The Sametime Blog is Moving...
Thu, Oct 29th 2009 12:46p John Del Pizzo Come visit us at our new home, the Sametime Blog on Lotus Connections. In the spirit of "eating our own cooking", IBM has been using our very successful social software platform -- Lotus Connections -- for our own blogging activities. So we're moving the Sametime Blog to that new platform. We'd like to thank our longtime partners, the PSC Group, for hosting this blog. John Head and crew have been wonderful to work with and PSC is a first class organization. This site will remain active f [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
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blogging
social software
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The Sametime Blog is Moving....
Wed, Oct 28th 2009 11:05p John Del Pizzo Come visit us at our new home, the Sametime Blog on Lotus Connections. We'd like to thank our longtime partners, the PSC Group, for hosting this blog. John Head and crew have been wonderful to work with and PSC is a first class organization. Unfortunately, we received word from corporate that any "official" product management blog had to be on IBM owned systems. Try as we might, there was no avoiding it. This site will remain active for a few months and then theSametimeblog.com will redi [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
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Sametime Quick Tip: Scrub your contact list
Mon, Oct 12th 2009 8:45p John Del Pizzo Is your contact list an unwieldy collection of names from projects and roles long completed? Are you constantly bumping into your company's limit on the number of contacts you can have in your list? Does the thought of getting organized scare you? If so, then this tip is for you. Sametime has a little known feature in the Tools Menu called, "Clean Contact List....". It presents you with a list of your contacts and the date you last interacted with them. You can sort the list by contact nam [read] Keywords: sametime
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INTEGRASYS hosting UC2 event on Oct 22nd
Tue, Oct 6th 2009 8:46p John Del Pizzo This just in from our friends at INTEGRASYS:IBM Unified Communications & Collaboration Event A Showcase of IBM and ISCOORD solutions October 22nd, 2009 INTEGRASYS is excited to sponsor and announce its upcoming "IBM Unified Communications & Collaboration" event on October 22nd, 2009 at the Houston Downtown Aquarium. We are delighted to invite you and your colleagues to this event to showcase the best of breed solutions to accelerate your UC adoption. Lotus knows you're tr [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
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unified communications
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iscoord launches new is-phone integrated softphone
Fri, Oct 2nd 2009 10:46a John Del Pizzo Our friends at iscoord forwarded me this announcement:The new, highly improved is-phone softphone for IBM Unified Communications is now available for downloading! Highlights - Enhanced audio/video call/conferencing, device handling/control, road warrior features - GNU/Linux support (Mac available November 2009) - Hook support for GN Netcom/Jabra and Plantronics - Toolkit with APIs (available end of October 2009) - Multilingual (Dutch, English, French, German) - Support of multiple SIP [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
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linux
mac
unified communications
vista
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Cisco migrates to their own product
Wed, Sep 30th 2009 8:06p John Del Pizzo IBM'ers are a sensitive lot and a number have taken notice of the tweets coming from Cisco (and others) that Cisco is turning off Sametime tomorrow. To which I reply with a resounding... "So what?”. They acquired Jabber over a year ago to replace/augment their own presence & IM capabilities and compete with Sametime. Webex Connect/Jabber could be the worst thing since Microsoft Vista... but I'd still expect them to use it. It is theirs. [read] Keywords: ibm
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Sametime Quick Tip: Installing Plug-ins
Wed, Sep 23rd 2009 9:26a John Del Pizzo One of the great things about Sametime is that you can use the Eclipse-based plug-in model to integrate new functionality. When done right, this puts the information and people you need at your fingertips when you need them. For example, Genesys's UC Connect allows employees outside the call center to update customer records, add interaction notes and more, right from Sametime. They don't have to learn how to use (yet) another tool. Meanwhile, customers get better service because the call center [read] Keywords: admin
agent
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ibm
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New Webcast on UC from Bruce Morse
Tue, Sep 22nd 2009 5:09p John Del Pizzo New Webcast: Get Smart with Hot Technologies, Cool Solutions: Unified Communications and Collaboration Speaker: Bruce Morse, Vice President, Unified Communications Software, Lotus Software Companies are finding that unifying telephone communications with real-time collaboration tools, and integrating these new communications capabilities into business processes can shorten cycle times and time to market. From instant messaging to e-mail, and from data access to enterprise applications, this webi [read] Keywords: collaboration
forms
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applications
enterprise
instant messaging
security
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Lotus knows you’re trying to reach Jane, not her phone number
Tue, Sep 22nd 2009 1:06p Jacques Pavlenyi As we've posted about previously, the Lotus Brand has kicked off a major marketing campaign, Lotus Knows, to show how Lotus technologies are helping people work smarter. This is especially important for the Sametime community as one of the things we've heard from many of you is that IBM needs to do a better job of (a) showing the Lotus Brand is alive and kickin' and (b) that Lotus is so much more than just Notes/Domino technologies. Hopefully this effort will help answer some of those concerns [read] Keywords: domino
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Lotus Leadership Alliance
Mon, Sep 21st 2009 4:46p John Del Pizzo This week, most of the Sametime product management team is in Boston for the Lotus Leadership Alliance meeting. "LoLA" brings together many of our customer and partner councils, giving them the opportunity to provide direct input into the coming year's product and marketing plans. Personally, I enjoy LoLA because it runs counter to all the stereotypes that surround IBM. Things like: we only travel in packs of 5 or more and we live to hear ourselves talk. At Lola, our job is to listen and learn. [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
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Sametime Quick Tip: Displaying the local time in your Business Card
Thu, Sep 10th 2009 2:27p John Del Pizzo Did you know that Samtime can display your local time in your business card? For example: This can be a great help to teams operating on a global basis or doing extensive travel. To turn this, go to Sametime Preferences -> Geographic Location and select the appropriate time zone for that location from the pop up menu. Of course, as you move, Sametime will recognize a previously visited location and load the time zone setting for you. (Special thanks to Kim Artlip for the recomm [read] Keywords: sametime
New UC ROI Tools from IBM
Wed, Sep 9th 2009 9:46p John Del Pizzo Even in the best of times there are rarely enough dollars available in any organization to pursue every important project. This is not news... nor is it that these are not the best of times. The economic downturn has forced many businesses to focus on a small number of projects that promise the most compelling returns with the least risk. This presents a unique challenge for advocates of unified communications. For example, the simple lack of a widely accepted definition of UC makes it challengi [read] Keywords: collaboration
forms
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IBM Leader in Gartner UC Magic Quadrant
Fri, Sep 4th 2009 12:06p John Del Pizzo A little good news to kick of your long Labor Day Weekend (at least in if live in the States)... Gartner has just published their 2009 Unified Communications Magic Quadrant, and for the second year running, IBM is in the leadership quadrant. Gartner had some great things to say about our partner strategy, extensive experience in delivering and enhancing business applications, Sametime Unified Telephony, and our capabilities in the SMB market with Lotus Foundation Reach solutions. Unfortunate [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
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applications
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Announcing the Multimedia Library for Lotus Sametime
Tue, Sep 1st 2009 5:45p John Del Pizzo We're really excited about this.... The Multimedia Library for Sametime is an instant training solution right on the desktop. Nearly 300 short video tutorials quickly teach employees how to use Sametime to maximize productivity and save time. Yes, in a matter of minutes, anyone can learn how to add contacts and groups, share instant meetings, send files and more. With the Multimedia Library for Sametime, businesses save time and money by relying less on a help desk call centers and employees [read] Keywords: administration
ibm
lotus
notes
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desktop
enterprise
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Lotus Knows Unified Communications
Wed, Aug 19th 2009 10:47a John Del Pizzo IBM has just kicked off its "Lotus Knows" IdeaJam. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, an IdeaJam is powerful way to tap into individuals' creative juices. It utilizes a simple website where people can submit ideas and vote for their favorites. In this case, the Jam is focussed on guiding Lotus marketing and communications strategy. After the Jam, the top ideas in each of several categories "will be evaluated for potential use during the Lotus Knows campaign". Personally, I [read] Keywords: ibm
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ideajam.net
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Sametime Quick Tip: Autoreplace Text
Tue, Aug 18th 2009 10:07a John Del Pizzo Adam Gartenberg published this tip on his blog while I was on vacation... and its really useful. If there are phrases or acronyms you use a lot when sending IMs, here's a tip you may find useful. I know IM is often a more informal communication vehicle and acronyms, while not as common as in SMS text messaging, are often expected and accepted. Still, there may be times where you want to spell things out, or, like in my case, where you find yourself using acronyms with special characters on a f [read] Keywords: ibm
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A Little Microsoft FUD
Tue, Aug 18th 2009 9:10a John Del Pizzo You know, I always feel bad for executives when their team fails to prep them properly. While I was on vacation, a few people sent notes pointing to Mteto Nyati's comments in ITWeb. Mr. Nyati is the Managing Director of Microsoft SA and had this to say: As for IBM, he said: "We need to make sure the customers of IBM are liberated from Lotus Notes. Just by moving across they will feel so liberated, and start enjoying things like unified communications." (emphasis added) I'll leave it to Ed Brill [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
sametime
email
exchange
exchange
microsoft
unified communications
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Lotus Knows: join us for an Idea Jam
Fri, Aug 14th 2009 12:26p Jacques Pavlenyi Ed Brill mentioned in a recent blog entry the upcoming Lotus Knows campaign will be kicking off an Idea Jam: Registration is now open for the "Lotus Knows IdeaJam" taking place next week. You can register now at http://lotusknows.ideajam.net/register. ... You can use the next week to brainstorm on topics and ideas for the jam, which goes live on the 19th at 8 AM US EDT. There are four categories of topics for the Lotus Knows IdeaJam: • "Lotus knows working smarter depends [read] Keywords: lotus
sametime
idea jam
ideajam
ideajam.net
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From our friends at Nemertes: Rate Your Provider and Participate in Nemertes’ Newest Study
Mon, Aug 10th 2009 8:06p Jacques Pavlenyi Our friends over at Nemertes Research wanted us to mention their upcoming technology vendor survey. How could we say no? For the 2nd year, Nemertes Research will recognize the top technology providers in their 2009 Pilothouse Award Survey. Vendors will be rated based on customer ratings in the following areas: Ethernet Services MPLS Services WAN Optimization IP Telephony Unified Communications Dashboards IP Contact Center Room-Based Video Systems Telepresence Systems Webconferencing Network & [read] Keywords: exchange
exchange
network
server
unified communications
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Sametime in Gartner Web conferencing leader Magic Quadrant - again
Wed, Aug 5th 2009 3:48p Jennifer Steever Last Wedneday, Gartner published their 2009 Web Conferencing Magic Quadrant and, for the second year running, Sametime and LotusLive are in the leader quadrant. They had some great things to say about our hybrid approach for web conferencing, our direct integration with the rest of theIBM Lotus portfolio and also into Microsoft environments out of the box and our range of client options from rich client to zero download browser access. Unfortunately, we don't have the rights to publish the enti [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
sametime
integration
microsoft
unified communications
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A little time off
Mon, Aug 3rd 2009 9:29a John Del Pizzo Just to let you know, I'm taking a few days of (much deserved) time off this week. I know, I know.... you're crushed there won't be a new Sametime Quick Tip to keep you entertained. To borrow a phrase, "I feel your pain." But there will be plenty more when I return. And now, a line I've always wanted to say: "Hey Mom! I'm going to Disneyland!" [read] Keywords: sametime
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Sametime Quick Tip: Voice Chats
Fri, Jul 31st 2009 8:26p John Del Pizzo We all know that Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) adds some pretty powerful telephony capabilities to the portfolio... including telephony presence, click-to-call, a very intuitive softphone, intelligent call routing, drag & drop ad-hoc conference calls and the ability to work with multiple back end PBX's. The good news is that Sametime Standard and Advanced users who don't have SUT aren't left on hold. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Standard (and Advanced) gives you the ability to have a voic [read] Keywords: sametime
desktop
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Sametime Quick Tip: Off the Record Mode
Wed, Jul 22nd 2009 9:50p John Del Pizzo Last week, our Quick Tip focussed on having Sametime automatically save your chat transcripts on your local machine. But there are times when you may want to ensure that a conversation is kept private. For that, Sametime has an "Off the Record Mode" that disables the transcript recording for both you and your chat partner. (Of course, any server based logging your organization may do will still occur.) Note that this mode needs to be invoked for each chat and lasts as long as the current chat wi [read] Keywords: sametime
server
Introducing Lotus Foundations Reach
Wed, Jul 15th 2009 8:15p John Del Pizzo If you're unfamiliar with Lotus Foundations, it's "a family of software appliances that provide the essential software businesses need to focus on running the business, not managing computer systems." Designed for operations with 5-500 people, Foundations Start provides email, web mail, office productivity tools, network firewall, anti-spam & anti-virus protection, remote connectivity, VPN, file and print services, and disaster recovery on a self-managed, self-healing appliance. It is very c [read] Keywords: collaboration
foundations
ibm
lotus
sametime
applications
email
laptop
mobile
network
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Sametime Quick Tip: Automatically Save Chat Transcripts
Wed, Jul 15th 2009 7:29p John Del Pizzo During the course of the day, I tend to receive a lot of important information through instant messaging. People often send me URLs, phone numbers, action items, deadlines, screen shots, files and more. Therefore the ability to save - and search - my chat transcripts is extremely important. While Sametime will let me save individual chats through the File Menu, I prefer to have it save all of them for me automatically. To do this, enter the Sametime Preferences Panel and select Chat History a [read] Keywords: sametime
instant messaging
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IBM Tech Talk on Sametime Gateway
Mon, Jul 13th 2009 4:47p John Del Pizzo Lotus Support is hosting a Tech Talk on Wednesday - which is open to customers and partners - on deploying and using the Sametime Gateway. It will cover: • Troubleshooting common Gateway install issues • Troubleshooting Sametime community connection • Setting up SSL • Troubleshooting SIP connectivity (TCP & TLS) for SIP Communities (AOL or Yahoo) • Troubleshooting XMPP connectivity for XMPP Communities [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
sametime
community
google
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VoiceCon UC eWeekly: "IBM Delivers Sametime Unified Telephony Early"
Fri, Jul 10th 2009 6:11p Jacques Pavlenyi While we are certainly proud to have launched IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony into the marketplace, it's also nice to be recognized for the effort by independent third-parties. In the latest issue of the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly online newsletter, Jim Burton penned an excellent article on the announcement ("IBM Delivers Sametime Unified Telephony Early"). In it, Jim also takes the time to dispel some persistent myths about the unified communications market and Sametime's pl [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
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unified communications
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Sametime Quick Tip: Intelligent Location Awareness
Thu, Jul 9th 2009 1:10p John Del Pizzo Pop Quiz: 1. Do you consider geographic location a core component of presence awareness? 2. Did you know that Sametime has intelligent location awareness? Many people are familiar with Sametime's more traditional presence attributes, but did you realize Sametime also provides a way to indicate where you are physically located? The first screen shot, below, shows my geographic location in the contact list. The second one shows how others see this information in a chat window. [read] Keywords: ibm
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networking
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Facetime webinar on working with Sametime July 7
Mon, Jul 6th 2009 12:47p Robert Ingram Cinthia Shields of Facetime told me about an free webinar they are presenting July 7 . Details and sign up info at the Facetime event web site here. Nice to see them using Sametime Unyte for the event! [read] Keywords: sametime
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CDW: Special Deals on Plantronics Headsets with Sametime purchase
Thu, Jul 2nd 2009 11:27a John Del Pizzo CDW has a special offer for US customers who purchase (or have purchased) Sametime through them. Until August 21st, you'll get a free Plantronics headset for every five you buy! Eligible headsets include: Savi Office Wireless Headset System Voyager 510-USB Bluetooth Wireless Headset System Audio 625 USB Stereo Headset SupraPlus HW251N Corded Headset DA45 USB Audio Processor for Corded Headsets For more information, visit CDW.com, call 800-606-4239, email CDWpromo@plantronics.com or download [read] Keywords: sametime
email
office
wireless
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Sametime 8.0.2 Mac Client Now Available
Thu, Jul 2nd 2009 11:27a John Del Pizzo The Sametime 8.0.2 Connect Client for the Mac is now available for download from Passport Advantage. This is especially important for organizations with mixed computing environments looking to deploy Sametime Unified Telephony. SUT pre-req's the 8.0.2 client. [read] Keywords: sametime
mac
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Sametime Quick Tip: Controlling Notifications
Wed, Jul 1st 2009 8:46p John Del Pizzo Gaurav Chhabra asked:"In Sametime 8.0, its very annoying when the chat window pops up in front of all the windows and that to when you are in the middle of some important assignment. I think there should be some option under preference otifications that would allow the user to select the kind of notification required. Popup or flash title in titlebar..just like v7.5" Thanks for the comment, Gaurav! There is a preferences setting to control exactly the behavior you are describing. Follow these s [read] Keywords: sametime
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Sametime QuickTip: Privacy Controls
Tue, Jun 30th 2009 3:33p John Del Pizzo You're working against a deadline on a key project. You need to be on Sametime to coordinate with your team... but you don't want to deal with other issues right now. How do you control who can reach you? Sametime Privacy Controls Sametime Privacy Controls let you determine: who can reach you, even if you are in Do-Not-Disturb Mode who can see that you are online inside your enterprise who can see that you are online outside your enterprise (Public IM systems, other Sametime Communities, [read] Keywords: sametime
enterprise
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Sametime leader in latest Gartner IM Marketscope
Tue, Jun 30th 2009 2:07p John Del Pizzo Last Friday, Gartner published their 2009 Enterprise Instant Messaging and Presence Marketscope and, for the third year running, Sametime received the highest possible ranking. They had some great things to say about Sametime Unified Telephony and the foundational role Sametime presence plays in IBM's cloud and social networking strategies. Unfortunately, we don't have the rights to publish quotes at this time, so you'll have to purchase the report to read the details. [read] Keywords: ibm
sametime
enterprise
instant messaging
networking
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Sametime Unified Telephony Ships
Thu, Jun 25th 2009 10:08a John Del Pizzo IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony was released yesterday -- a month earlier than the target date we announced at VoiceCon in April! Available now, IBM Lotus® Sametime® Unified Telephony software is unified communications middleware which integrates telephony across multivendor Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems and provides a unified end user experience, including integrated softphones; phone and IM presence awareness; call control and rules-based call management across multiple communi [read] Keywords: collaboration
forms
ibm
lotus
sametime
enterprise
exchange
exchange
integration
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New Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime solution goes live
Wed, Jun 24th 2009 3:09p Jacques Pavlenyi We blogged about this particular IBM Research asset a while ago, but just this morning IBM Software Services for Lotus has announced the availability of a new solution called Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime that enables organizations to leverage virtual meeting spaces and highly interactive tools to support real-time collaboration. With Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime, individuals can use Lotus Sametime to invite colleagues to meet in a virtual world environment and use inte [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Sametime Quick Tip: Using Multiple Communities
Tue, Jun 23rd 2009 10:49a John Del Pizzo How do Sametime users from different companies interact with each other? One way is through the Sametime Gateway, which allows for the exchange of presence status and simple text messages. But what if the users need more? What if they need voice or video chats? Or direct file transfers? Or they want to take advantage of the new drag & drop meeting invitations coming in 8.5? In that case, they might want to consider using Sametime's Multiple Community support. To oversimplify, think of a [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
sametime
community
enterprise
exchange
exchange
password
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Wainhouse Unified Communications and Collaboration Survey 2009
Mon, Jun 22nd 2009 7:26p Jacques Pavlenyi The folks over at Wainhouse Research are putting together their annual Unified Communications survey. They asked if we could include a mention in our blog, and thought it was a pretty reasonable request. With everything going on in the economy, it's always good to reset expectations based on what users, especially our loyal IBM users, are actually thinking. For your time and effort, they're offering prizes, too: a Blu-ray DVD player and amazon.com gift certificates. That's in addition to a [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
unified communications
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Sametime Quick Tip: Tabbed Chats
Wed, Jun 10th 2009 5:46p John Del Pizzo Have you tried the Tabbed Chat interface in Sametime? It consolidates all of your discussions (including Persistent Group Chats and Voice Chats) into a single window. I find this especially important as individual chat windows can become "lost" across multiple displays and virtual desktops. When traveling I also appreciate need for less screen real estate on my laptop's 13-inch screen. To activate Tabbed Chats, go to Sametime Preferences-> Chat Window and check the box next to "Use tabbed [read] Keywords: sametime
interface
laptop
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Genesys announcement: bringing UC to the Contact Center
Tue, Jun 9th 2009 4:26p Jacques Pavlenyi Genesys, an IBM Business Partner, just announced the launch of UC Connect, a new product initiative designed to enable the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform to communicate via UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry, including IBM Sametime. UC Connect will help Contact Centers by facilitating collaboration with experts and resources across the enterprise to increase first-call resolution and reduce costs by providing agents immediate expert as [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
sametime
enterprise
office
Sametime / OCS 2007 Interop II
Mon, Jun 8th 2009 8:26p John Del Pizzo Although it took a tad longer than anticipated, the Sametime 8.0.2 Gateway hotfix that enables OCS interoperability is now available on FixCentral. Just to recap: Interoperability will include federated identity, online presence awareness and the ability to exchange text chats between enterprises You'll need Sametime Standard 8.0.2 and the hotfix for the Sametime Gateway in 8.0.2 Sametime Advanced customers are entitled to all the features in Sametime Standard. Just upgrade to the Standard [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
sametime
exchange
exchange
microsoft
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LotusUserGroup.org hosts webinar on IBM / Avaya UC Solutions
Fri, Jun 5th 2009 1:49p John Del Pizzo LotusUserGroup.org is hosting a webinar on joint IBM / Avaya Unified Communications Solutions on June 16th at noon (EDT). Allan Mendelsohn, Senior Manager, Unified Communications Product Marketing, Avaya, and Gopal Gupta, Global Business Development Executive, Unified Communications Software, IBM, will be discussing how Unified Communications solutions are helping businesses increase performance and become more responsive to customers and clients. Get a first hand look at how Avaya voice cap [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
notes
quickr
sametime
development
lotususergroup.org
unified communications
4
Sametime Quick Tip: Type Ahead Search
Fri, Jun 5th 2009 12:09p John Del Pizzo Question: What does your contact list look like? Does it scroll on forever? Is it a tangled mess of groups and subgroups? If it is, then this Quick Tip is for you. About a year ago I stopped adding new people to my contact list, yet still have instant access to all my colleagues. The key is that Sametime doesn't require you to add contacts in order to interact with them. (Why waste time adding people - just to ask if they can help - and then remove them when you get directed to someone else? [read] Keywords: ibm
sametime
community
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Sametime Quick Tip: Screen Captures
Mon, Jun 1st 2009 9:49p John Del Pizzo If you're like us, your business runs on Sametime. Yet like most tools we use everyday, we don't often take advantage of their full potential. In this new Quick Tips series, we'll be highlighting features that often surprise long-time Sametime users. "Did you know Sametime could do that?" Feel free to add your own Quick Tips. Screen Captures This is one of the tools I use practically everyday. There are times when you need to show others precisely what you are seeing but an Instant Share or [read] Keywords: sametime
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Lotus Collaboration Evangelist Kit
Thu, May 28th 2009 8:12p John Del Pizzo Ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I wish I had a 421MB zip file filled with presentations, flyers, videos, brochures and case studies on Sametime, Quickr & Connections. That kind of material would be useful as I educate my colleagues on the benefits of social networking and unified communications."? Haven't we all? Fortunately, our colleagues on The Collaboration Soapbox have pulled together exactly what you are looking for in the "Work Smarter with IBM Collaboration" evangelist kit. The ki [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
notes
quickr
sametime
microsoft
networking
unified communications
web 2.0
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CRI offers Sametime & Avaya PoC "in a box"
Tue, May 26th 2009 10:09p John Del Pizzo Last week I had the opportunity to co-present at the International Association of Avaya Users Conference. First, a couple of thank you's.... to Avaya's Allan Mendelsohn for inviting me and organizing our session... to Lynne Canavan for pulling together a great event... and to the IBM-Avaya Alliance team for not laughing (too much) when I walked into dinner utterly and completely dripping wet from the torrential rain. You would have thought I walked through a car wash. While the rain was memor [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
sametime
application
community
mobile
server
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Webinar: Sametime & Interactive Intelligence Contact Center Solutions
Tue, May 26th 2009 9:08p John Del Pizzo Don't miss next Tuesday's webinar on collaborative solutions in the contact center next, sponsored by Interactive Intelligence and IBM. "Bridge the contact center-enterprise gap. With the integration between IBM's Lotus Sametime software and the Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center IP contact center software suite, agents and business users get: - Presence synchronization - Company-wide directory - Desktop client enhancements - Mobility features Th [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
sametime
desktop
enterprise
integration
php
1
IBM at INNUA Global Connect 2009, June 7-10
Fri, May 15th 2009 7:06p Jacques Pavlenyi InAAU isn't the only event coming up for the Sametime team and IBM. We're also participating at the upcoming INNUA Global Connect 2009 conference, June 7-10 in Pittsburgh PA. The IBM presence at the show continues to grow, mirroring the growth of the Nortel-IBM Alliance. This year, in addition to the IBM booth (#713), we have several speakers at the event. Bob Reed will discuss how Unified Communication capabilities make the world both smaller and flatter, and business better. Matt Broomh [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
notes
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applications
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IBM at InAAU
Fri, May 15th 2009 5:05p John Del Pizzo Next week, I'll be traveling to sunny Orlando to present at the International Alliance of Avaya Users (InAAU) annual conference. Allan Mendelsohn, Senior Manager UC Product Marketing for Avaya, and I will be discussing the IBM / Avaya partnership and our joint Unified Communications solutions. We're on twice - Tuesday and Wednesday from 4:00 to 5:30 pm in Osceola 1. My colleague Steve Cawn will also be speaking on Wednesday from 2:45 - 3:45 (Destin 1) on Improving Self Service Security through [read] Keywords: ibm
security
unified communications
websphere
Best Practices for Executing a Sametime Advanced Deployment
Wed, Apr 29th 2009 7:46p John Del Pizzo Sametime Standard is IBM's platform for Unified Communications. Rich presence helps you find and reach your colleagues in the most effective manner. The Sametime Connect client provides a unified user experience that makes moving across communications methods - text, voice, video, meetings - seamless and intuitive. Sametime's SDKs let you extend and customize the Connect client and deliver UC capabilities into your own business processes and applications. As a whole, Sametime can help you speed [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
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applications
community
unified communications
Epilio Jesse brings social networking to Sametime
Mon, Apr 20th 2009 6:05p John Del Pizzo Last week Epilio released their 7th free plug-in for Sametime, named Jesse. Jesse adds a new view to your Samtime Connect Client that shows your colleagues' status updates as they change. Of course, there are photos, time stamps and you can update your own status from the same view. Simple social networking for Sametime. Very timely given the recent discussions on this blog. You can learn more here: http://www.epilio.com/web/Jessie.htm http://www.iminstant.com/iminstant/iminstant.nsf/d6plin [read] Keywords: sametime
networking
2
Gartner: "IBM Users Should Experiment with Sametime Unified Telephony"
Mon, Apr 13th 2009 4:46p Jacques Pavlenyi Just saw this new report now available on Gartner's website on our recent announcement of the coming availability of Sametime Unified Telephony: "IBM Users Should Experiment with Sametime Unified Telephony". Here's a quote direct from their website: This announcement furthers the trend toward unified communication and collaboration (UCC), the convergence of communication modes onto one platform to boost productivity and maximize the use of the communication infrastructure. The report [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
sametime
Sametime and Lotus at Interop Las Vegas 2009
Fri, Apr 10th 2009 12:47p Jacques Pavlenyi Just wanted to announce that IBM has confirmed several speakers and panelists at the upcoming Interop Las Vegas 2009 show, May 17-22. The Interop team has been gracious to provide us with the opportunity to participate in 3 sessions: Pat Galvin, will be participating in the panel "The New Competitive Landscape for Unified Communications: Microsoft vs. Cisco vs. IBM vs. ???" at Tue May 19 at 2:45pm Louis Richardson, Worldwide Sales Executive, Collaborative Document Services, will be participa [read] Keywords: document
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Collaboration Videos a Go Go
Thu, Apr 9th 2009 12:26p Jacques Pavlenyi IBM has been posting videos on YouTube for quite some time. I personally think it's a nice way to share not just typical marketing fluff, but cool technical and humorous stuff as well. Apparently so do many of my IBM colleagues (we're not your father's IBM anymore). The Lotus team just introduced a new channel called Collaboration4You, where we share videos of our clients and business partners talking about how they use various IBM collaboration products and services today, and how they'r [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Lotusphere Comes to You
Wed, Mar 18th 2009 4:30p John Del Pizzo I'll be presenting IBM's UC2 story at "Lotusphere Comes to You" in Atlanta tomorrow and again next Tuesday in the Philadelphia area. Registrations have been strong - the Philadelphia event has had to move to a larger venue to accommodate everyone. If you couldn't make it to Orlando in January and want to get up to speed on the latest and greatest that Lotus has to offer, Lotusphere Comes to You is the place to be. This link lists upcoming locations and dates. [read] Keywords: ibm
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How do you deploy Sametime clients?
Tue, Mar 17th 2009 2:09p Robert Ingram We've been taking a look at simplifying and removing pain points in the client install process for Sametime, and would like some feedback on what you do today. Here are a few questions that would help us understand your needs a bit better. Do you use (or plan to use) Sametime Connect standalone or Notes 8.x embedded with Sametime as your primary client? When you download the client install kits from Passport site, would it be useful to have smaller download kits created for Windows on [read] Keywords: notes
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Introducing new bloggers
Tue, Mar 10th 2009 12:06a John Del Pizzo If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have inferred from the posts that the Sametime team consists of Rob Ingram and myself. Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few other IBM'ers focussed on Sametime and the UC2 space. Rob and I would like to welcome them to the blog and introduce you to a few of them. Kathleen Cooke is my fellow Offering Manager and is responsible for the new Sametime Unified Telephony offering. You'll be hearing a lot about this in the upcoming months. [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Video - a top focus for Sametime 8.5
Tue, Mar 3rd 2009 11:09a Robert Ingram In our first post on Sametime 8.5, we focussed on online meetings. It's our belief that existing web conferencing tools aren't more widely used because they are too cumbersome. How often have you lost the first 10 minutes of a meeting trying to get everyone into the conference? Or lost time explaining how to hand over control to another user? Sametime 8.5 goes a long way towards addressing the usability of online meetings. Similarly, we believe that, despite tremendous technical advances, deskto [read] Keywords: collaboration
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desktop
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Sametime Gateway for Business Partners
Thu, Feb 26th 2009 8:36p John Del Pizzo Lately, I've been hearing the same question from a lot of our business partners: "How can I demonstrate how the Sametime Gateway interfaces with AOL & Yahoo!?". The first thing is to download the Gateway from PartnerWorld and install it. Then you need to be provisioned. Basically, this means we have to tell AOL & Yahoo! that your Gateway is valid and they should accept your connections. For customers, this is pretty straightforward. There is a web-based application that validates that [read] Keywords: connections
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New Lotus Collaboration Video on YouTube
Tue, Feb 24th 2009 9:09a John Del Pizzo Sorry its been so quiet here as of late, I've been getting over Bronchitis. But here's a little something to keep you going... a new video from Lotus (with a great plug for Sametime) created from interviews with customers and IBM'ers at Lotusphere. See how many people you know! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijjsIyZOQ_Y [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
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Re: UC and ROI
Wed, Feb 4th 2009 10:06a John Del Pizzo Mike Gotta posted a thoughtful analysis of last week's posting, "The ROI of Unified Communications & Collaboration". You can find it here. Based on our examples, He gave us 3 thumbs up and 5 thumbs down. (In reality, it was 3 thumbs up and 3.5 thumbs down. He repeated one down twice and two others were minor variations on a theme.) First, the thumbs up. Mike liked the cost savings opportunities around: replacing expensive telephone calls with IM & VoIP chats. minimizing internationa [read] Keywords: agent
collaboration
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The ROI of Unified Communications & Collaboration
Tue, Jan 27th 2009 9:07p John Del Pizzo During the Unified Communications & Collaboration keynote at Lotusphere, Bruce Morse asked the following question: "How many of you feel like you can... come up with a cost justification for a new UC project?". As expected, only a few hands went up. While there were certainly demos and product roadmaps, this keynote was about arming our customers and partners with enough information to justify their projects on the basis of quantifiable ROI. From the conversations I had after the session, it [read] Keywords: collaboration
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The New Annual "Best in Lotusphere Chotski Award"
Tue, Jan 27th 2009 5:46p John Del Pizzo Just before Lotusphere, we highlighted the winner & finalists for the Best Unified Communications & Collaboration Award from Lotus. I also want to congratulate three other business partner award winners: The Best in Lotusphere Showcase Award "recognizes an IBM Business Partner that has adopted and leveraged the latest Lotus technologies, has made a significant investment in IBM and Lotus, and has an exhibit on the Showcase floor that demonstrates a fresh, unique and powerful solution [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
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archiving
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Observations from a Lotusphere First-Timer
Mon, Jan 26th 2009 9:28p John Del Pizzo Last week was my first trip to the much-hyped Lotusphere 2009. (By the way, in my head, 'Lotusphere' is always said in a booming voice with too much echo.... a lot like the Monster Truck Rally commercials from the 80s. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just watch this youtube video. ) So, what did I think? First, it was the best show I've ever seen IBM put on in my five and half years with the company. Forget the Blue Man Group and Dan Aykroyd for a minute. Picciano and all the execut [read] Keywords: ibm
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Congratulations to our Lotus Award Winners!
Thu, Jan 15th 2009 9:28a John Del Pizzo Congratulations to the winners of this year's Lotus Award - Best Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution! WInner C3 Desktop Video Conferencing and Collaboration from Avistar Communications Corp. Booth #336 @ Lotusphere www.avistar.com Demo on Youtube The Avistar C3 Desktop Video Conferencing and Collaboration product has been integrated into Lotus Sametime to provide a single click to video-conference solution for both Small/Medium Business and Enterprise customers. Avista [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Sametime and Lotusphere 2009 podcast
Fri, Jan 9th 2009 8:46p Robert Ingram Ok its little bit of self promotion, but Lotus User Group has just posted their podcast recording in the '2 minutes with Lotus' series featuring your's truly previewing Sametime activities at Lotusphere 2009. Its actually a lot more than 2 mins talking to LUG's Erin Dunkin. In the interview I cover what's happening at Lotusphere for Sametime and offer some hints about Sametime 8.5 themes. I can't tell you much more about 8.5 yet, but if you are Orlando you will hear and see lots more. [read] Keywords: ibm
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Sametime 8.5 and Lotuspshere podcast
Fri, Jan 9th 2009 8:25p Robert Ingram Ok its little bit of self promotion, but Lotus User Group has just posted their podcast recording in the '2 minutes with Lotus' series featuring your's truly previewing Sametime activities at Lotusphere 2009. Its actually a lot more than 2 mins talking to LUG's Erin Dunkin. In the interview I cover what's happening at Lotuspshere for Sametime products and get into Sametime 8.5 themes at a high level. I cant tell you much more about 8.5 yet, but if you are Orlando you will hear and see [read] Keywords: ibm
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UC2 at Lotusphere 2009
Mon, Jan 5th 2009 11:25a John Del Pizzo Happy New Year and welcome back from the holidays! Hopefully you all enjoyed some time with family and friends. While I have one eye on the Eagles' improbable playoff run (American football), Lotusphere 2009 is right around the corner and it will be jammed packed with sessions on Sametime and Unified Communications & Collaboration. To help with your planning, we've pulled together this one page flier with all the UC2 sessions, breakouts, demo locations, etc: UC2 at Lotusphere 2009.pdf [read] Keywords: collaboration
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New Case Study
Thu, Dec 18th 2008 5:13p John Del Pizzo One last note before the holidays... Check out this post from our colleagues on The Collaboration Soapbox. They've published a case study of a partner solution that uses Sametime as the front end for multiple databases from multiple vendors. "...'IMAM from Semaphor is an ingenious solution that leverages the simplicity and flexibility of Lotus Sametime to open up a world of possibilities for our business. With easier access to business data, our users and IT staff save time, and the abilit [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Sametime 8.0.2 How To’s
Thu, Dec 18th 2008 9:52a John Del Pizzo Sametime Support has posted several articles on obtaining and installing Sametime 8.0.2. Download the complete Sametime 8.0.2 Entry product using the Passport Advantage Online Web site Download the complete Sametime 8.0.2 Standard product using the Passport Advantage Online Web Site Download and assemble the Sametime 8.0.2 Gateway components using the Passport Advantage Online Web site Download the Sametime 8.0.2 Enterprise Meeting Server using the Passport Advantage Online Web site [read] Keywords: ibm
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IBM VoiceCon Videos
Thu, Nov 20th 2008 1:29p John Del Pizzo In case you couldn't be there in person, here are links to our recent presentations at VoiceCon San Francisco & Amsterdam. The first one has proven especially popular as it links UC with social networking and mashup/CEBP capabilities. VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 Keynote - Bruce Morse, IBM Vice President for Unified Communications & Collaboration VoiceCon Amsterdam 2008 Keynote - David Farrell, Vice President, IBM Software Europe VoiceCon Amsterdam 2008 Booth Visit - J [read] Keywords: collaboration
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The Importance of Services in UC2
Tue, Nov 18th 2008 10:28p John Del Pizzo Blair Pleasant has a great post on the role services play in UC and how IBM's offerings in this space really help set us apart from the competition. You can also hear her discuss the topic in a podcast with Marisa Viveros, IBM's Vice President of Converged Communication Services. "IBM Global Services (IGS) is an important part of IBM’s overall UC program, offering a comprehensive suite of strategy-and-assessment and architecture-and-design services, as well as integration, deployment and manag [read] Keywords: ibm
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Sametime / OCS 2007 Interop
Thu, Nov 13th 2008 3:50p John Del Pizzo If you were at VoiceCon today and sat in on the UC Software-based Architectures panel discussion, you heard IBM and Microsoft fulfill a promise we made earlier this year. We are currently testing interoperability between Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and plan to deliver it later this year. So what does this mean and how will it work? Interoperability will include federated identity, online presence awareness and the ability to exchange text chats between enter [read] Keywords: ibm
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enterprise
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Sametime / OCS 2007 Interop
Thu, Nov 13th 2008 2:09p John Del Pizzo If you were at VoiceCon today and sat in on the UC Software-Based Architectures panel discussion, you heard IBM and Microsoft fulfill a promise we made earlier this year. We are currently testing interoperability between Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and plan to deliver it later this year. So what does this mean and how will it work? Interoperability will include federated identity, online presences awareness and the ability to exchange text chats between ente [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
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exchange
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How to Make Unified Communications and Collaboration Work for You
Thu, Nov 13th 2008 12:08p John Del Pizzo "Unified Communications and Collaboration – it’s everywhere. Everyone is talking about it, implementing it, or wishing they could implement it. Of course, when you ask about it, everyone seems to have a slightly different answer. So, what exactly is UCC and how can you use it to your business advantage? IBM has taken the headache out of researching and planning for the right UCC solution and laid out some easy do’s and don’ts to get you started, no matter how big or small your organizati [read] Keywords: collaboration
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VoiceCon San Francisco 2008
Fri, Nov 7th 2008 2:09p John Del Pizzo If you're attending VoiceCon San Francisco next week, be sure to stop buy the IBM Pavilion at booth 323. We'll be featuring demos and subject matter experts on: Joint solutions with Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and other partners Productivity Solutions for Mobile Workers Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC2) Software Communications Enabled Business Processes In addition, don't miss the following presentations from IBM'ers: Bruce Morse, Vice President, Unified Communications & Collaborati [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Sametime: "The Official U.S. Army Chat Room Software"
Wed, Nov 5th 2008 3:52p John Del Pizzo I'm always on the lookout for good examples of organizations extending Unified Communications & Collaboration beyond their traditional "knowledge workers"... and I can't think of a more demanding example than the US's Army's new Green Force Tracking system, a slightly customized version of Lotus Sametime. How are you using Sametime outside of the office environment? The Army - which plans to use the software at garrisons, posts and forward bases - is now loading the software onto computer [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Lotus Sametime Cool Stuff
Fri, Oct 31st 2008 6:09p John Del Pizzo Did you know about the Lotus Sametime Cool Stuff site? It has a ton of useful material if your considering Sametime or advocating for it inside your organization. Right now, you will find: The Gartner UC Magic Quadrant Frost & Sullivan's Green Excellence of the Year Award to IBM Wainhouse Research's comparison of call control in Sametime Unified Telephony and Microsoft OCS 2007 A great video on IBM's own journey into Unified Communications & Collaboration Resources for using Sametime [read] Keywords: collaboration
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A moment of joy
Thu, Oct 30th 2008 3:08p John Del Pizzo With all due respect to my Lotus colleagues in Boston... the PHILLIES WON THE WORLD SERIES!!! I grew up in Philly and was 10 the last time there was a major sports championship there. I'll return you to your regularly scheduled UC2 programming shortly, but first a moment of joy. And from the "Random Stuff I Love" File... For years there was an informal agreement that no building in Philadelphia could be taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. (Penn founded Philadelphia and [read] Keywords: lotus
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Global Hyatt signs for Sametime UC
Wed, Oct 22nd 2008 12:28p Robert Ingram IBM announced today that Global Hyatt Corporation chose Lotus Collaboration and Unified Communications Software including Notes 8 and Sametime 8. They will deploy a broad set of the latest Sametime capabilities to their users. Global Hyatt is making the latest IBM Lotus Sametime functionality available to all of its employees worldwide so they can all be on the same system. When fully deployed in 2009, 25,000 Global Hyatt employees will use Sametime version 8 software to communicate with the [read] Keywords: collaboration
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VoiceCon Amsterdam 2008
Mon, Oct 13th 2008 1:09p John Del Pizzo VoiceCon Amsterdam kicks off tomorrow and IBM will be there in force. Visit our pavilion (booths 19-21, 31-33) to learn about: IBM UC Solutions with Cisco, Avaya, & Nortel IBM's UC Integration Expertise IBM Power System offerings for UC and, of course, IBM Lotus Sametime Software In addition, don't miss out on the following sessions featuring IBM subject matter experts: Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 10:45 AM Keynote: Communicate and Collaborate at the Speed of Business, David Farrel [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Make your voice heard
Thu, Oct 9th 2008 3:09p John Del Pizzo Wainhouse Research is looking for users of "hosted audio and web conferencing services" to fill out a quick survey. We want to make sure that IBM customers are fully represented. Please take a few minutes and offer your opinions! Conferencing & Collaboration Services Survey 2008 Dear Wainhouse Research Bulletin Reader, Do you use hosted audio and web conferencing services provided by a service provider? If so, we invite you take a short two-page survey to contribute t [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Nojitter: IBM in Gartner leadership Quadrant for UC
Wed, Oct 8th 2008 7:52p Robert Ingram No Jitter recently reported on Gartner’s 2008 unified communications Magic Quadrant . IBM is reported as having joined the "Leaders" category in the report. (The Gartner report reviewed the top companies that offer capabilities in at least three of six unified communications categories: voice and telephone; conferencing; messaging; presence and IM; device clients; and communications applications). No Jitter paraphrased the IBM position in the Gartner report as follows:- "IBM advanced [read] Keywords: collaboration
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"Bluehouse" public beta: features new Sametime hosted chat service
Mon, Oct 6th 2008 7:09p Robert Ingram IBM just announced the start of the Lotus "Bluehouse" public beta software as a service collaboration offering. "Bluehouse" services are aimed at making it easy to collaborate between organizations - small or large. Among the services are capabilities to:- Host your online sales or project meeting - anyone can join an online meeting (using Sametime Unyte service) Network with potential clients and business partners outside the firewall Upload files and share files with others Start a group proj [read] Keywords: bluehouse
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