IBM's Collaboration Summit, from CNNmoney.com

IBM Collaboration Summit to Highlight Advances in Technology and Business

September 18, 2007: 12:30 PM EST

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a class of new technologies to move collaboration forward in a Web 2.0 world at the IBM Collaboration Summit at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

IBM's ongoing investments in collaboration technology have resulted in the richest and broadest collection of communications, collaboration and content services, connecting people to people and people to business processes and information in a standards-based environment that runs on a multitude of devices.

"Business leaders are capitalizing on the convergence of collaboration, information and business processes," said Mike Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "Coupled with industry adoption of open standards, this represents an historic opportunity to redefine how people work together in a Web 2.0 world. The primacy of email has passed. The new definition of collaboration is access to the right people and the right information at the right time -- the linked value of all the existing expertise for any topic or project."

IBM's collaboration software portfolio has been transformed in 2007 with Web 2.0, social networking and unified communications capabilities. IBM is expanding the portfolio further with several new products and services:

--  Hosted Lotus Notes: Lotus Notes is now available via enterprise-level
 application hosting. This new service offering provides Lotus Notes and
 Domino customers with a hosted and managed environment for their mail and
 collaborative applications, helping them improve the performance of their
 messaging environments while enhancing efficiency and productivity. By
 delegating the complex management of mail and collaboration tools,
 Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes can help clients tackle the
 integration of their entire email solutions. This includes not just email,
 but ever-expanding collaboration capabilities all within a security-rich,
 advanced hosting environment.  Since clients pay as they go for what they
 need, they are able to reduce up-front project and infrastructure costs,
 speeding returns on investment.  Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes
 currently supports Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickplace, and Lotus Quickr. IBM
 currently plans to extend Applictions on Demand to other Lotus
 collaboration products over time.
--  Mobile Support for Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino Web Access: IBM is
 announcing Lotus Notes Traveler, a new client for Lotus Notes and Domino
 8.0.1 currently scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2008. The
 new Lotus Notes Traveler will provide out-of-the-box, mobile support for
 Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access users, enabling access to Lotus Domino
 mail from Microsoft Windows mobile devices.  As currently planned, Lotus
 Notes Traveler will provide automatic, real-time replication of email,
 including attachments, calendar, address book, journal and to-do's, and
 will work over all wired and wireless connections.
--  IBM Lotus Quickr Content Integrator:  A new companion product to Lotus
 Quickr, the Lotus Quickr Content Integrator will provide an intuitive, self-
 service environment for content sharing and collaboration.  Designed for
 mass movement of documents from server to server, the Lotus Quickr Content
 Integrator can be used by administrators to import content from Lotus
 Domino Document Manager Libraries, Lotus Domino teamrooms, Microsoft
 Outlook public folders, and Microsoft SharePoint sites into Lotus Quickr
 services for Domino.
--  Lotus Quickr connectors for Lotus Notes 8 and Microsoft Outlook:
 Quickr connectors for Lotus Notes 8 and Microsoft Outlook will allow team
 members to save attachments into team workspaces, replace attachments with
 shared links, and use the collaborative content services of Lotus Quickr
 software directly in Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook clients. With drag
 and drop support, the Lotus Quickr connectors for Lotus Notes and Outlook
 will make it easy to move attachments directly into Lotus Quickr folders,
 so users can reduce the size of their mail files, enable access to the
 latest document version and get new team members up to speed quickly.
--  IBM Lotus Forms 3.0:  This major upgrade to IBM's electronic forms
 product uses open-standards based technology to make it easy for customers
 to integrate data across the enterprise and with existing IT systems.
 Customers can now extend business processes outside the firewall by
 offering their customers the ability to create, fill out, sign and submit
 forms data via a Web browser without downloading additional software.
--  Accelerators for IBM Websphere Portal: WebSphere Portal customers now
 have simple tools from within a company's website to create, connect and
 share content and gain access to community resources and contacts through
 professional networking tools.  The Collaboration accelerator uses Lotus
 Quickr, Lotus Sametime and Lotus Connections software optimized for the
 Web. The Content accelerator enables customers to easily build and manage
 web sites, intranets, extranets, and portals with features from IBM
 Workplace Web Content Management software.
 

IBM market research shows key work-style trends are reshaping the traditional office worker environment. The consumer and enterprise worlds are merging, while the technology-savvy generation entering the workforce is accustomed to the immediacy of gaming, instant messaging and social networking. As electronic bandwidth increases, content is represented in richer forms of digital media that can be combined or "mashed up" into situational applications to accomplish very specific tasks. A proliferation of new workers -- predisposed to playing and working with others in an online world -- are forming professional and social communities both within and beyond their companies' firewalls, collaborating in a multitude of new ways.

The Collaboration Summit is being attended by more than 300 organizations, including State Street Corp, The Federal Aviation Administration, Novell and Nokia -- that are pioneering innovative current and next generation collaboration software. Technology leaders showcasing new collaboration technologies include Ascendant Technology, Avaya, Axceler, Binary Tree, CGS, Gemini, Genius Inside, Innovative Ideas Unlimited, JustSystems Corp., McAfee, MetaLogic, Motorola, Perficient, Permessa, RIM, SCS, Sybase, Synaptris, Vamosa, VSS, and Workgroup Connections, among others.

For more information on IBM's collaboration portfolio: www.ibm.com/lotus

IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Domino, QuickPlace, Quickr, Sametime WebSphere and Workplace are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

Add to Digg Bookmark with del.icio.us Add to Newsvine

Contact:
Mike Azzi
IBM Communications
+1-914-766-1561
+1-203-515-6324
azzi@us.ibm.com 

Forward/Share This Article With Colleagues And Social Media:

IBM's Collaboration Summit, from CNNmoney.com

Convergence Happens Because WE Make it Happen!

There seem to be several groups that want the same thing...convergence of technology over the internet that will support more efficient and meaningful online (and offline) networking.

So why aren't these groups collaborating? Doesn't that make the most sense?

The good news is that the technology is already here! We (as a human society) have everything we need to create open standards which will facilitate a safe and secure means of entering our profile data in ONE PLACE. It won't matter if you're on Facebook or MySpace or Friendster or LinkedIn or anything else out there - THEY ARE JUST FLAVORS OF THE MONTH...YOU'RE NOT!

So what's missing?

Structure, standards and agreement

A few months ago we started a non-profit trade association, The Relationship Networking Industry Association (RNIA) - www.RNIA.org to facilitate a seamlessly-connected Relationship Economy by working with its members to develop such standards as well as the educational initiatives and accreditation processes to support them.

The Relationship Networking Industry (social + business networking) is a Multi-Billion dollar industry. If you want to get involved and make a true difference, please check us out.

www.RNIA.org

Forward/Share This Article With Colleagues And Social Media:

Convergence Happens Because WE Make it Happen!

Nokia: Oy Vey!, from A Media Circus

As Apple continues to conquer the digital download market, the threat of Apple achieving the same status in the mobile arena is weighing heavily upon the mobile industry. Apple’s potential stronghold in the mobile industry is subsequently posing a threat to various related industries. Entertainment and gaming are two industries becoming more inextricably linked to the mobile devices than ever before, and if Apple gains enough control over the handset, they will inevitably gain control over the things that run on the handset.

In response to Apple’s mobile play, Nokia issued a series of press releases announcing various devices and services for the mobile consumer.

Ovi and Content Convergence

The idea of content convergence is often mistaken. I often make reference to Henry Jenkins’ notion of The Black Box Fallacy which refers to how people tend to think, one day all of our media will be contained in one unit. This will most likely not be the case (can you imagine carrying around a cable box all day ).

The reality is that we will have many devices for different purposes (the bedroom, the car, personal devices) but the content will be interoperable across a variety of devices. (For example, Facebook online will contain the same information as the Facebook that is accessed via a mobile phone, however the interface will be appropriated for your phone, taking into account the time and place that one uses their phone).

The diagram above is a model of how content convergence/hardware divergence works.

As usual I digress, back to Ovi

Ovi is the name of Nokia’s new internet services brand. Ovi is Finnish for “door”. The metaphor here is apparent; Ovi is the door to your all of your digital content and your social network. Ovi will also act as a door to two of their other new services, The Nokia Music Store (a platform that rivals iTunes) and N-Gage, Nokia’s mobile gaming service.

Incidentally, I love the copy on the site that refers to N-Gage:

“Keep the action going while you’re on the go with the power of N-Gage”

This line furthers the notion that the gaming does not stop when you turn the console off. The convergent nature of emerging platforms is made for gamers on the go.

The Nokia Music Store

I got an iPhone about a month ago and the one thing I cannot do with it that I want to do (besides cut and paste) is download music on the spot. It seems like a no-brainer, right?

"The Nokia Music Store brings together a powerful combination of great music and great devices in an easy to use way. You can select from a huge range of music, including local music from your country, and download it directly to your Nokia device," say’s Tommi Mustonen, the head of Nokia’s music activities.

This is a big step.

Payment can be made by a variety of methods including paypal. This is certainly a big step as mobile commerce becomes more of a reality. There is another point in the release that I thought was very compelling,

…the Nokia Music Store aims to provide more locally relevant music than any other digital music store. If you want to see what others are enjoying, the Nokia Music Store provides a dynamic recommendations engine as well as genre-based instant playlists.

The one drawback to all this (for me) is that there was no mention of a US release date, however the music store will be opening across key European markets this fall with additional stores in Europe and Asia opening over the coming months.

Forward/Share This Article With Colleagues And Social Media:

Nokia: Oy Vey!, from A Media Circus