KEY101: Lotus Online Collaboration: Experience the Possibilities (Live)

Live Blogging the Software as a Service Keynote session beginning shortly Sean Poulley on stage starting with a recap of yesterdays OGS announcements.  Making it clear that LotusLive is an extension/enhancement to the portfolio not a replacement. Today’s Agenda is explaining the portfolio, Demos, early adopter stories, and integration with Lotus products and partners. Why did we create LotusLive?Belief that most organizations have rich collaboration environments that work internally, but they don’t work externally wth partners and vendors. LotusLive is there to extend collaboration outside the firewall Services in LotusLive Engage include Profiles, File Sharing, Activities, Forms, Charts, Instant Messaging & Web Conferencing.  LotusLive pricing for all services will be competitive with Web Confrencing only solutions from other vendors Bredan Crotty on stage to demo how Lotusphere attendees can use LotusLive to connect at Lotusphere and continue the relationship after Lotusphere. Demoing the dashboard with a news feed very similar to what is being implemented in Connections 2.5 Companies in LotusLive  can create public company pages which are searchable for all LotusLive users.   Brendan is now demoing File Sharing in LotusLive, includes “Collections” which he compared to a playlist, it is a collection of files and files can belong to more then one collection. File sharing also integrates directly with online meetings to add files stored in LotusLive directly to a meeti Kevin Cavanaugh coming up on stage now to talk about e-mail in LotusLive.  LotusLive is about market expansion. Industry average cost of a mailbox is about .00 per user per month.  With Domino 8.5 improvements many shops running well below that.  On premise costs for Domino are coming in lower then competition and cloud services, but there are cases for cloud services (but not for everyone) LotusLive allows you to have IBM host your Domino environment to integrate with LotusLive.  Expects that between 1000 and 10,000 users hosted services can provide savings over on premise. LotusLive iNotes is also targeted at employees who need limited access to e-mail (boundary workers) available at a reduced price point. I don’t know if I captured it properly, but Kevin just did an excellent job clarifying where IBM expects LotusLive to provide savings and benefits, while showing clear cases that on premise solutions make more sense for others. Brendan Crotty is now demoing sharing files between on premise solutions. Lotus Notes 8.5 Client with LotusLive files sidebar plugin, and “click to cloud” functionality very similar to Lotus Connectors you can drag and drop files from OS or Notes directly to file sharing on LotusLive.  Activities side shelf can connect to LotusLive with off line access. Meeting plug in, with a single click a meeting can be launched and use the buddy list to send  a link integrating LotusLive meetings with the Sametime client. Sean Poulley introducing a video with clips from Salesforce.com, Prolifiq and Skype the LotusLive partners being highlighted this morning Brendan coming back on stage to demo partner integration Skype integration, Skype integrated on the business card for click to call.  “Click with Collaborators” button to start conference calls with document collaborators, and the ability to add others from contacts n the fly.  One click launch of skype client dialing the parties selected in LotusLive. LinkedIn – Search of LinkedIn from LotusLive, and ability to share files with LinkedIn users with in LotusLive Prolifiq – Integration of LotusLive contacts with Prolifiqs internal messaging system integrated in to LotusLive, and embedded widgets for further action and tracking of the messages Salesforce.com – LotusLive meeting integrated in to Salesforce.com, ability to send meeting summaries from the a meeting back to Salesforce.com.  Meeting Summary captures meeting title, host, any activities or To Do associated with the meeting, files presented,  and attendee lists. Customer stories: Tom Kivell from Nortel talking about how LotusLive has helped them overcome many collaboration issues, specifically run more efficient meetings, and eliminate firewall issues to be more effective and help them bring their products to market faster. Maureen Shaffer from Inset Technologies startup operation with the majority of employees are remote, and manufacturing is done by an external organization.  Issues with VPN Connections, e-mailing of large files, connectivity issues with web conferecing.  With an IT department of zero employees hosting services on LotusLive was an efficient way to implement with zero install or configuration, and eliminated connectivity and firewall issues.  Impressed with response and commitment of the LotusLive team during Beta.  Using LotusLive to deliver training materials on moblile devices with LotusLive and Prolifiqs Darian Hendricks froom Robert R Taylor Network at MIT, network of over 250 individuals and organizations.  Organization memebers were looking for an online home for the organization that provided a way to connect and exchange information when they could not meet in person.  Integration with Skype and LinkedIn enhance their ability to use LotusLive. Sean is back on stage wrapping up what has been a very impressive session.