anyway. This is not a new opinion, we have been discussing it for years, but as I saw first hand, when IT people and executives are no longer willing to adjust to employees needs, then we in IT have failed and it matters little which vendor you chose.

Writing Competitive Pitches #EvangelistGuide

Once upon a time, people would have discussions with one another and argue the finer points of The Beatles Vs. The Rolling Stones, beer vs. wine, blended vs. single malt scotch, or is Eric Clapton really God? Should we be in Vietnam or Korea, or do we colonize Mars? iPhone vs. Android, Jobs vs. Ford, 72' Dolphins vs. anyone.

But the fun and good times eventually give way to serious business discussions at work when you are in sales, and now you not only need to have a good argument, you also need to know information, not the type your Google search, but real data and details. As much as you can recite every word in your favorite song or poem or The Princess Bride movie, that is how prepared you need to be when you get into these discussions.

Except when you won't. Then you may freeze up and do what I try to train every salesperson in the world NOT to do, which is lie to the customer. You make up stuff that even Vizzini would call BS on, but you get away with it because you think the customer knows less than you.

Your customer is not so stupid. You might be, though.

If you can't say, "I don't know the answer to that question, but I know someone who does, and I will get an answer for you by ..." you are not a great salesperson.

What does this have to do with writing competitive pitches? Evidently, quite a lot based on some I have been reading lately. They are the equivalent of lying. Not Competitive pitches.

I will admit, if you are in a strong and dominant position in your market, you probably do little competitive work because you do not need to. Yet. You will because:

"The thing I worry about is some guy in his garage
inventing something I haven’t thought of."
- Bill Gates, Microsoft

For everyone else that is in second, third, fourth, or tenth place in their market, you need to do competitive position papers and research. Salespeople will think of it as handling objections, but it is more than that and less at the same time.

What do you need to be in the competitive space? You need to...

• Be a strong improviser. You never know what will be thrown at you.
• Have international or at least regional knowledge to understand the nuances of culture and other influences on people.
• Know about your products/solutions and the competitions inside and out. Like Sun Tzo (Vito Corleone for you nonreaders) said, "keep your friends close but your enemies closer."
• Read, listen, and watch as many things as you can on topic and off-topic, so you have more angles to work with when involved in different industries. (Your examples should be just as relevant and helpful as your knowledge)
• Be fearless.
• Not be arrogant.
• Have friends in weird, odd, far out, and local places that you can reach out to at random times and days.
• Have a sense of humor.
• Think like an executive or an assistant or a CFO or the person on the 4AM support shift.
• Know you will not win every discussion, and that is okay. Really. It is.
• Think out of the box, especially when revisiting clients you already saw. No one likes repeats.
• Wear a black suit. ( Just kidding)

If you have all of this, you can start to work on your first pitch or presentation for a product or solution...or against one. 

Once you get the slides and presentation done, then you can move up to writing white papers or bigger efforts.

Finally, you can get to the big leagues and go speak to people in person and do battle. It is a battle, of wits, just like in The Princess Bride. The stakes, not a princess, but potentially millions of dollars on the line.

Wits, not geek-speak. If you are involved in development competitive situations, you may have no other way to do this, but geek speak, but since I am not a developer, I will let others who know this field better provide some details or links.

Wits mean you do not go pointing out "we have a one-click interface" or an "open status bar" unless that is all you created. 

You want to aim higher.

Set your goals in alignment with the executive you are meeting with and what they need. CRM, project management, payroll, whatever it is, there are numerous ways to point out the benefits of your solutions without reverting to geek speak. 

You must speak the executive's language, finance to finance, marketing to marketing, sales to sales. Meet them on their terms, not yours. Don't sit in their seat, but if you walk into a conference room, do try to take the seat at the top of the table. Mind games are fun, even if meaningless to you at the time.

Take time to think about your answers, especially when presented with unknown data. Ask more probing questions, find the nugget they hide and let them know it is okay to let you see and hear about it from them, in their own words.

Never put down your competition, Microsoft likes to use the term "legacy" on every other company's products, yet mysteriously they never say that about their own, which are now quite old as well. You can say our competitors do this or that, but we take a different approach. I know, I sound like the startups pitching to VCs, but they learned fast the need to differentiate themselves from the competition. Which is what you should be doing as well.

If you are the only person writing these types of documents, you MUST, I cannot stress this enough, you MUST get input from people inside and outside your organization in order to provide well thought out documents. The last thing you want is for someone to rip your doc apart and start something like FUD Buster Friday posts to show how bad your work was on the topic.

A follow-up post in this #EvangelistGuide series will look at various ways to build a competitive pitch. Until then, if you need someone to help you with your competition, my consulting fees are reasonable, and my time is flexible.

Have You Designed a Car without an Engine Today?

Half baked ideas? No, they were completely baked and ready to go....except for a strategic piece. Lost in translation or just lost in space, hard to know sometimes where to assign the lack of accountability.

A Cloud solution that is not quite ready for the Enterprise or an application that you are working on when you suddenly realize no one thought about who would use the solution, let alone, why they need it.

Governments, countries, airports and many organizations run into this it seems more often today than ever before. The site, Why Projects Fail, might be useful to you.

Imagine if in walks your business leader with an announcement of a cool new car they dreamed up for the company to produce. It's just a drawing right now, maybe a clay model, but they have a vision!. They have searched out some vendors that promise to make everything nice and clean, like never before, and they asked to let them do everything so the leader can focus on the end game. Agreements are made and a date set to expect everything to be ready for the "1st auto show of the year".

Shortly before the eagerly expected date, the leader calls the vendor and asks if everything is ready. They reply, yes, of course, we made sure you have roads from your office to the show. The leader is confused and asks, where is the engine for the car we designed? The vendor replies no one said anything about the engine, we provide the roads for you to drive and look how nice they are all black and smooth topped."Where's my engine!?" screams the leader. Engine? Replies the vendor, we don't do engines.

I have been in numerous meetings over the years where parts of these discussions went on and I wondered why it happened in the first place.

Would better meetings help? Would an ESN like IBM Connections or Microsoft Sharepoint or Jive? Was there a problem in Microsoft Project? Not enough project managers? Too few? If you had used a different email system none of this would have happened.

It is easy to be carried away by the excitement of a new project and just as easily to be led astray. Just because the client asks to go to the Cloud does not mean you should block it, or help, without some clear logic and information.

Last night I wrote and compiled a two page list of questions for a client that wants to migrate mail systems... to Domino. I broke up the questions, some 60 or so, into 3 groups, the "old info" , the "future info" and the "co-existence".

The actual list could be 80 pages, like an SUT document I worked on previously, or one page. The questions and answers will come but being prepared is more important.

Auto Dealers taught by Microsoft Sales Course

After my experience today in trying to obtain a van to lease I am convinced that auto dealers learn their sales techniques from Microsoft.

Why do I say that? Because it started with a conversation on the phone.

We would like to lease this van, model type, color, whatever, how does it look on monthly lease prices? Answer came with a dollar figure we could live with. Great, send it to me in writing. They did, so off we went today to swap the old van.

So far it all sounds good, just like any other sales conversation.

We get to the dealer, they do their song and dance and announce a price that is $100 more a month. Funny how that happens, but sad really if Honda and their dealers cared about customers. But maybe they learn from Microsoft that you suck people in and then change the terms on them.

I asked what happened to the quoted price. Was told that the sales person had no right to provide a price. Ok, so let me get this straight, you hire sales people not to give prices to customers that want to buy your cars? Interesting.

So his job is to lie to customers to get them to come in so you can bait and swap them? Sound familiar? Microsoft will come to a company tell them the product will do everything they ask, nothing special required. But there is this minor issue that there are no such options in version X, but buy this one now and when the new version comes out we will let you upgrade. Yes, really nice.

The Internet Sales Manager needs to go to ethics training. When I asked if he respected his staff and stood behind them, he said "of course". I asked why he would tell a customer that the sales person they talked to lied and should not be trusted, yet why should we trust him? Ok, this line happens in every sales organization at one time or another but really, he answered me with a straight face. I did warn him, he was a good deal older than I am, that the Internet has powerful friends and many ears.

As it turns out they did not have the car we wanted, oh we could get the color, but it came with a bunch of accessories which we do not require but the dealer had put them in or on 95% of all the vehicles. I reckon this is the License, with a CAL type deal, even if no one ever uses Onenote. Eventually we found one car that would work and the dealer still refused to honor the written offer from their own sales person. In the end we compromised to an amount that we knew others had signed off on. No I am not happy about it, stick to your word as a company, for better or worse, own up to the fact that you messed up.

Then it was time to sign the 1,000's of pages in documents. They then asked if we wanted to pay in advance for maintenance and towing benefits. Normally I would say no but as this is not my car left it up to my wife and she wanted it. Fine, another $9 month, but no fee for general service. This is the Microsoft Software Assurance offer, but we know the car will go in for maintenance, unlike say Microsoft who may not have any new versions of software out for years at a time. This also felt like the way the Microsoft consultants come to you at 4pm on a Friday and say they need more money, time, hardware to make stuff work or they have to drop the project.

On our side we did go to leave and they gave in to the price we wanted, but not the quoted price. Numerous customers have been in that situation and it is never fun especially if you got budget approval for less.

Some people will say IBM does this as well, but I have faith in the sales people I know not to act this way. Something I do not have for Microsoft sales people or a specific Honda dealer in Pompano.

Everything else went well and efficiently showing that not everything learned from Microsoft is bad. Of course I don't expect to hear from them until the lease runs out again, that is something they did not learn from Microsoft who continuously calls on customers weekly if not monthly.

In Place upgrade of Windows for Exchange? NOT

Thanks to VoWe for finding this. For the most part it discusses Exchange support in Windows 2008.

The simple detail is you can not run Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 R2 until 2nd half of 2010. Exchange 2003 however is good to go now.

They must really have screwed up Exchange 2007.
Later in the post comes this request, which most people have asked for from the start:

Finally I do want to update all on one other piece of feedback we have received - allowing the in place upgrade of the operating system under Exchange. Technically the work required to provide this capability is consistent with the work we would need to do to support an in-place upgrade of Exchange itself. As such the amount of work needed is outside the scope and complexity of what we can do in a post release product update. Still we do understand the demand and desire and it is something we will continue to look at for future versions of the product.

In other words, too bad, we don't care, go buy new hardware and pay your Microsoft Business partners more money.

Sometimes I wish IBM would do this, then I remind myself that while it would make us more money, it also makes life much harder as we would have to convince customers to upgrade which as can be seen, if there is such usage of Windows 2003 still, the Microsoft faithful don't sound so faithful do they?

Fud Buster Friday #40A - Exchange costs less to implement

Read David's blog entries from Thursday about his trek in an Exchange migration away from Domino.

Part 6
Part 7
Part 8 which has final review

Some quotes:

Before Domino servers 38 including 3 BES servers (15 sites) after Exchange users(presuming he means servers here) 105 (14 sites)

I can’t stress enough how much more bandwidth you will need compared to a Domino infrastructure.

Microsoft Sales team promises a lot that they can’t deliver.
If you use Microsoft Engineering team to implement what the Microsoft Sales team has sold you, you will get proof positive on the previous point. Even the Engineering team will admit that they’ve oversold you.

Where did you go wrong?

Ever wonder why companies move to Exchange or Gmail for email? I often ponder this as well. I also deal with it weekly, sometimes too late in the game to save the poor souls.

I can understand the feeling that "it's just email", which we all know is not the way to keep a company on Domino. If they really only use it for email, they will leave Lotus eventually. Shame on me, you, IBM and others for not encouraging more workflow and application solutions in their earlier days of the network.

Maybe it stems from politics. A new CIO,or more likely a new CEO. They want "Outlook". Notice they never say "Exchange". DAMO (Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook) allows for your users to have Outlook and run a superior server on the back end....Domino. The CXO will never know. Yet rarely does this get done.

The admin left, got fired, the server is in the middle of nowhere and thus it is difficult to find a Domino admin. A lame excuse if I ever heard one, yet also commonly put out as a reason for dropping Domino. If you are reading this and this is your predicament, call me NOW! Because of a similar situation we have hired 3 people around the country to cover these types of situations.

Server crashes all the time. I don't think so. Not if you have set it up properly, maintained it properly and of course cluster it which would mean you have 100% uptime.

The Client crashes all the time. Not on every one's machine. Just like Windows, Java or any other program if you have a problem, fix it. When your car gets a flat tire, do you trade it in for a new car? Again, if this sounds like you, call me NOW!

The UI is ancient. Really? So a tabbed interface is ancient? which is why Microsoft and Apple and Firefox use it? Show me another mail client you can manipulate what you see and move things around, not to mention dock or undock pieces and parts to anyplace on your desktop. Sorry that is the R8/8.5 UI. You probably have an R5 or R6 or R7 client which your IT staff has failed to upgrade in years and thus you are stuck in an old client.

And Outlook 2003, going on 6 years old now, is really new, isn't it.

Yes, if this is the case call NOW and we will help you, against your IT staff's wishes move to R8. Hang on, you can do it for yourself, go download it from IBM's Lotus site.

"Sharepoint is our strategic direction". Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing. I had someone recently give me that line and I asked if they could elaborate on what that meant or quantify it in a value and ROI way. Received a nasty look and they walked away. Next time I should not ask about the ROI I guess.

What should you be doing more regularly with your customers, especially the ones only using Domino for email?

Talk to your clients, but listen once you have them in a discussion and let them lead you more to a solution they envision which will be much easier to "sell" to them afterward.

Show them. Try pointing them to an app on your website, encourage dialogue to find how an application can fit into their world. Xpages apps, even simple ones will go far.

Communicate with them. Send them links to openntf.org and ask them what they want to try to use.

Show them again, planetlotus.org and your favorite developers blog posts.

If you really get stuck, skip over your contact and go for the CXO directly so they can't say no one ever tried to talk to them or show them what is out there for them. After all you have nothing to lose at this point.

Fud Buster Friday #33 - We Use Microsoft because...

Better late than never, client issues kept me busy all day and night. Sorry to those who expected it early this morning.

They provide everything we need.

Do they? In a way that is really practical?

If you bought a new car but before you could sign for it the dealer asked if you needed to steer? What would you say? Of course! Well they would add a steering wheel to your car, and charge you for it.

Will you be driving it? Then you will need brakes and tires. Again these get added to your price.

And what if they asked would you be driving at night? Then you need to buy headlights, tail lights.

If you live in a cold or warm climate would you like air conditioning or a heater? Again, probably you say yes and they charge you for this too. WAIT, this one actually happens still!

You get the idea by now. So why do you still buy Mirosoft products if they treat you this way?

Why do you still like them when they treat you this way?

You have choices, like the car companies and you bought your Lexus/Mercedes(examples only, I don't drive either) because it just came ready to go. Didn't you? Because you hate the headache of piecing together a car(Toyota that is why the Sienna loses to the Odyssey IMHO). yet your infrastructure is cobbled together the same way.

But it doesn't have to be.

We can help you, just ask, we promise to reduce your server count and headaches.

Fud Buster Friday #32 - Domino is so Hard to Update

Those who read this from Microsoft, I have nothing but awe for your marketing department.

You did your job real well, and convinced most sane people that only through pain and suffering can one update a server. In fact you trained your Business partners so well they complain and get it in their head that any upgrade is a multi million dollar affair.

Of course if GM had rigged cars so every oil change required new headers, pistons, spark plugs, fuel lines and a radiator, I think more people would get annoyed, don't you? And your jump from 2000 to 2003 and from 2003 to 2008 leaves many companies pondering why do they do this....JUST FOR EMAIL??!!?!

Well, as much as I wish that is was true it's a million dollar deal, it just isn't. I really would like to bill my first customer for a million dollar project, so would my business partners, really, so would many others.

Instead most Domino admins I know take care of upgrading the server as soon as they can and usually within 15 minutes to 1/2 hour it's done. Backups done previously of course.

And when we do an upgrade I can't bill for more than a day of work, in fact my 1st grade daughter can do it, she can read at least, unlike evidently many Microsoft Business Partners who are so afraid to touch Domino. It doesn't bite and it only makes your life EASIER as an admin.

So if it is so simple and as you can read in my previous post so cost effective in so many ways, why do you feel you must stay the course and keep spending your money with Microsoft?

Fud buster Friday #30 - The Cloud Will Save us Money

Let me start by saying if you are committed in a relationship, either stick with it or drop it.

2009 will go down as the year, in the US at least, where everything changed, from the President to your bank and your bank account or job or home or life in general.

Evidently the companies of the world are choosing to drop long time relationships in favor of what some see as short term crutches and it is upsetting quite a few companies, the ones still in existence.

100,000 GSK employees are going to the Cloud. 100,000 in various price points too.
How many of these lucky people will also get to work from home? After all if you are going to do this, why not go all out? Commercial Realtors you are about to get FUBAR(look it up).

85,000 x $15 = $1,275,000 a month
15,000 x $3 = $45,000 a month

So for about $1.3 Million dollars a month or $15.6 million a year they will get online version of everything Microsoft can offer.

Now surely someone said we are already paying Microsoft about $1000 per employee for Windows, Office, plus Lotus costs for email and well sure this looks good.

But hold on, what are all these employees going to use for accessing the web? Linux machines? That would make perfect sense, but no, the SAME machines they have now will still be in use. Saving money? not yet.

Also all those small offices are going to need more bandwidth or if GSK goes whole hog to let everyone work from home hopefully they are picking up the tab for the internet bill. if so, let's imagine 40% of the company works form home.
40,000 x $50(average per month)= $2 million a month or $24 million a year.
This doesn't include the real bandwidth which may be added at corporate.

So at $40 million a year this is saving them money? Right. they expect to shave off 30% of their costs over time. How? Once you start with a host the costs only escalate. Have you ever seen them go down? I didn't think so.

So let's say GSK is smart enough to lock in some pricing growth limits, like $1 for higher users or a quarter for the lower ones that's still quite a chunk of change in year 2 and going further.

Wait, don't forget there are admins for all this. I don't see any of them losing jobs soon. Microsoft is going to manage their user base? I don't think so.

So that cost doesn't go away. IT Support also is not going away although maybe they cut a deal for that as well.

And classically, what happens when you lose the connection at the wrong moment? What is the BC plan? Business Continuity can be costly to or is Microsoft making GSK pay for a complete redundant data center on both sides of the ocean?

Maybe GSK's costs are much more than this, and I know this is not even all the possible items on laundry list of costs(security, disk space, integration to their back office solutions), and a deal like this is probably being underwritten by Microsoft in one form or another.

A smarter way to look at their environment could have saved them even more money. But they needed that money for the day the try to get off the Microsoft hosting.

Microsoft Elevate America Plans

This is for real, and although I would like to see IBM for Lotus do something similar, my state appreciates the effort.

In an email link I received from the InternetCoast which is intermingled with the CIO Council I am part of as well as the South Florida Technology Alliance, they discussed Microsoft's new training initiative.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

A new training effort spearheaded by Microsoft will offer free tech training to millions. Elevate America, the initiative launched by Microsoft Sunday, aims to give 2 million people during the next two years tech training both online and at regional telecenters.

The online resource is focused on helping users figure out what types of technical skills are required for IT jobs, and provides resources to help acquire these skills. The Web site offers access to several Microsoft online training programs, from very basic (e.g., "How to use the Internet") to much more advanced (e.g., "Implementing and Supporting Microsoft Windows XP Professional").

To provide a variety of training, Microsoft will partner with state and local governments. Florida, New York and Washington will be the first states to offer Elevate America courses.

The odd reference to XP aside, this is a good thing for many of the out of work people in the country. In the IT industry one can and usually will make more money, up to a point, than in many other jobs in the world.

That article will lead you to this page which outlines various people and ways to get trained or enhanced your knowledge of Microsoft products.

But what is truly amazing to me, and I love the way it reminds me of the NY subway maps, and makes it easy to follow is this pdf found if you select the "Expand Your Skills" option of "Find the IT skills needed for jobs you want".

Maybe IBM can do this as well and provide a similar chart for certifications.

Google Joins Mozilla vs. Microsoft

In what will be a defining moment, sometime in our children's lifetime at this point, the EU will listen to Google and Mozilla discuss why Microsoft should not be allowed to include IE with Windows in the future.

This discussion could take place in the US, but unfortunately the vast majority of Capitol hill is non-technically inclined and wouldn't know the difference between sms,smtp,ssl or ssh let alone UML, XML, HTTP to name a few items. My own rep argued against digital voting, Florida does have its problems.

Read the ZD post here.
Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for posting it and saying this to go with it:

You have to almost feel sorry for Microsoft about this--or at least see the irony of Google's efforts

Now if IBM had a browser to go with Symphony, Notes, Sametime imagine a true Linux world.

MS Office Delayed...till 2010...if...maybe?

Twitter is so full of information it is hard to remember to post some of it.
Not in this case.

So Office 2007 was to be followed up with a quick, um, refresh might be a good word, and out in 2009. But not so fast, it looks like it is definitely pushed to 2010. January 1 or December 32nd is the question, my bet is on Q2/Q3 which happens to fall around their fiscal year.

Could it be Microsoft was looking to stop the 4-5 year cycle so their Software Assurance customers wouldn't have to complain, yet again, that they wasted all that money for nothing. And it IS quite a bit of money one can waste.

Just like the extra warranty you don't need from the dealer/store, you don't need the SA from Microsoft either.

Sure someone will say they are waiting for their "Cloud" to be ready or maybe the next rendition of Sharepoint, either way, what are they promising you that you have to PAY them to wait for it?

Drop Office, I have, pick up Lotus Symphony or Star office or anything else really. Make Microsoft work for your money, don't just give it to them and get nothing in return.

I have a client going to take a Ubuntu Linux desktop setup based on one I am showing him from my office. Why? Because they realized that a call center with multiple copies of Office and Windows gets real expensive fast especially when you are using it only for a mail client and a word processor.

Fud Buster Friday #25 - Analysts have a $%*$(#^ Clue

EDIT NOTE: wrong day, but can't pull it now. Guess I have a quieter Friday to look forward to.

Mr. CEO, you pay Gartner a huge amount of money annually to "tell you what is going on". Should we as your employees infer you are a moron?
Or should we infer you don't have time to dedicate to staying aware of your environment because of all the golf outings?
Or maybe if you listened to your own internal staff(sales, marketing, IT or even janitorial) you would have way more insight than these jokers.

Mr. CFO you pay an accounting firm to audit your books, but you don't really believe they do, yet you continue to keep paying the money to them year after year and pray you never get called on anything by the IRS or some lawsuit. Very nice, have fun with your buddies from Enron.

Mr. CIO you rely on so many different vendors and their ideas plus the notorious analysts with their mythical percentages and poorly futuristic views into the future to help guide your ouija board of a business plan. Don't you think it's time to step back and realize it's all fluff?

Loyal employees, well there are none anymore especially after this past 2 weeks, if they even existed since 2000, must truly question what goes on in the minds of executives or more so in the Analysts minds. I do too, but I know too many and few have shown any aspects of intelligence beyond CYA. IBM puts way too much into quoting these fools too.

For years we have read how Microsoft was so great. Then Vista comes and although they hailed it, they now pan it.
See this article from the BBC(usually love Microsoft), Nov 30, 2006

He points to forecasts by technology consulting firms like IDC, who predict that within one year 100m computers will be running Vista.

David Smith at Gartner agrees: "In 18 months you will see the majority of [business] computers running on Vista."

The same article says Let's not forget that Vista is late. Very late.

Instead of three years, it has taken Microsoft five years and 10,000 workers to get Windows Vista ready for the big time.

Now compare with this article from tech Crunch from april 11, 2008.

Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald told a conference audience yesterday that Microsoft’s Windows product is collapsing and must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

Inside Gartner I bet they say "Dang, we got it wrong, but they still pay our fees, ROTFLMAO!"

Yes there are journalists with integrity, no question, but the analysts, it's hard to say what their agendas are and there in lies the problem.

So the next time you or your CXO ask for analysts opinions, just laugh and then type something up and say its from FBF Analysts team because everyone loves acronyms.

Look for FBF Analyst postings wherever FUD can be analyzed.

Project Liberate - Hits the Microsoft Wallet, LS09 BDDAy

My interest, and it should be yours, your CIO and CEO and especially your CFO, is not just save money or convert clients to Lotus.
It's to provide a logic to understand, the Microsoft Tax, as some have called it.

Microsoft is hurting, the companies that said they would go to Exchange, never did and they are still trying to get them to do the migration. But in this economic environment, why would you pay over $3million dollars to move a moderate size company and still just have email?

Microsoft is aware of Liberate and may now start digging in their heels even more to stop the losses. Google hits them, IBM hits them, but Microsoft still hurts themselves.

If they do not discount any pricing, but will do it for "free", where does that leave you in your organization?

If you can't explain to your C executives why it isn't free, you need help, ask me, or you can go to the IBM group itself. http://www.ibm.com/software/info/liberate

Nothing is free in life, even death is expensive. So get over the free discussion already and face reality. If you don't believe it, numbers don't lie. YOUR numbers.

Fud Buster Friday #23 - IBM is Dropping Lotusphere

Microsoft spoilers abound, but this one is perpetual.

Every year Lotus reminds us that next year we will be back in Orlando and gives us the dates.
Every year Microsoft touts that IBM is dropping Lotusphere, just like Devcon, Lotusphere Europe and similar events.

IBM renewed it's agreement with the Swan/Dolphin for another few years, I think we are good to 2012, but if anyone knows better let me know.

Should IBM expand Lotusphere is really the question. In looking at my calendar
see it here:


It is obvious that I need more hours in my day and Lotusphere needs more days in it's week. Or Lotusphere maybe needs to get broken down further and bring back Devcon so all the AppDev has a proper place and time. Then the Sphere could be about the infrastructure, products and of course, Admin. But then I am a little biased.

But seriously, the show is so large and so difficult to match your time, coupled with client meetings, IBM partner meetings, special on site meetings, company business and of course support still of our clients, it does take it's toll.

So as we all hunker down and fly(no more water landings please, kudos to Capt. Sullenberg!), drive (congratulations to Goodyear you just sold me 2 new tires this morning for my bald and flat rear ones) or Bus(Lotus911 doing it again?) remind everyone you meet, see or bump into anywhere in the world Lotus is alive, well and kicking and this year will see some heavy hitting from IBM.

So for the Microsoft lover in your organization, and all Star Trek fans, remind them

Do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold?

RIP Ricardo Montalban.
It's 32F in Seattle right now.

Sorry to hear about your Small...

Don;t want spam traps to block my post but you might think this is going down a path we don't want to visit.

Well let's say we keep it clean and above board, for the minute.

Following another excellent post by Duffbert I found a gem to discuss in this article from Computer World.

Google gives you a 25GB mail file when you pay the $50/yr for their GAPE product as discussed previously.

Microsoft in their new found Cloud of Azure claims:

There are limitations in Exchange Online. Mailboxes default to just 1GB. Every additional gigabyte costs $2 per gigabyte per month. The maximum size is 4GB, despite the service being built with Exchange 2007, which supports mailboxes up to 16GB.

The 4GB limit is "to ensure the best performance in Outlook," said Betz. "Customers we talk to tell us that overly large inboxes create many problems for their organizations," which have to comply with rules around compliance and e-mail discovery.

Duffbert quoted this part too, but my interest is in the 2nd paragraph, overly large inboxes create problems? You don't say? So the answer is to limit the users to 4GB to prevent their inbox from getting too big?

HUH?!

Domino also doesn't like very large inboxes but that never stops you from having a 10gb file or larger, although your antivirus will not be happy with you nor will your autoindexing function as they slow down to a crawl but traffic in Manhattan has been the same for decades too.

Don't you think better mail filtering or even end user training could help?
No, just quota them to death, no wait charge them for it too. Google doesn't seem to have this problem....or do they?

By the way, Microsoft charges you for this benefit $15/month but I guess with the extra 3 GB that would add an additional $6 so $21 a month over the year is $252.
$202 MORE than Google is and you get what in return?

I know someone reading this is saying, yes but IBM just did the same thing. Well yes and no, IBM is billing the usage at $8/month, still more than Google no question but you get to keep your Notes apps and mail. At $46 more per user that's not funny either and the real question, if you are an SMB is what is more important to you, cost savings, reliability, long term leadership or ease and efficiency.

Fud Buster Friday Lucky #13 - Exchange is Everywhere

SO WHAT! Microsoft laughs to the bank every single day because your CFO doesn't talk to the CIO or CTO about why this solution must get rebuilt every few years.

Why does this sway your CXO's mind so easily?
What causes people to have a herd mentality and be so fiscally irresponsible?

Yes, Windows is almost everywhere.
But when a new version comes out it doesn't FORCE you to upgrade your hardware. Naturally more RAM is always nice but you don't HAVE to go buy a 64-bit laptop to run it.

If I knew I had to go out and purchase new equipment and redesign my network every 3-4 years JUST FOR EMAIL because the vendor required it, why would that be a good business decision on my part? And if you argue it does more than just email, I would counter with the premise that you now MUST UPDATE YOUR WHOLE INFRASTRUCTURE!

I want a consistent solution from a company that wants to limit my downtime, reduce my expenses, and provide upgrades which I can maintain in a reasonable fashion with minimal disruption to me, my staff or my end users. I have that with Lotus Notes & Domino and ALWAYS have had it from day one.

The next time you hear your executive talking about going to Exchange, ask them about how they feel about the "solution" from Microsoft and the expense related to it that just keep billing you and billing you and billing you.