Lotus support give us a link to a paper from IBM and VMware which details the results of testing a complex Lotus Sametime environment on ESX Server to see how well it scales. Summary: it does scale pretty well.
IBM and VMware have jointly published their first paper on running a Sametime server in a VMware Infrastructure 3 environment — a configuration that minimizes “server sprawl” while simultaneously providing a highly available deployment solution.
In this test, IBM and VMware deployed a complex Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 configuration, using ESX Server 3.0.2 to verify whether this solution can support several thousand (over 100,000) Sametime chat users on a single, powerful machine.
IBM developerWorks has published a tutorial about the OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF).
The OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is an XML standard that lets you store and exchange office application documents, including word-processor, spreadsheet, and presentation files. Whether you try to perform special tasks on files saved from such applications or work on applications to process such files, you should become familiar with this important format. Learn about the two possible forms of OpenDocument files, as multipart packages and as single XML documents, and learn how to structure text and tabular information in OpenDocument.
This video is part of a series of demo videos on IBM Lotus Connections. Connections is social networking software that consists of five services - Activities, Blogs, Communities, Dogear, and Profiles. In this video, you will view a demonstration of the Profiles service.
Yes, I know you can’t download IBM Mashup Center yet, but you will be able to very soon, I promise. I’ve been heads-down working with our awesome dev teams getting this ready for beta, but unfortunately, we’re just not ready for a public beta _quite_ yet. So, here’s a deck that I pulled together that I just got clearance to blog about today that reveals some additional details of Mashup Center, Lotus Mashups, and InfoSphere MashupHub
IBM today announced that its new portal software with Web 2.0 support will ship this quarter. Called IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1, it is designed to securely combine information from both the enterprise and the Web.
A portal is a technology for providing external and internal Web sites which can deliver information, applications, and processes to provide a personalized experience to individuals. Web 2.0 technologies are increasingly being used for business by empowering people with content, social connections and other tools to solve problems.
I must admit I’m a little cynical about the corporate “Web 2.0″ bandwagon. I’m yet to see much in the way of innovation here - mostly its just playing catch-up and is already years behind where the useful stuff is happening. That being said, I haven’t seen or used this release of Portal, so I can’t judge it yet.
I am also pretty curious about the other new product announced today though - TotalForms. Depending on how it is structured and more importantly - how it is priced … this could be a great tool for the SMB market.
With diverse data sources and inefficient, time consuming processes needed to turn data into useful information, more companies are turning to web-based forms. In response, IBM announced today a new lightweight entry-level product code-named “TotalForms” which the company plans to ship in beta in June.
“TotalForms” is an easy-to-use version of IBM’s Lotus Forms software that will enable nontechnical people to quickly create, publish and route electronic forms submitted via the web. It can be used for a variety of tasks including customer satisfaction surveys, job applications and product orders. Based on an open and scalable nonproprietary software platform and Web 2.0 technology, “TotalForms” will integrate with IBM WebSphere Portal to provide one familiar interface for customers.
A new whitepaper is available on IBM developerWorks with information on developing themes and skins in Portal 6.
This white paper provides IBM® WebSphere® Portal developers an understanding of the new features and layouts available with the version 6.0.X themes and skins, addressing new functionality such as theme extensions and theme policies. It also covers how the various files that make up the complete theme are pulled together and how they are used to control the various aspects of the look and feel.
“IBM Makes Web 2.0 Accessible to Users at Every Technical Level”
An interesting approach - I’m wondering how effective it will be. Security and data integrity are still critical parts of an enterprise - and will the IT departments really see value in allowing end users to do things on their own ? I suspect the ROI may be questionable if it takes too much effort to expose all the systems to be mashed. Especially when IBM already has quite a few mature products quite capable of performing this task already (under non-Web 2.0-compliant naming of course!)
IBM Press release:
IBM today unveiled the industry’s first complete mashup portfolio for business, empowering individuals to create situational applications, or mashups, and to help them do their jobs more effectively and meet the needs of the emerging real time enterprise. Innovative companies of every size are beginning to realize the value of service oriented architecture and possibilities of Web 2.0.
Today’s Information Technology departments are under enormous pressure to allow business users to interact with information on demand, including text, audio, video and data from the Web — but must often prioritize enterprise-wide issues ahead of the needs of individual departments and end users. This balancing act frequently leads to frustration and missed opportunities, and causes increasingly tech-savvy business users to embrace new, simpler technologies, in some cases bypassing central IT departments.
IBM understands the challenges of both sides, and has created a mashup portfolio to help all types of individual users and teams get the information they need. The portfolio is centered around two key products: IBM Mashup Center and WebSphere sMash. Together, these new products enable everyone from the non-technical business user to the IT Manager to develop dynamic applications to satisfy an immediate need.
This is the first in a series of demo videos on IBM Lotus Connections. Connections is social networking software that consists of five services - Activities, Blogs, Communities, Dogear, and Profiles. In this video, you will view a demonstration of the Activities service.
IBM developerWorks is starting a series of articles about how to introduce Linux into an organisation - including a discussion about the various decision points and a look at the contents of their solution. It’s an interesting topic even if just for a discussion about the implications of moving away from MS and how you might solve the various gaps (perceived or otherwise) in capability of a Linux based solution.
Learn what’s involved when introducing a Linux® client pilot in your organization, including planning for business and IT requirements, architecture decisions, risks, and understanding how IBM’s open collaboration client is used to implement this desktop of the future, today.
This article guides you through the most important technical decisions involved when you introduce a Linux client in your organization. Business and IT requirements range from the need to reduce cost to a variety of desktop migration pressures. We begin by introducing the IBM® open collaboration client solution (OCCS). We present the need for our solution based on business and IT requirements, and then we provide a detailed view of the OCCS architecture.
Included are a brief introduction to the solution components and a high-level view of the OCCS jumpstart method with the associated processes and work products. We also examine key architectural decisions, associated risks, and risk mitigation strategies based on lessons learned from customer implementations.
As WebSphere Application Server installations grow to accommodate the growth of business processing, the question “How large can a WebSphere Application Server cell be?” is being asked more often. This IBM Redbook discusses large WebSphere Application Server installations, and as you will see, the answer to the question is not straightforward. Numerous variables play a part in supporting or constraining the size of a WebSphere environment. These variables are most likely different in each WebSphere Application Server installation, resulting in a different answer for each environment.
This Redbook discusses large WebSphere Application Server topologies, focusing specifically on best practices when planning and configuring the high availability manager, core groups, and core group bridging. A review of high availability, core groups, and core group bridging features is followed by extensive coverage of planning, designing, and implementing a large cell migration. The book then covers detailed scenarios of configuring single and multiple core group topologies.
In addition, the scripts, applications, and batch files used to set up and test the scenarios are included as additional material that can be downloaded and modified as required for your specific environment.
This Redbook is intended for WebSphere Application Server administrators and planners who are considering migrating their small to midsize installations to larger topologies.
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