One of the things heard this morning at SugarCon was that IBM is working on rolling out SugarCRM to the company.
This is a huge boost of course for SugarCRM and for IBM and it's sales teams and Business Partners. In doing so, IBM will be putting aside Siebel.
SugarCRM which is looking to grow their Enterprise business, needs this boost. In many ways it brings validity to what many of us have known for years. Mainly that older solutions are cumbersome, expensive and they preclude others from excelling at their jobs.
With this roll out there are integration points in place today for IBM SmartCloud Engage (previously LotusLive Engage) and now there will be IBM Connections integration. More on this topic coming in a different blog post.
If you had been at the Partner day or the Keynote this morning, you may have felt, as I did, that substituting Lotusphere/IBM for Sugarcon/SugarCRM you may think you were in Orlando. Even the music/videos out front had a similar sound/feel. so naturally I feel at home. Just missing my yellowverse friends.
But as I meet new friends, customers and partners, I am struck by the feeling of deja vu. I have seen this similar growth and plans way back in R4 of Lotus Notes. yes prior to IBM buying Lotus, the company was also trying to break into the Enterprise levels. And IBM helped them get there in many ways.
Now SugarCRM is leaning on IBM to help guide the future, make inroads into bigger clients and integrate with their existing systems and extend out to newer ones. It is a good working relationship that can only help SugarCRM. But I wonder what IBM will get from this.
Back in R4 time, email was just coming out and it was the right time, right product. Now, CRM is not new nor is SugarCRM by far the only player out there, though they are the 3rd largest CRM vendor out there with over 1 million active users, 80,000+ organizations use it and 30,000 registered developers.
Their view, reiterated by Larry Augustin, CEO and Clint Oram, CTO of SugarCRM, is the USER is what is most important. Again, just like Lotus Notes wanted to help the user do more, share more and grow more. It's a great parallel.
Sugarcon grows each year and next year will be in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want to be part of this great run, join now, try it out. You can download the mostly full installation, called Community Edition, and try it on your own.LAMP or Windows your choice. Go get it from www.sugarcrm.com
If we, as partners, can leverage SugarCRM to augment our IBM solutions it may help IBM Connections grow similarly to how Lotus Notes grew years ago.
My session tomorrow discusses this and more from a practical angle, not a sales/marketing pitch. looking forward to this future and greater information to be coming from this relationship.
Curbing your social media habits once a week
Tue, Jun 11th 2013 1:10p Keith Brooks Imagine
you are on an island in the Caribbean, cold drink in hand, sun shining
down on you, and your family and friends are with you just hanging out
or walking around the island. Sounds nice, doesn't it? No phones in
sight, no TV, no car—just you, sand and the sounds of the waves crashing
on the beach.
How
long could you go before you had to whip out your phone or laptop to
get a picture, post to Facebook or answer some office emails? These
days, not very long it seems. Based on t [read] Keywords: connections
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Backing Up Sametime Buddy and SUT Phone Lists
Thu, May 30th 2013 9:20a Keith Brooks Did you ever start to work on something only to be deeply involved when someone comes over and asks what you are doing?
You respond and they look quizzically at you and ask why did you not just do X?
X of course is right under your nose and would be obvious to anyone else, except you because you were so involved in your project.
So I found myself when someone screamed about losing their Sametime buddy list. Sure there is a menu item to import/export your lists but you know, how many peo [read] Keywords: sametime
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R.I.P. Lotus Organizer+
Mon, May 20th 2013 7:00a Keith Brooks Sad to see and hear that the end of the line, officially, is coming to Lotus Organizer, Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Smartsuite itself on June 11, 2013 with support ending September 30, 2014.
Organizer was so far ahead of us when it came out, easy links to guide you directions, call from a contact and straight to a web site with one link, an awesome calendar and scheduling tool, and it connected with Lotus Notes and some people still leverage it that way.
All from one UI! I can't get anything to [read] Keywords: ibm
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The Art of Troubleshooting...The Video
Tue, May 7th 2013 1:00p Keith Brooks Live from IBM Impact in Las Vegas this was recorded April 30, 2013.
If you want the slides, they are here.
Thank you to Ryan for setting the Ignite talks up and Daphne for letting me know about it.
It was fun, 20 slides that automatically roll over every 15 seconds for a 5 minute talk. [read] Keywords: ibm
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What if Darth Vader won?
Sat, May 4th 2013 9:00p Keith Brooks May the Fourth Be with You!
Ever wonder what it would be like if Darth Vader won?
Could Darth Vader have won instead of the Rebels? Could it be that a strong network of Sith Lords could control the masses through social media efforts using The Force? These may be strong words, young Padawan.
There is an amusing Twitter account I follow called @DeathStarPR that brings my point forward. What if social media was used as an insidious effort to gain the upper hand against the Rebels? W [read] Keywords: connections
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I'm an IBM Champion Video
Wed, May 1st 2013 2:20p Keith Brooks The video from the IBM Impact keynote this morning that has all of the IBM Websphere Champions who could make it to the video shoot.
See me and my friends do a "I'm an IBMer" type commercial.
Thanks to Daphne and Justin for editing and making it all happen. [read] Keywords: ibm
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Day 2 of Impact 2013
Wed, May 1st 2013 10:40a Keith Brooks So what did I do on Day 2 of Impact? Today was The World in Motion.
Business calls most of the morning, bad wifi upstairs, bad wifi in OGS and the exhibit hall. A frustrating problem because if you needed 30,000 IP addresses or so, what would you do?
Duh, grab a Z series! Okay not exactly but it is a problem which should have been addressed Sunday.
Which brings me to what I did Tuesday, meetings, interviews, an ignite speech and a session I did with 3 other IBM Champions and a night cap [read] Keywords: ibm
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My Impact Ignite Slides "The Art of Troubleshooting"
Tue, Apr 30th 2013 3:10p Keith Brooks I gave my ignite talk today and when the video or you tube is released will post it as well.
Here are the slides from slideshare.
The Art of Troubleshooting from Keith Brooks [read] Keywords:
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Opening Day...of Impact 2013
Tue, Apr 30th 2013 11:40a Keith Brooks Today started out like every other day, you know phone ringing at 5am and 6 and 7. Went to meet frineds for breakfast and then went over to the OGS where Champions had prime real estate. 4th row center.
Today was Business in Motion day.
Opening was a drum set and horn section that were quite good and then the star attraction a white Ford took the stage and proceeded to talk to us all.
Just kidding, the car said nothing, didn't even start, but Robert Leblanc came out along with a Ford exe [read] Keywords: ibm
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