Back in my Lotus Foundations days, I always recommended my business partners to try out SugarCRM to manage their day to day sales and customer management. I loved the functionality, price (starting from FREE), and being able to scale it according to the organizations’ needs.

Today, IBM announced partnerships with Ariba and SugarCRM to help clients take advantage of social commerce and CRM in the cloud.  We also announced the widespread adoption of LotusLive with a whole range of new clients benefiting from IBM’s cloud initiatives.

You can read more about both here.

And based on a survey IBM conducted in the mid-market recently, there’s growing adoption of cloud computing among midsize firms, with two-thirds either planning or currently deploying cloud-based technologies to improve IT systems while lowering their overall costs.

Adoption of cloud computing is on the rise. Recent IDC research shows that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $44.2 billion by 2013. With this increased interest and adoption, businesses across the world are embracing IBM’s public cloud services for easy-to-use collaboration tools to connect with colleagues, partners and suppliers quickly.

Additionally, according to a recent IBM survey of more than 2,000 midsize companies, there’s growing adoption of cloud computing among midsize firms, with two-thirds either planning or currently deploying cloud-based technologies to improve IT systems management while lowering costs.

Check out the video below to learn more about how Lotus and SugarCRM are bringing customer relationship management to the cloud.

Part 1: MS-FUD Version 5 Fixpack 8 Service Pack 16 Security Patch 34.7

One of the most irrational debates in IT these days is the inbox to inbox migration battle, aka as Notes vs Exchange. There is no point in migration from one mail system to another. Really. It’s all the same. Migration just cost money – lots of it – effort and the end result is … well … erm … just another inbox. Unfortunately quite a few of our customers find themselves in this situation swayed by clever and well funded Microsoft FUD. FUD means ‘Fear Uncertainty & Doubt’ – a trusted marketing ploy. Granted, IBM does not necessarily do everything it can to dismiss the FUD Microsoft is disseminating. A good example of MS-FUD Version 5 Fixpack 8 Service Pack 16 Security Patch 34.7 can be found here; www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/notes.aspx.

Innovate, Collaborate, Define something different. Have you always wanted to develop something different? Something better. If you have a vision for our planet and want to change the way we work, this tweet-up is for you.

We will focus on development topics, social software, social networking, analytics and product demos.

P.S. DeveloperWorks is the largest technical social network in the world!

Meet and network with other smart minds changing the world. From Business Partners to Developers to even the Marketing and Strategy folks. From Java to DB2.

Here’s the Plancast Link: http://plancast.com/p/2fu4

1001 E. Hillsdale Blvd., 4th Floor, Titan Conference Room, Foster City, CA
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

As part of my new role (which I will talk about in the coming few weeks), I am focusing more on the developers — specifically our Lotus ones. We have been listening to the community and have been able to setup the first in FREE Worldwide Lotus Developer Summit series at the various IBM Innovation Centers through out the world.

Learn about the latest application developer advancements that will help extend your skills and expertise associated to designing and deploying Domino based applications.  Join our workshops and have an opportunity to learn:

• about XPages and how it provides new advantages for your applications.
• about composite applications and how they run in the Notes client.
• how to extend the Eclipse RCP based Lotus Notes client using plugins.
• a step by step walk through of how to build a Lotus Domino Web application using Lotus Domino Designer 8.5.1.

As again, there is no charge to attend and events are hosted at our IBM Innovation Centers near you.

RSVP today—space is definitely limited to the first 24-25 folks per class. To reserve a spot, please register by clicking here.

Let me take this opportunity to clarify the differences and do some preaching on the ‘experience’ and how it dictates everything your business revolves around.

I’ve been very impressed and humbled by the response to our social media aggregator which was launched on Sept 10th to facitlitate the social media around the Customer Experience Suite launch.
As someone who worked really closely on the project, I can tell you that I would love to say that it’s part of Northstar but it really is not. It might hint at what we envision the future of the web to be but it certainly is not the Project Northstar.

It is a social media aggregator which connected all the loose ‘social’ pieces together. From twitter to flickr to blogs to livestreams. As someone who has been working with the web since 1996 (with my startup), I can assure you that web has always been social. People have used the internet to communicate since it’s conception. However, from marketing perspective, we (for the most part) have rarely used to communicate and engage with our audience.

This social media aggregator was infact an engagement tool developed to connect the community with each other. Not us, but you with your peers. Indirectly, if you like us for that, then it’s our benefit as well. That’s what defines experience. A good lasting experience.

US Tennis Association is an IBM Web Experience software client and a panel participant at IBM’s Reinventing Relationship event in NY City today Sept. 16.

IBM Project Northstar vs. IBM Customer Experience Suite

IBM Customer Experience suite is the first in the series that define the Northstar vision. It’s a stage 1 of a customer offering which is part of Project Northstar introduced earlier this year. We will have more offerings as part of this vision including new services, additional software capabilities and more. Just watch this space closely. And I mean closely.

IBM is going after a large and emerging market that believes in providing a lasting experience to their customers. In fact, providing such an exceptional experience that customer does not even bother looking for the competition.

Unlike before, rather than customers having to stich together all the capabilities needed to deliver an exceptional web experience, we are providing customers with the core foundation for them to start with providing a personalized experience. In fact, it can build upon to provide more specific functionality such as commerce, predictive (SPSS!) and Web (CoreMetrics) analytics, BI (Cognos) etc.

Project Northstar defines a vision that believes in providing the providing the next generation of digital presence. From mobile to commerce to enablement to analytics to make it happen.

Specifics around IBM Customer Experience Suite

There are four main parts of the Customer Experience Suite:

In terms of mobile, this is the most attractive part for me: the Mobile Portal Accelator can support 7,000 different device types.

What about Project Vulcan?

Project Vulcan defines the vision of a collaborative work space. Northstar on the other hand defines the offerings, services, vision, consultative offerings that can be applied  and directed to internally and externally facing requirements of the business enterprises. The Customer Experience Suite defines the ‘web’ part of that vision.

After all, the best web experiences make all users feel like the experience was designed for them. It brings organizations come closer to their customers.

Hope this helps. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask here.

As an organization, how do you ensure that you are as competitive as the new lean start-up? How do you remain relevant? How do you ensure that you are providing what customers of tomorrow will seek?

It will only come when organizations change the way they have worked for the past 20+ years. Information is power and it allowed you to rise to the top.  You kept the do-ers on the factory line and managed them from the top. Information remained at the top — with the management.

However, that begs us to question — what happens when senior management is out of touch with the reality and decisions are made by HIPPOs? Seth Godin asked the same very question today in his post.

A forty-year old internet executive who has been running his company for decades misses one new trend after another, because he’s still living in 1998.

One thing that happens to management when they get senior is that they get stuck. (As we have seen, senior isn’t about old, it’s about how long you’ve been there).

If you’ve been doing it forever, you discover (but may not realize) that the things that got you this power are no longer dependable.

Reliance on the tried and true can backfire (Rupert keeps missing one opportunity after another, and keeps misunderstanding the medium he works in).

“Arthur C. Clarke’s lesser known three laws:  “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.”

However, as many experts have already mentioned, the current “factory” business  models don’t work. They are developed to be replicate-able and easily deployable and remain effective it does not ensure that you remain the most innovative nor competitive. Heck, its replicate-able for a reason and can be duplicated by your competition as well. So, how do we bring value into our ecosystem? In our client’s ecosystem?

So how do we ensure that we are able to tap into our experts that work for us — the folks who get it, the folks connect with their customers, the folks who are passionate and hungry for change? How does an executive, a leader, figures out what works and what doesn’t?

How do you ensure that your team is able to collaborate and share information effectively? Remember, information is power. But it’s useless if its contained or hoarded. Social Software, Enterprise 2.0 movement, Expert Locater program, and many other similar ‘collaboration/change’ management programs are being discussed at various levels of the organizations to solve this problem.

IBM recently released an article that describes the need for change and I was interviewed on social ‘biz’ models. Check out the IDC report results and Social Software article here.

Special thanks to Mark Miller and Marjorie Madfis for their insights and a wonderful ‘think-tank’ like discussion.

Announcing today and starting at just $5 per user per month, LotusLive Notes joins the www.lotuslive.com online (cloud) collaboration suite, providing a single point of access to e-mail, calendaring and contacts.

In addition, IBM today also announced the availability of a new suite of email and social networking in the cloud. Starting at $10 per user per month, the new bundle provides enterprise-class email with LotusLive Notes bundled with LotusLive Engage Web conferencing, social networking and file store and share services that simplify and improve daily business interactions with colleagues, customers and ofcourse partners.

Check out the pricing and other details here. Here’s Ed Brill’s detailed review of Lotuslive Notes.