Ed Brill

Often times when we get on a topic about Lotus's strategy, direction, or marketing, I receive comments along the lines of, "I get it, but my executives don't". Last week, this lead me to have a conversation with Dave Montgomery, who is one of the managers at the Lotus executive briefing center, cur...

A column by IBMer Luis Suarez appears in today's New York Times concludes with a rather provocative position: E-mail can become extinct, if not repurposed altogether, even at big companies like I.B.M. An e-mail in-box no longer needs to be like Pandora's box. Let me quickly say that I completely agr...

Since the meme is going around.... Wordle was created by IBM researcher Jonathan Feinberg Very cool! Link: Make your own Wordle...

I guess the only surprise here is, why it has taken 4½ years for this to ever happen. Since there is no identity validation for comments on this site (as with many blogs), anyone can post under any name. By site terms, though, comments must be posted using one's real name and a valid e-mail addres...

The shop was closed, so I really can't explain....

Via Duffbert, I just had an interesting read of the transcript from Unify Corp.'s 2008 year-end earnings call. Unify, as you may recall, is the company whose migration product from Notes to Microsoft, Composer, was aggressively marketed to SearchDomino subscribers from December 2007 until a few mon...

The NSW Department of Education and Training has awarded a tender that I had the opportunity to learn about from them when I was in Australia last November...The New South Wales Department of Education and Training will dump one of the world's largest installations of Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange em...

OK, so we had a good time. The £30 (each) "champagne flight" on the London Eye was one of the best bargains of this trip. There were only six of us plus a host in the capsule, we were able to bypass all the queues, and it was a fantastic view last night. A thoroughly enjoyable time. We also h...

In previous entries on this topic, I've mentioned how the development team has put significant focus on improving the performance of the Notes 8 client in the upcoming 8.0.2 release (planned for Q3, target: August). In the last couple of days, it's become apparent that 8.0.2 is going to address the...

During my travels the last week, there have been a huge number of interesting postings on Lotus community blogs that have been worth reading. I haven't had a chance to link to them all real-time, but as a summary, I suggest you check these out: * Andrew Pollack on Lotus' Project "Atlantic": Here'...

After a nine-hour journey door-to-door from our hotel in Paris to our hotel in Ascot, we were finally here for what we were here for -- the wedding of Ben Rose and Jo Lister. As for the journey, my wife was able to experience first-hand why I consider CDG and LHR the two worst airports in the w...

It's almost like yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre...Why so many of us use Yahoo, Microsoft, Google or other freebie mail programs when on the road is no great mystery. Enterprise-orientated services such as Lotus Domino/Notes, and to a lesser extent Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, have become unwield...

On the occasion when a high-profile customer migrates from Notes to Exchange, there are often a lot of eyes watching to see if the migration is successful, and solves all the world's problems as was promised during the courting phase. Vince quotes a Philips (internal?) message which suggests using...

Sprint, a large mobile carrier in the US, announces that the cool new Samsung Instinct -- plus eleven other popular mobile devices -- will support Notes/Domino mail:Easy access to Microsoft Exchange Server and IBM Lotus Notes accounts will be available through Sprint Mobile Email Work, as an extensi...

Ah, way back when, it was different. She was just one among the many. Yes, at some point, I had to admire her through bulletproof glass, but she was still low profile. Then Dan Brown came along. He exploited her, made everyone who loved her jealous. Things got worse. Then Tom Hanks ruined it...

I am out on vacation for the next week, starting in Paris, then Ascot (near Heathrow) for a wedding, then London... so the blogging will be a little light. However, I don't want to stand in the way of progress :-) The Notes product team has finished and just published a "cookbook" white paper enti...

The IBM developerWorks Lotus team has launched phase II of their online wiki efforts in the developerWorks Lotus forums and community section. Eight Lotus-related wikis are now up and running:IBM Composite Applications wiki Find and share technical articles, samples, and best practices. These reso...

I've been remiss in blogging about last month's launch of Lotus Foundations. Lotus Foundations is the result of the acquisition of Net Integration Technologies (Nitix), as announced at Lotusphere 2008. In just a few short months, the product has been released under the Lotus brand, and new partn...

As Alan picked up last week, and a few bloggers have commented on...the Notes and Domino product pages on ibm.com have been redesigned. One of the attitude adjustments I really like about the new pages is that it starts to rid us of the artificial distinction between talking about Notes and talk...

I had a conversation late yesterday with one of the IBMers on the software side of IBM's System z team. We were talking about upcoming efforts to promote Domino on System z running Linux. On the record, I'll admit that over the years, I've been somewhat ambivalent about the various different ser...

OK, this topic has been beaten to death, with almost 150 comments here on edbrill.com, a bunch at Bruce Elgort's site, at Nathan Freeman's site, at John Head's site, and at Greyhawk's. Lotus VP of development Brent Peters has also chimed in, with this comment on vowe.net:Let me say, that we have th...

...Microsoft's TechEd progresses. There's a session on the agenda about migrating from Notes/Domino to the Microsoft unified communications platform. I'm obviously not there to see it -- too bad, as I understand I've been mentioned by name and some of my slides from Lotusphere have been used. It...

As mentioned, I spent the day yesterday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. My primary reason for being there was to work the Notes/Domino stand in the IBM booth Admittedly, ped duty isn't something a worldwide sales exec volunteers for all that often, but I wanted to get to E2.0 and see what this y...

Well I'm a few hours later than anticipated, but I've arrived in Boston to spend Wednesday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. I will be at the IBM booth in the expo from 12 noon to 2 and again 4:30 to 6:30 PM. Stop by to say hi. I've stocked up on business cards and moo cards (with my own photogra...

Blogged without a trace of irony.... AT&T is promoting Lotus Notes Traveler to Windows Mobile customers: Link: AT&T Certified Solutions Catalog: Lotus Notes Traveler...

Maybe I'm being a bit of a masochist this morning (can't wait to see what google hits are sent this way by my use of that word...)....Others had more strategic reasons for being disappointed with the iPhone's enteprise support. "They're missing 50 percent of the e-mail population," complained John...

The press and analysts have picked up on yesterday's session between IBM Lotus and Microsoft at Enterprise 2.0 yesterday... CIO.COM: Enterprise 2.0 Faceoff: Microsoft Lags Behind IBM in Social SoftwareWhile both vendors showed their products could integrate with existing e-mail systems (especially...

Yes, I know, today was the Stevenote at WWDC (translation = Steve Jobs keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference) and there was no mention of Lotus support for the iPhone and lots of mention of support for Exchange. The story remains the same as it has since Lotusphere. Domino Web Access...

This morning, I wish I had been at Enterprise 2.0. One of the first sessions, moderated by Burton Group's Mike Gotta, was a battle between IBM Lotus Connections and Microsoft SharePoint. By reading the blog reports, session back-channel, and twitter, it's become apparent -- Heidi Votaw and Suzanne...

Looks like I'm rolling 500 deep on Twitter... This is going to be an interesting week for the Twitter infrastructure, with Apple's WWDC and the Enterprise 2.0 conference both on tap. I notice that the top line on Twitter's website is trying to redirect readers who are interested in WWDC to Summ...

Apparently I missed the memo that I could have presented at this conference in jeans! (Photo: Martin Humpolec -- Thank you for your camera lens, looks like I've lost weight!) I'm sitting now with hundreds attending Mary Beth Raven's session covering Notes 8.5 and beyond. She's getting applause f...

Lest anyone think that this job is all about the glamourous life...today started at 5 AM Paris time. That's after going to bed somewhere around 1:30 AM Paris time, after a few conference calls back with the US last night. That 5 AM wakeup lead to a 7:45 AM flight to Bremen, where I arrived at the...

Quote from Rob Ingram, Sametime product manager, about visiting Germany:I like the bread and I like the beer.Amen, brother!...

Anthony takes a look at the return of -- and enhancements to -- roaming user support in the beta of Notes 8.5:I've reviewed the Notes 8.5 Public Beta 1 documentation on Roaming. As well as allowing the Notes 8.5 Standard client to roam like previous versions, there are some enhancements, including t...

It looks like I'll be able to make it out to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston next week. I'm excited to be there on Wednesday, June 11. I'll be at the Lotus product showcase pedestal from Noon to 4 PM and around for networking and the like the rest of the day. If you are there, be sure to...

One of the most enjoyable parts of my day job is working with IBM Lotus salespeople and business partners on learning the Notes/Domino business. IBM presents a series of in-depth "Top Gun" training classes for sellers:IBM Top Gun training is designed to increase sales, solutions, competitive and te...

It's hard to tell where the next chapter in the OOXML saga is going, and how relevant it is now that MS has announced their plans to ship both ODF support and OOXML-as-ratified in a later Office 2007 version...Venezuela and India have appealed against the official ratification of Microsoft's Office...

The Flickr album isn't 100% edited the way I'd like, but all my photos from Istanbul and Athens are now online. What incredible places, I will be back!...