Can We Get To Work Now?

As you may have heard, the divorce from IBM of the Lotus Portfolio of products has come to a conclusion and HCL has come out the winner,

The value of the deal ensures a decent rate of return to HCL within 3 years(maybe earlier) based solely on Support and Services, otherwise known as renewals.

The efforts to stop the leaving and increase the renewals only adds gravy to the deal for HCL.

But many of us want to see a new land, we want to not just see people hang on, but new customers come out of the cold. This could be the start of a renewal for the product line, sure, few companies have done it, Apple being the biggest turn around, and we have to do it without Steve Jobs. Not sure if that is the vision, but it is a goal which I think should be on everyone's mind.

We have to see the world, not like it was, not like we wish it was, but as it is and how we can once again be useful to people. Yet, once again, daily, we will have to prove that a venerable product, it  never went away in 30 years while so many disappeared, still runs and can run many companies worlds.

Sure, Salesforce now does workflow and automation, taking our niche potentially, or at least trying to if you believe a $200 million software project in Salesforce is required to replace, and not fully, a Domino application. The limitations and costs of Salesforce are not enough to convince someone to drop Salesforce, to push on those is working the competitive tactics of old.

Embrace and extend maybe is the answer, but that would end up a Business Partner play, aside from HCL getting the APIs to place nicely.

Microsoft of course still worries about us, funny how old flames die hard but the old ways, do not work the same and a better play in the competitive space is needed.

Google/Alphabet still sucks at calendaring and while the focus from HCL may not be messaging, messaging still is what runs a lot of businesses.

Workflow and automation demand a solid, stable, secure platform that can be relied upon to work no matter what you throw at it and no matter how little you babysit it. Do you ever hear Exchange admins say they love Exchange? No, not really, but there are 100s if not 1,000s of people out there that will say they love Domino.

It.is.THAT.Good

Back to HCL Software and the future, while the dust settles and this 3 Billion dollar(Lotus bits)  startup creates logic where there was none, have some patience.

We would all like to see new commercials and marketing, but in a modern world, that doesn't cut it enough. If we really want this to succeed, we need to embrace the social media side, not just pay lip service to it.

We need to ingrain into people that MongoDB is only decades behind Domino in getting field level encryption in a NoSQL flat database.

And people treat that like news?

IBM would never let us go after this, but my hope is HCL will because if we don't bring the issues to the front, there is no press and no customers begging to come back.

Do we need new templates? Yes, and we need to find a way to make them flexible enough so customers can adopt them easily enough. I have some ideas in this space for another blog post.

Do we need to revise old ones? It wouldn't hurt, and these will help keep customers renewing. I gave my input already on the Rooms and Resources.

I have argued that to try to convince people to code with Domino is a hard sell, kids in college have never seen or heard of it. More importantly, the workforce is not what it was in the dawn of the PC industry.

Many employees are niche driven and not code happy, or even interested.

In the earlier days, those of us that wanted to find a better way or figure something out had to read anything we can find, play with everything, dig into stuff that even now I think about some of it was amazing.

But I don't see that spark in employees. The need to know more is gone, maybe because love of company went away over the last 20 years. If HCL can figure out how to light that spark again, we may be on top something.

I mentor startups and they listen to me explain long dead products that did what they plan to do and what went wrong so they can try to make a better way...while scratching their head why they never heard of these solutions.

HCL has the chance to do everything we have been begging IBM to do with the products for years. Now we just need to get on with it and be aware that the future is being built literally every minute as of officially 17 hours ago Grenwich Mean Time.

Engage 2019, We Came, We Saw, We Heard

I went to Brussels last week for the excellent conference Engage, run by Theo and Hilde with a supporting cast of dozens. Thank you for an excellent event and Dinners!

Not only was I speaking, I was looking forward to the discussions with the HCL team and seeing friends and meeting new ones in person, and learn a few things along the way.

Fitting to have the event at Auto World in Brussels. 100s of cars on display and names you recognize, many you would not, and that amazing smell of leather, wood, oil and gasoline. The same way some brands are long gone, while others have stayed with us for over a 100 years, so it is with Lotus, a part of IBM and now with HCL. Those that find their community, live long, and prosper.

Had to get the Vette photo

Ferrari Featured in my session

I love the Amphibian Cars

Lotus Yellow

Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Internal Technology Awesomeness

I spoke on Wednesday about the need for an affinity to one’s software and/or hardware solutions inside your company. Why does one need such affinity? Because the more we love something the harder it is to let it go. I gave the following example, while it is true many people lease a car and get a different one every 2-3 years, others will do anything they can to get their car of their dreams.

And you know what they do once they get that car?

They never let it go, they don’t exchange it, they keep it for a long time.

And this is where we are today, as we await the handover from IBM to HCL of the Lotus portfolio.

We heard, and saw, at Engage from HCL some details about versions 10 and 11 of Notes, Domino, Sametime, Traveler and updates on Connections and new products like LEAP.

I was in a few Domino administrator sessions, one from IBM Lifetime Champion GabDavis doing the 60 admin tips in 60 minutes and the other to close the show, Ben Menesi of Ytria and Christoph Adler’s (https://www.panagenda.com/) own session "New Domino Admin Features Sure to Spark a Lasting Love Affair with Domino 10 and 11". 

I learned or relearned about some items, no one can know and remember everything.

I strongly suggest you download both presentations once Theo posts them on the Engage.ug site.

My session on Tuesday included this Engage Jeopardy Edition of user complaints and how to deal with them. 

1 slide, the rest was a discussion

The session was not about how to solve the issues but how to work with your customers/users because we, as Business Partners or internal IT staff, are the ones that help shape and work with the affinity I mentioned above. If we do not take the time to spread the love, the end users really will not do it.

Luis Suarez also of Panagenda, put it quite well in his Community presentation when he said “communities are voluntarily started by people who find a common interest, not because management told someone to create a community” (Sorry Luis, I paraphrased).

Me and some cars from the room I presented my session

As I said in my session on Wednesday, if we do our jobs properly, and encourage people to feel empowered to use these products, we may see the reborn Phoenix rise again.

If we can help end users not see these products as something required by management, but instead tools to help them accomplish and see the great benefits to them individually such as time, data, accountability, and awareness then we have done our jobs well.

A different session I was in, again by Gab Davis, was comparing and contrasting Domino to Exchange. I have no doubt that Gab spent a lot of effort and time to reach a level of that session that was unbiased and educational to those of us that attended it.

A key point she raised was Exchange has many options for the user’s world, while Domino has many options for the Admins world. There were other points raised about the differences in logs and how to read them or find them, along with other areas that portray Domino in a bright light from an Admins view.

The Roundtables I sat in on were related to Verse on Premises, mobile, future template update ideas and the future HCL Masters and Grandmasters program, which is what some of us may become in the future now that we will not be IBM Champions.

Libby Ingrassia was in Brussels as well and reminded us, and I am letting you all know, that we all could be IBM Champions still just in a different area of IBM. Something to keep in mind for those of you that have already extended your wings to cover other solutions.

The sponsors included the usual suspects and I was intrigued by CYONE and their monitoring solution which they are giving a piece of it away for free and I look forward to testing it and possibly leveraging it with clients that I manage.

Lastly, I was the winner of one of the raffle items at the close of Engage. The OnTime team gave away a Bell and Olufsen H9i headphones and they are amazing! Thanks Jens and team! 

By the way, they have a new module out for OnTime that includes catering options for your Rooms and Resources, something which I think everyone would benefit from in their organizations, just ask your Administrative Assistants.

That’s it for me, hope to see some of you at Hogne’s ISBG event in Stockholm in June.

The Rebellion Strikes Back

My apologies, this was scheduled incorrectly.

If you were not at the HCL Factory Tour Part 2 recently in Milan, you may not appreciate all the Star Wars references but, us being geeks, we go with the flow.

There were about 100-120 customers, business partners, and IBM Champions in attendance, many of us worn down from travel to/from Think in San Francisco barely 10 days ago.

We converged on the HCL offices in Milan, Italy with Richard Jefts and his crew of ex-Empire leaders.

We proceeded to have 2 full days, 3 if you stayed for Portal day (I did not due to flight schedule) of sessions. Myself and a few other IBM Champions were tired from all the learning. 

We are used to doing the sessions not attending so many in a row.

I messaged my kids at one point that I was reminded how they feel every day at school, been 26 years since I finished my MBA.

Nothing, was boring.

There was a track for technical and a track for Business. I skipped the developer sessions, I am sure my developer friends covered that stuff very well or will soon enough for your review.

Business partner sessions, sales sessions, HCL services, the future of the Champion program session, and some other ones I can’t really discuss publicly, as much of it is not written in stone until the deal is finalized and should properly come from HCL itself.

However, we did get to weigh in on many aspects and I think the partner community will be quite happy.

We also had the pleasure of walking around Milan on our way to dinner the first night, and as you can see from the picture below, we all did a group photo at the Duomo in the center of Milan. 

Thanks HCL for a great time and, my luck, got to spend time with Russ Holden at my table who now heads all Notes and Domino development (maybe more, but if you know Russ, then you know it is in great hands) and Richard also sat with us but, as the host, was quite busy.

So what can I tell you? Let’s talk about the current and future of Notes Clients/Verse, Sametime, Nomad, Places, Technical Advocacy (near and dear to my heart) and closing speaker @VoWe.

V10 highlights on the left graphic and Verse on Premises upcoming Features and you can read them on your own. 

An interesting highlight, for me, is while web browser apps will maintain all languages, Notes and Domino and on premises applications are going to lose some languages, including Hebrew. So if you are from a smaller country, you may want to verify there will still be a client in your language. It is a monetary decision based on licensing and number of users. I hope to change their mind, will see.

There was some discussion about a mix of Verse and NOMAD, the application to read your Notes applications(except mail) via a browser and not the old NOMAD of running Notes from a USB. Ideally it would be good but doesn't sound like a true panacea just yet.

V11 Notes client is shaping up. Plans are to do a release a year (YEAH!) and over time make it easier to update your clients. There is of course the Verse client that was meant to be light weight and the “future”, but undoubtedly, due to key customers, the Notes client as we know it, java et al, will continue on.

Not surprising, the UI teams efforts, while clean, were reminded that the, ahem, elder employees, need more contrast schemes. It looks a little cleaner, some things are getting reworked and less “html section” like so the UI appears to all be one window.

Sametime Update

There will be a release, the Limited Use V10 version out soon. As you can see below some of what is included but the main item is Persistent Chat is part of it. 

We will have to wait until the end of the year for the next full version of Sametime which will also be numbered in synch, and possibly emerge, at the same time as Notes and Domino 11.

 

Unfortunately we did not get the previews of the revised templates coming but it sounds like at Engage, in May in Brussels, they may appear. 

The team was quite surprised but our enthusiasm to see/hear and give feedback about some core templates in need of modernization and not just UI.

At the end of the 2nd day, Volker Weber gave us a history of Lotus coupled with his take on the HCL/IBM deal and future. Always great to see him and spend some time talking with him.

Overall, what I heard and saw was impressive. Yes some items are off limits until the deal closes but you can see the fun is back in people's eyes, something we have been missing for quite a few years now. Now to see if the tide can turn and give Notes and Domino a Renaissance like when Steve Jobs came back to Apple.

Dear CXO, Can We Talk about IBM Domino 10?

Executive Summary (TL:DR Synopsis): You may, or may not, have heard about a 30 year old platform still managing applications and workflows inside the Fortune 100. Would you believe it comes from IBM, not that other blue company that still maintains a legacy 27+ year old office platform? If you have yet to bridge the Internet with your Enterprise, which is where the business benefits can be found, then you owe it to yourself to go listen to your IBM representatives.

Good Morning Sir or Madam CXO,

Once upon a time almost every company used a piece of software that was all encompassing so people who never knew what coding meant, were coding applications that revolutionized their business lines because they had all the pieces they needed right in front of them. 

Yet there is a need within every organization, including your own, where someone says, why can't we do X or how could we do X better?  And the person saying it is not a developer but one of your direct reports, or one of their reports far down on the chart. In some cases that idea reaches an internal business analyst and they may, or may not, know how to solve this or which platform to use for it. There may not be any thought given to how it will integrate to your existing applications, CRM or finance package. Suddenly the simple application becomes a massive project and gets shelved before even starting. It also may have become the project from hell that your predecessor was promised.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

IBM has embraced and extended their core collaboration software package, the venerable IBM Domino application which helped your parents be successful, and is still here to help you as well.

Other vendors will tell you they have a new solution, maybe they do, maybe they don't. 

Another blue logo company may tell you they have solved all the issues in their now legacy 17 year old application, but we know you are smarter than their little charade. 

The alphabet soup kids will promise a lot but so far their collaboration efforts are 0 for 2(G+, Wave) and their Enterprise experience is not up to your level of intricacy.

However, IBM understands your world, in many cases, they built your company for you, and is now putting all of that knowledge into their flagship product. If what's old is new again, then now is the time to revisit a product that provides:

• Applications that seamlessly interact with the Internet, but maintain your privacy and security while enhancing your productivity. 
• Sales people on the road that can visualize and pull their data overlaying a map to know who they can go see in their area.
• Workflows that interact between your CRM, your payroll and finance departments and your HR.
•  There is nothing worse than on boarding staff and telling them to go to 5 departments instead of one workflow app which provides most of what they need automatically.
• Write once code that runs offline, online, via a desktop client or a browser, tablet or phone.
• Reduces development time to days or weeks instead of months and gets apps in staff hands faster.
• More sales leads. Just kidding, it can't do everything for you. 
• However, it can automate your sales funnels, marketing efforts and help on the road sales teams engage in more clients than you do today. (Some assembly required, email me for details)
• Better meaning for your data.
• IBM Watson integration awaits with all your AI needs now easily accessible to anyone, anywhere you need it. Ask the right questions, or the wrong ones, your data will provide you insights.
• A solution that grows with you.
• If size matters, don't worry, you have a long way before you max out the systems, IBM leverages it inside for 300,000+ people worldwide 24x7x365. 

What holds you back from sneaking a peek at the imminently available IBM Domino 10? It is in beta now, over here and if you are lucky, you will be allowed access.

You can be a part of the new revolution, if you are ready, and willing, to work on your future, not repaint your past.

Finger Pointing? DDM to the Rescue

The Engage event has been going well and my session was this morning.
I wanted to make my slides available to everyone that needed it, especially the ServiceNow and Salesforce customers.

As always, feel free to ask me any questions.

In a later conversation today with the HCL team the recommendation is to go to newrelic.com and manage your reports and issues in a modern way that allows for tweets or IMs or however you want to be notified.

Pointing Fingers? DDM to the Rescue from Keith Brooks

Collaborate on a Boat! Come to Engage in Rotterdam With Me

The best way to start your summer vacation is to attend Theo's #1 European Lotus/ICS event. (Click on the picture to go to the website)

As the sign says, I will be speaking at Engage and I hope to see you there.

About my session:

ADM09 - "Pointing Fingers? DDM to the RescueWednesday, May 23 | 09:00 - 10:00 | B. Guadaloupe
Cloud Hybrid? Mixed domains? Gmail, Microsoft and Notes coexisting? Domino DDM (Domino Domain Monitoring) to the rescue. Ok, maybe not rescue, but at least you will know who is down and what service is downBEFORE your users. Old School gets a new lease on life, or for those who never use it, this is your chance to learn about it.

Look forward to seeing you there as well as numerous IBM Champions like myself that are presenting and attending.

Breaking the Unwritten Rules of IT for Your users

At Social Connections XIII this morning I gave my presentation on how to work with the unwritten IT rules.
Break the rules, tear down the barriers, ask more questions, ask for help.

For those who want the slides, here you go...

Breaking the Unwritten Rules to Help Your Users from Keith Brooks

A Beautiful Domino Environment

It is an incredible treasure trove of applications, planning, architecture and user attention that we all wish our companies would provide.

A true work of art, this is the environment I want to show everyone and be proud of that I was the admin, if I had built it. These days we rarely get to extend environments like the early days. Change management, mergers, fiefdoms, lack of training/knowledge and just fear of the unknown prevent us from helping customers sometimes.

Dozens of servers, dozens of application directories on each server, you name it they used it or tried it, sandbox apps, nifty 50, OpenNTF templates, apps even I have never seen used in the wild, and I have seen a lot, and have discs of misc. templates from books long gone to history.

Except, it is The Titanic of Domino environments.

The framework is all there, the structure too, sure it lost all the servers along the way as consolidation brought it to this point of life. It has been unearthed, by me, because it needs to get moved to a new physical server. The effort is not lost on me and I am in awe as I open apps that ran the IT department, handled changes and ID files and looks like a well maintained and curated environment with IT people that documented everything.

It is pure and regal just like it was when it ran this Enterprise's world. How would it have known that a merger or two would cause leaks in the infrastructure and the leadership to lose faith in the abilities to keep them running..

It could still get up and run today, bring everyone back, there is life here! I shouted in my head. But all I could do is be a voyeur and help it move to what may be the final resting place.

After all how long do they need this data?

Why would they no longer leverage these applications?

Sadly, it is not coming back to see the light of day, having been put down a few years ago and now sits as a read only backup documentation server.

Like the underwater footage of the Titanic where chandeliers, art, gold, dishes and windows live on and we can relive their beauty, so I sat in my remote desktop just amazed at the art in front of me that will never see the light of live data usage again.

So much awesomeness, so much sadness.

Where's Keith? Trip plans and my sessions at IBM Think

Where's Keith between March 15th and March 26th? 

IBM Think from Sunday the 18th thru Thursday the 22nd I will be at IBM Think.

Send me messages on Social Media, Twitter(@lotusevangelist) is preferable or Watson Workspace, but any one of numerous ways will work, if you want to meet me or have business to discuss with me like jobs, projects, training requests, competitive pitches coaching.

I will be flying to LAX via CDG on Wen the 14th Air France 10:20am if any of my European friends are on that very, very long flight let me know.

Hopping a flight from LAX to Vegas Saturday night because as you will see below I have a busy morning.

I will be speaking or guiding discussions as follows:

Sun, 18-Mar

10:35 AM - 10:55 AM 

9239A How to Engage More Customers and Potential Clients While at Think

MGM Grand Conference Center, Level 1 - Room 103

10:55 AM - 11:15 AM

9240A Birds of a Feather/Roundtable: Promoting IBM and Vanquishing the Competition

MGM Grand Conference Center, Level 1 - Room 103

Mon, 19-Mar
3:00 PM - 3:40 PM
Hone Your Communication Skills - Powerpoint and Presentation Skills, Intro to Body Language Workshop
At the Think Academy, located in Mandalay Bay, 2nd floor, Shoreline Ballroom

Wen, 21-Mar
12:30 PM -1:10 PM
Hosting a Champion Chat: So You Want to be an IBM Champion
Champion Corner Bayside D

Thu, 22-Mar

10:30 AM - 11:10 AM

2858A I'm a Lego Man Living in a Duplo World

Mandalay Bay South, Level 2 - Lagoon B

1:00 PM - 1:40 PM
Repeat Session: Hone Your Communication Skills - Powerpoint and Presentation Skills, Intro to Body Language Workshop
At the Think Academy, located in Mandalay Bay, 2nd floor, Shoreline Ballroom

Beyond that I would say look for me in my Champion gear but there will be over 200 IBM Champions walking around.

I will be taking the late flight to JFK on Thursday night and then a Sunday afternoon back to Israel direct from JFK should anyone be flying my way.

FudBuster Friday 2018 Edition: That GDPR = Dead Domino

"From the ashes we can build another day.."- from "Story in Your Eyes" by The Moody Blues

Every once in a while I feel the need to publish another FudBuster Friday post, yes it has been way too long but "fake news" makes these posts almost superfluous. I could write 10 a day and still never get them done.

Over the last few days some people I like, trust and learn from, were bothered by a "op-ed" type Press Release from the CEO of a company that obviously makes their money by moving IBM Domino shops to Microsoft.

Their own website even states in absolute terms "Our mission is to develop user-friendly, cost effective technology solutions to help companies escape the IBM Domino/Notes application landscape.:"

From their site I get the impression they have not been around for a long time but obviously are unhappy that people use Notes and Domino. This is their prerogative and in business there are many ways to make money. However, FUD ways are not funny, nor valid reasons to ever do something.

In this case they try to angle that the old solution is not up to par for the imminent on May 25, 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU. For a great article about it read this. 

GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. It also is applicable to US companies that STORE the data.

Taking a few items to task, let's start with 

"It is compelling because organisations are expected to create a single view of a customer – leaving data in old Notes databases is likely to render users non-compliant"

No explanation is provided and it is "just a fact". There is no requirement, that I found, requiring a single view of a customer. And even if there was, given Domino is a flat database solution, the data is sitting in one nsf although it may be called and referenced by others. Of course you may have data shared in various formats across your CRM, your SAP, your individual sales people as well. This would not change no matter what or how you store your data. What becomes incumbent on companies is the need to document their data workflows and processes for reporting breaches of the said data. 

Domino non-compliant? No way.

He then goes on to lay out a process of three steps that are required to help you meet GDPR requirements, namely: Discovery, Data Extraction and Archiving. In truth none of these steps do anything except pad a consultants pocket and sell, as we will see, many software licenses.

Discovery phase in which they inventory your Domino servers looking for applications. How exciting! our interns can and should do this for us if the built in tools of Domino can not.

Again, this has nothing to do with GDPR or Domino, it is just a normal project process. 

Data Extraction

"A key area of importance to the GDPR compliance directives is being able to get to all the data that is held on an individual so that, for example, a request to be forgotten is executed with a high degree of certainty. This means that getting data out of the Notes databases into an easily searched Relational Database is critical."

What? A did not go to B and definitely did not reach C in that sentence. If you already mapped out your data workflows and locations, then you would have a process in place to eliminate the data asked to be forgotten.

You do not need a relational database to do an index lookup, Excel does it quite well and so does your own internal search solution hopefully. If not, you may want  to invest in a corporate search appliance but this is still no reason to give up on Domino nor does it prove any non compliance. Just bad FUD.

The author then goes on to elaborate about how data could be dumped out of Domino into not one (MS SQL), not two (MS Dynamics), but three (Alfresco) different solutions and somehow this is a better idea? Imagine how many licenses and servers and billable hours this requires compared to your existing team looking at your data and mapping it out.

Archiving of data is always fun. those of you with 20 year old tapes of customer data, how will you rectify this? There is a serious business. This however is just bad rhetoric. Do you really need an all encompassing search solution? Perhaps, but if you have workflowed your data, you should know exactly where it resides and be able to easily identify what parts need to be marked/deleted.

Again, Domino is no different than any other database when it comes to finding your data.

The gist of the PR is a SQL server will give you better control, indexing, deletion of the data. No, it will not and no matter what database or solution you use if you do not document it or manage it properly you will face some huge fines. Any business no matter how small or large if you have personal/private data of EU members you will need to sit down and sort yourselves out.

In the end, no, moving to Microsoft SQL server will not be more compliant for GDPR than Domino.

You will have spent way too much money to move data from one solution to another for zero, I repeat zero reasons other than you were blindly following some entity because you were ignorant and uninformed!

I welcome feedback, further details which maybe I have neglected to research thoroughly enough or even an official statement from IBM or HCL that provides me with a reason to edit this post.

Domino 10, The Early Game is Afoot

Notes is dead they say.

Domino is passe.

Who uses this thing?

Why do you (meaning me) bother?

Yes it is a tough life one leads when they go against the grain.When you believe in something so strongly you pursue it until a better pivot comes along. So far nothing I have used outside of Salesforce makes me want to pivot away from ICS, but I always have a soft spot for CRM apps, see my history with SugarCRM.

IBM did a webinar yesterday and due to the holiday here I could not be on it live but I just finished the recorded version (only some slight redactions of a few screen shots) and want to report about it. You can watch/listen to it here.

Bob Schultz the recently crowned GM for IBM Watson Talent and Collaboration Solutions opened the call.

Bob then handed it over to Richard Jefts who is the GM/VP Collaborative Workflow Platforms for HCL and Andrew Manby Director of Offering Management for ICS. 

Jason Gary of the ICS internal Pink team, now with HCL, also snuck on the call and did a quick Node.js discussion and demo. Leaving Connections to work on Notes and Domino is a loss for the Connections team but a big win for the Domino one.

So what did they actually tell us?

I am skipping the dev items because I am not a developer and would not explain them well at all. Aside from the Node.js inclusion that will be built in, not bolted on, please go read some other blogs from my developer friends like Paul Withers and Hogne Pettersen and the Red Pill team.

The list is in no particular order includes the following and feel free to provide more details or comment:

• 256GB NSF sizes - Currently we have a 64GB limit so this is nice but why in a world of unlimited cloud storage and massive mail files is there even a limit of under 1TB? Performance and function. The larger it is the harder it is to maintain it properly and the resources to manage it efficeintly. My guess is IBM has some data to work from and notices database sizes are growing and this is an acceptable compromise.
• Leveraging Microsoft Word as an editor - Not sure I like this idea given every single version of Word not only handles regular text and rich text differently it also messes up HTML and XML and O365 is not exactly efficient especially when run from the Cloud. But I understand IBM's reasoning and understand the option should be available.
• Team Calendar Enhancements - They were kind of vague about what was new and it was a fast screenshot/demo. Presumably making it easier as the speakers said the loudest voice was to make functions easier to use.
• 3rd party invitations to a meeting - That you don't own which would be great instead of just forwarding an email or entry but adding someone to a meeting you don't own.
• Group forward mails - This we already had so I was not sure what was so new. Sometimes our own people don't even know the 1,001 things we can do with Notes and Domino. Anyone feel free to provide me some edit for this one.
• Scheduled email - All I can say is FINALLY! This has been one of the top things I always get from Outlook users that they need. Personally I could use it maybe once in a while so never a big need but i understand why people want it.
• iPad app is coming. - I know because I was on the beta until my iPad was no longer included in updates from Apple and thus I can not leverage it anymore. But I have grown apart from my iPad and so while this may be needed, it may have jumped the shark already.
• Version 11 and others in pipeline  - which means items they could not do for 10 or items which were questionable get pushed forward to what I hope internally the beta will be called Spinal Tap "it goes to 11" edition.
• NSF-2 - NSF is getting updates and the future of NoSQL looks to be in good hands.
• OAuth support via REST API - which will allow Domino to interact with so many apps and websites that will be exciting to see how this works out.
• Domino apps on the Cloud - is a needed service and sounded like it will be coming out.
• SAML support is being extended - Not much details provided yet, come to Think is the mantra for more information and SEE it in action.
• Elastic search - or just better, broader search is coming.
• Active Directory integration - continues because why should you run two different directories.
• Client AutoUpdate - Yes, been asking for this for years. Of course big customers with tweaked environments will turn this off, but for the rest of us out there just Thank the team. This presumes they do not just mean an update to SmartUpgrade and a real polling and downloading from a "store".
• Automated Database Repair - More proactive database monitoring and automated fixups or whatever goes a long way to letting Admins stop putting out fires and be more proactive in expanding their users worlds of collaboration.
• Docker - I am on the fence if this is really a genius idea or just another VM type option. But for companies who want it, it is coming. You can already make use of Domino and Docker in 9.0.1FP10.
• Destination Domino - SME and IBM Champions and IBMers will be more proactively writing useful and detailed information in what sounded like a newsletter or another DeveloperWorks community  for admins, developers, security people and business owners. As they said on the call communication is key and they have planned many routes to inform everyone about what is going on. 
• 3rd party mail integration - "At THINK" more will be known, shown, etc.. Being a mail person I am very interested in what they have in mind.
• Verse and Desktop client parallel development work - going on because large groups exist for both currently.

ETA for Domino 10? 2018 which is a vague way of saying 2nd half of the year.

SnTT - Pieces you may need for IBM Notes 901 FixPack 10 Interim Fix 1

In the evening, when the day is done...

I tried to upgrade my IBM Notes client to 901FP10IF1 from FP8.

And as luck would have it, you just.can't.do.it.

It breaks Sametime Embedded, it breaks the Connections plugins, it causes Milli Vanilli to win a Grammy. Okay, not everything can be blamed on the QA teams.

If you will be going down this path you will need the following, and Mac People there are updates for you as well.

These are on IBM.com Support/FixCentral which you now need your subscriptions up to date to download. Links will connect to IBM but you will need to login to download the files.

IBM Notes Fix Pack 10 Interim Fix 1

IBM Sametime 9011-ST-Client-FP-GSAI-AVHQ3A 

This Technote explains about the plugin failure you will receive when you install the FP10IF1 and includes the direct link to Fix central.

MAC clients? 

Notes_901IF14_MAC64_Standard

Otherwise known as 901SHF886.dmg

These Plugins are on the IBM Greenhouse site which was supposed to be sunset but seems to still be alive so move quickly. Links directly to the pages.

IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes

Version: 5.5 February 1, 2018: An updated image has been posted with the following changes:

• Support for IBM Notes 9.0.1 FP10 (on Windows)
• Miscellaneous defect and customer PMR fixes

IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows

Version 18.2 (February 2018) update:  The latest release introduces the following:​

• Miscellaneous defect and PMR fixes.

IBM Connections for Mac 

Version 18.2 (February 2018) update:  The latest release of the IBM Connections for Mac introduces the following:

• Miscellaneous defect and PMR fixes

PS - I am unable to reconnect my plugins to the IBM Cloud, stay tuned for further updates or let me know if you know how to fix it. To be fair it did not login before I upgraded either.

IBM Domino to Outlast Pokemon Go!

About a year ago I was at an IBM User Group conference in London, UK LUG in a Q and A session as part of the IBM Champions. We were asked to answer questions from the audience and one question irked me at the time and I gave an answer which a few people laughed at but I was serious.

Yes, I know, hard to believe, but it is true. Tweets never lie :-), I found a tweet from Rob Mason

Domino is cooler than Pokemon Go is my takeaway from the #ibm #champion session at #iconuk . Courtesy of @LotusEvangelist

— Rob Mason (@MackemBob) September 16, 2016

Pokemon is doing well, although nowhere like it was at its peak, lots of stats about Pokmeon Go! here.

IBM recently said that they are rethinking the "feature pack" naming/numbering system and go back to a brand name and number if reports from various events lately are true.

Thus IBM Domino 10 will be with us sometime in late 2018 which means support is good through 2022.

All hands up if they think Pokemon Go! will make it that far, let alone to 30+ years as a product?

I didn't think so.

IBM Domino still does so many things, all in one box, that no product today can even come close. Yes, you can recreate parts of it in many pieces, but is that what your IT shop really wants? No, they want a Cloud solution. IBM Domino is for those that want it on premises...but also in the cloud and to keep using their applications that run some impressive companies businesses.

"For IBM Notes/Domino 9.0, we have announced that product support will be extended through at least 2021, and extended support through at least 2024" - Ed Brill's blog post

And now with the HCL deal there is no end in sight. Sorry Pokemon Go! Hope someone visits you in the app museum.

יבם דומינו נוסע ליעד שאף תוכנה עוד לא הגיעה אליו

האם ישנה תוכנה שאינה מערכת הפעלה, ועדיין פועלת בכל פלטפורמה, יותר מ-30 שנה לאחר שהיא יצאה?

אם ידועה לך, אנא הודיע לי.

יבמ (חיים קודמים לוטוס Lotus) נוטס ודומינו(Notes and Domino) מתמשכים הרבה יותר מאשר ריי אוזי אי פעם חזה. ריי, אל תהסס למסור לי אם אני טועה. 

יבמ הודיע היום כי הפיתוח של הערות דומינו ימשיך ללא הגבלת זמן.

מובן שמי שקורא מאמר זה, אף פעם לא דמיין שזהיפסיק לפעול,  אם כי יש בהחלט מנהלים שונים ומתחרים שירצו שכך יקרה.  ובכל זאת, התוכנה חיה וקיימת , ובכיוון החדש היא תמשיך להפיץ שיתוף פעולה וזרימת עבודה בדרכים שאף מוצר אחר בשוק לא יכול לעשות היום.

בואו ילדים, צאו וכתבו מערכת טובה יותר לכל מטרה, יבמ מעיז אותכם, ולמרות זאת, עד עכשיו, אף אחד לא הצליח.

ועתה, כנראה שאף אחד לעולם לא יצטרך כי זה יכול פשוט לשרוד את כולנו.

"HCL also expanded its relationship with IBM to collaboration solutions, including Notes, Domino, Smart Cloud Notes, Verse and Sametime." - http://www.livemint.com/Companies/BpxtRX3Lvs7hJs1eKRdGlL/HCL-Technologies-Q2-net-profit-rises-86-to-Rs2188-crore.html

אפילו (Sametime) סאמטים מקבל חיים חדשים. אני תוהה אם הם יכולים עכשיו להחיות מחדש את Quickr. מותר לגבר לחלום, נכון?

אה ו- IBM מוציא את נוטס ודומינו גרסה עשר (10) במחצית השנייה של 2018.

במקרה ואתה באמת רוצה שהיישומים האלו לפעול בצורה שלא כדרכם, או לאלה ששונאים לתקן משהו שלא נמצא חן אצלך, יבמ מתכוון לארח אירוע אידיא ג'אם  בשם #Domino2525 שבו אתה תוכלו למסור רעיונות  משלך עבור המוצר, ומפת העתיד שלו. אפשר להירשם לאירוע כאן.

עסקת HCL אינו פתרון בלתי צפוי לחידה שהעליתי לפני יותר מ -9 שנים בפוסט הזה, גם אם זה בא מזווית אחרת.

אנחנו צועדים באומץ לאן שאף אחד עוד לא הגיע, למעט באז שנות-אור ( Buzz Lightyear) כי הוא הלך אל האינסוף... ומעבר לו.

Domino Voyages Where No Software Has Been Before

What software that is not an Operating System still runs on any platform, 30+ years after it came out?

Come up with some, let me know.

IBM (prior lifetime Lotus) Notes and Domino are going to go much further than Ray Ozzie ever envisioned. Ray, feel free to let me know otherwise.

IBM today announces that development of Notes and Domino will continue indefinitely.

I realize none of you reading this ever thought it would die, although certainly various executives and competitors wished it were so every year. And yet, it lives on and with this new direction will continue to spread collaboration and workflow in ways no other product on the market can do today.

Come on kids, go out and write a better all purpose system, IBM dares you and yet no one has to date.

And now, probably no one ever will need to because it may just out live us all.

"HCL also expanded its relationship with IBM to collaboration solutions, including Notes, Domino, Smart Cloud Notes, Verse and Sametime." - http://www.livemint.com/Companies/BpxtRX3Lvs7hJs1eKRdGlL/HCL-Technologies-Q2-net-profit-rises-86-to-Rs2188-crore.html

Even Sametime gets new life. I wonder if they can now resurrect Quickr. A man can dream can't he?

Oh and IBM is putting out Notes and Domino 10 in the second half of 2018.

And just in case you REALLY wanted these apps to do something they do not, or for the haters to fix something you feel is wrong, IBM will be having an Ideation Jam called #Domino2525 where you get to give your input for the future product road maps. Go register over here.

The HCL deal is not an unexpected solution to a conundrum that I had raised over 9 years ago in this post although from a different angle.

We are boldly going where no one has gone before except Buzz Lightyear because he went to infinity and beyond.

How much are your Domino Applications Worth? DAC Knows

Most of you reading this are my Yellowverse bubble, BPs, consultants, advisers, fellow IBM Champions and a few friends so this will not be new news to you.

To the few, the proud, the admins and executives who are blessing me with a few minutes of their time, this may come as huge news, or not.

You already moved your mail to the IBM SmartCloud Notes cloud mail, humor me for a minute even if you have not yet. You are sitting on a small server farm or VM landscape supporting your core, enterprise grade, money making, workflow functioning Domino applications.

Obviously because you did not like the idea of co-location or you would have done that at least 10 years ago.

Probably you never wanted your proprietary data to be residing permanently outside of your firewall and did not look into any hosting options, public or private, even if Prominic has been hosting Domino for decades?(I do not work for Prominic but have used their services over the years)

Officially you say you would never let your data outside your site....and then the CFO or CEO says kill the servers by Dec 31. What do you do?

Road Trip!

Yes your data is about to go on a one way trip. One way because who brings everything back in house once it is out? Do you have your post college married children living at home with you now? Don't answer that.

IBM has decided to help you and if you can meet the requirements, your applications will get the VIP treatment(you pay for it of course) and you get some benefit as well, like no more 3AM server down emergencies.

For $27 PER APPLICATION, IBM will host your app at the Domino Application on Cloud (DAC) server in a data center near you, well your country not city, in a Docker container with a Linux machine (I'd like to think there is a beautiful Z series doing this someplace) which means you get most of the comforts of home providing you meet some requirements as follows:

• The application can not be larger than 25GB (unknown if this includes the index or not)
• The app must start with the letter L
• Bring your existing IBM Domino license
• You must sign on for a year upfront (this isn't Burger King's "Have IT Your Way")
• Seems like you need a minimum of 10 applications although I am sure IBM would be happy to charge you $270/month for 1 application if that is what you really want. If you think about it, hosting your own server will cost at least that much once you figure in all your costs so it's a good deal?

Want the full details? Here you go the full slide deck: https://goo.gl/hDurDG


You get all the nice parts of an IBM Domino Utility server so NO mail functions. See above where I mentioned the mail in the cloud part.

So how much are your Domino applications worth? $324/yr/app seems ludicrously low to me. Your applications run your business and bring some serious value to you, don't belittle them.

However, you probably stopped asking for big budget money for your Enterprise solution years ago, so your boss thinks this is a steal. Which it is and if you act in October when it becomes available your local IBM rep or BP(ahem, ask me about it) will love you even more. 

PS - Just kidding about the app must start with the letter L, everyone knows it is the letter I

What is this Watson Workspace thing?

IBM in recent days has made a number of announcements, some of which are more public than others, today I want to discuss Watson Workspace (WW) and Watson Workspace Essentials (WWE).

As the name implies, it is an Instant Mesaging (IM) program that, hang on, that's not right. Let's back up a second.

Why the name Workspace? I have no idea, I thought it was a beta name. Seriously now, it is because the young generation of marketers were not born when us old people were using ICQ, AOL and other vintage messaging tools and they prefer the old school term of collaboration, so collaborative workspaces. Yes. I know IBM calls it a messaging app, semantics, semantics.

So Watson Workspace is an IM program, sorry, I mean a collaborative workspace in which your discussions can be analyzed and enhanced by the cognitive capabilities of Watson. and it is FREE!

Why would you want this? Some of you out there that do not have the FOMO (fear of missing out) problem can get an easy recap of those 100 messages about whether to call the next product a number or a verb and just tell you the outcome.

No, it will not automagically answer people that ask you something, but as bots expand and more developers get a hold of the code I believe this will come soon enough. Good thing too, as someone who sits 7 hours ahead of EST, by the time I read the messages the discussion is over, so an automatic bot would be nice.

But when you just want that executive summary, I know of no other IM, sorry collaborative messaging platform that provides this benefit. Leave me a comment if you do.

There is a mobile version and a windows desktop edition (64bit only, sorry tree huggers) in addition to a browser version. For all of you that think Slack is so unique, there is an IFTTT integration between WW and Slack assisting you to never leave your cocoon and can interact with your peers that are chasing that corner executive suite.

Speaking of executives, you enterprise workers will want need the Watson Workspace Essentials (costs money edition) so you get Single Sign On (SSO) and some control over the system.

Here is a quick breakdown of the differences:

WW is FREE, with 1GB of storage per user, no enterprise management and only an online support forum, and it is FREE!

WWE costs $6/month/user, provides 20GB storage per user, enterprise management and SSO integration and guest user management

Right now WW only speaks English, but within the next 60+/- days PFIGS will be available otherwise known as Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish.

Interested?  It's easy to get started with WW, just sign in (or register) with your IBMid to  https://workspace.ibm.com and you can be up and running in seconds. 

Go on, try it, you might like it. This is not your grandfather's IBM.

PS - This is why I don't write marketing copy for IBM,  they take everything way too seriously

SnTT - WildCard SSL Certs and Domino....needs 32bit Windows?

This post is for me, and you, to make life easy. 

Some of you out there are only now adding SSL certificates to your servers, I know because you are asking me to help you, and so I present today's Show n Tell Tuesday post.

There are some excellent SSL and Domino posts on this topic already from Gab Davis, Mats Ekman, and Sean Cull, IBM documentation is a bit lacking in this use case so I will not point you to it.
EDIT : Jared Roberts, also a fellow IBM Champion, wrote an excellent post on the wildcard and you should go use his, it is found here. (My blog post was written over a few months so I had missed Jared's post)

I used Gab's post a few times over the last few months and always in a situation where the customer had a stand-alone (individual server) SSL certificate and you can't mess it up, well you could typo the syntax, but her post is the easiest way to get this accomplished. Thank you, Gab!

However, a Wildcard SSL certificate is a little different and this is when I found Mat and Sean's post very helpful and I am taking from them to add my 2 cents.

Along the way of following their posts, I found that the IBM required tool only runs on a 32 bit Windows environment. Let's just say were it not for my TV PC, I would have to create a VM just to run this tool. 

You have been warned.

Everything else runs on 64 bit and you will need your Domino server and your Admin Client accessible. 
EDIT from Chuck's Comment below: You should be using at least a 9.0.1FP6 Notes client, not necessarily an Admin client but you may find it easier to do so.

This is how we include a wildcard 4096 bit cert issued from a registrar with a .PFX and .CSR file into Domino. (Always make sure to get the password used for the key, you WILL need it.)

What do you do with a .PFX file? You convert it into a .PEM file using OpenSSL.
EDITED FEB 9, 2022 after prior update of Nov 30, 2017 NOTE: If you have a .pfx file, an IBM HCL technote makes this much easier than the steps below. https://support.hcltechsw.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0029841 but I will leave it all for those who want to know more. Thanks Ted H. for the link.

What? Why? Never mind that now, but the steps to do the magic are below:

Steps:
1) Download the OpenSSL software (taken from Mat's post)
Homepage: https://www.openssl.org/source/
Easy precompiled: https://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html
The one Mat used: https://slproweb.com/download/Win64OpenSSL_Light-1_1_0g.exe
NOTE: These are direct links, so if it doesn't work, go to https://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html for 32 and 64 bit.

2) Download the KYRTool (again taken from Mat's Post)
Fixcentral short: http://ibm.co/1SAYX5E
Fixcentral long: http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/swg/selectFixes?parent=ibm%7ELotus&product=ibm/Lotus/Lotus+Domino&release=9.0.1.2&platform=All&function=fixId&fixids=KYRTool_9

3) Install the OpenSSL into its own directory (include the binaries)

4) Go to C:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl then run the openssl to get the command window you need so you can type in. (This took me a while to figure out, you are welcome):

5) this is all one line pkcs12 -in C:\location of mypfxfiles\wildcard_company_com.pfx -out  c:\somelocation\wildcard_cmpany_com.pem -nodes -chain

Remember, Domino requires both the .KYR file and the .STH files to be placed inside the \Domino\data directory.

As always have fun, ask for help when you need it and don't give up, as you can see, many of us have been in your shoes before.