Category Archives: UC&C

So, Ed made our email exchange front-page news by posting summaries, but not the actual messages, from the thread of email we exchanged after my March 15 column, “Tooling Up for Exchange Migration“, went out. I think the summaries miss some important details, so I’m going to post the full messages in the next day or two; it’s a hassle to turn them into readable HTML, and I’m busy with several things that have to be done before I head out for Exchange Connections in Nice, so I don’t have time to do it right now. For now, suffice it to say that it’s interesting to see the comments from the Notes faithful complaining about IBM’s branding for WCS, Workplace, Websphere, and Notes.

Oh, heck, why not. Here’s Ed’s first message:

Paul —
I’m disappointed that you continue to push this falsehood about the Lotus product line:
“IBM is pushing Notes, and its successor, Workplace Collaboration Services, as a future-proof way to protect existing investments”.
Could you please provide documentation to evidence where IBM has indicated that Workplace Collaboration Services is the successor to Lotus Notes. When you determine that none exists, I ask that you please discontinue such references, which you also made in comments on your own weblog and others.
I’ll also question your assertion ” although Exchange clearly offers a better messaging and calendaring system than Notes (particularly when you include the desktop client in the comparison), ” but I guess you’re entitled to your opinion — clear or not.
Also, will you be covering the deficiencies in the Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Notes in a future newsletter, now that you’ve promoted its use in this week’s?
Thanks –Ed

And my reply (I’ve converted footnotes into links for readability and changed the formatting a bit):

Ed–
It’s clear that we disagree on a few things, and it’s ironic given that the intent of the sentence you complain about was to say that IBM is strongly pushing the notion that Notes/Domino/Workplace offers better investment protection than does Microsoft’s platform.
IBM has introduced WCS to offer “converging and complementary functionality”. Arthur Fontaine says that “Workplace Managed Client is an enhancement, not a replacement.” This sounds like the introduction of a completely separate product that provides a parallel path to Notes/Domino. On the other hand, you said: “When that happens, whether it’s Notes 7.5 or 8.x, the Notes client and the Workplace client become the same thing,” Brill said.
If they’re the same thing, that certainly gives the impression that the two are converging. That’s the whole idea of a one-lane road, isn’t it? In my experience, that means that only one will remain. Very, very few technology companies are willing to maintain two separate but parallel product tracks given the degree of investment that doing so requires. Erica Rugulies of Forrester gets the point when she questions whether IBM’s going to maintain two sets of collaboration tools.
David Via of Ferris said something analogous, quoted in an article with your own byline:
“It is now very clear that Notes technology (and most importantly millions of applications) will live on, effectively embedded in the new Workplace Client.
So, Notes applications will be embedded in the Workplace managed client, at which point they’ll be what? Notes applications not running in the Notes client? Notes applications that won’t necessarily be hosted on a Domino server? Sounds like a replacement to me. In fact, using language like “sets the stage for extensions to applications”[6] is very reminiscent of what Gary Devendorf keeps talking about, although in the opposite direction.
So, to answer your request [ed: for a correction]: no. I think there’s ample evidence to support the claim that Workplace will be the eventual successor to Notes, although you’re welcome to try to convince me that the quotes I cite mean something different.
Now, on to what “clearly” means in “clearly offers a better messaging and calendaring system”. From my perspective as a messaging administrator, and as a consultant who deals every day with a wide range of customer messaging environments, I think it’s fair to say that the current version of Exchange offers a number of desirable messaging features that Notes and Domino do not. These features include an integrated anti-spam filter and integrated wireless access for a wide range of devices, to say nothing of Exchange’s higher scalability on identical hardware. There are lots of little things, too: Exchange offers a much broader range of performance parameters you can monitor; the scripting environment for performing admin tasks is much richer,
On the client side, you and I both know that the Notes client has been lambasted over the years for its user interface. You can argue over whether that’s just a matter of it being unfamiliar to Outlook users; I think the bigger point is that the Notes interface diverges significantly from other Windows productivity applications (including not only Microsoft Office but Lotus’ own SmartSuite products); this divergence confuses users and makes them think that the Notes client is hard to use— because for them, it is. To its credit, the Notes team has worked hard to make the client UI more consistent; however, the very strength of interest in DAMO should indicate something about user preferences in the broader market.
As for writing about the app analyzer in more detail: I may or may not, depending on the amount of reader feedback I get. With Exchange 12 around the corner, most of my reader mail recently has been asking questions about some of the new features (notably unified messaging and compliance) that Microsoft hasn’t been discussing in detail.
Cheers,
-Paul

I’ll post more later, but now I really do need to get some real work done.

From the “own goal” department: Oracle found a vuln affecting multiple versions of their database, so they promptly posted a description and a description of the exploit on their Metalink web site. Oooops. Good thing they have a security czar to make sure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.

Amusing post from Roberto Boccadoro in which he attempts to explain IBM’s Workplace branding. He dismisses the existence of multiple products with the same name (“Does this create confusion? I do not think so”) and heaps fun on Microsoft from the explosion of products that live under the Office brand.

Why is this amusing? Because customers don’t understand what the difference is between Workplace-the-product and Workplace-the-brand. I see this time and again when I speak with people. Just as it was a bad idea for Microsoft to have two different products both named SharePoint, IBM’s differentiation between Workplace and its subordinate products isn’t, well, working. And don’t get me started on the many subordinate products– when you install Workplace Collaboration Services (hmm, they didn’t steal that name from Oracle, did they?) you also get WebSphere and a passel of other, un-Workplace-branded products. By contrast, Notes/Sametime has a much more consistent branding message… at least, it did until I got hoovered up into Workplace.

I wish I had more time to write more, but I don’t. A few brief notes: user admin is still kind of a mishmash, because you have to create directory users and provision them through one tool, then manage their rights in each application through that application. If a component isn’t installed or running, you can’t provision it. For example, if you don’t start the mail service, when you create a user account, it won’t have any email attributes. (It’s simple to go back to oiddas and add that capability, but it stinks that you have to.)

Second, your first move ought to be to grant the orcladmin user email admin rights, then create a domain. This isn’t well described in Oracle’s documentation– the steps required to complete these tasks are, but not the fact that you have to do them in the first place. If you don’t do this, you’ll have all kinds of hassles.

My copy of the Burleson and Garmany book got here today, but I’ve been too busy to read any of it yet. Perhaps tonight.

Oh, and when you create a new user, don’t put in a FQDN for the email address. If you do, you’ll end up in a catch-22: you can’t create an email domain for the RHS of the address, but you can’t remove the existing email address (or log on to the OCS mail page) because… wait for it… the domain doesn’t exist.

Domino and Exchange are easy to start. Workplace is moderately easy (or, at least, the start procedure is well documented). None of these things are true of Oracle Collaboration Suite (OCS).

There are actually three separate OCS tiers: the database itself, the infrastructure tier, and the midtier, which is actually where most of OCS functionality is implemented. The problem is that you have to already be an Oracle DBA to know which services to start in what order. The documentation describes the process in general terms, but Oracle was kind enough to provide sample scripts to do the job for you: search Oracle’s docs for “ocsctl_sample” and you’ll find them.

One side note: if you’ve done a one-box install, you must manually reset the ORACLE_HOME environment value before running ocsctl_sample (or its equivalent) because the infrastructure and application components go in two separate places.

While Devin beavers away on Workplace, I’m digging in to Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g. So far, I can report that the install experience is about a million times better than OCS r2 or (gack) the original version. However, the documentation isn’t greatly improved, and now that it’s installed I’m having a heck of a time getting it to actually work.

Metalink article 331666.1 has a ton of very detailed guidance in it which is absolutely worthless until you manage to get opmn and the other baseline services running. I’ve just ordered Burleson and Garmony’s Oracle AS 10g book, so I’ll see if it helps any.

Devin and I are trying to get Workplace IM to work. I can log on with IE for Windows, but not Firefox for Windows or Mac or Safari for Mac– clicking the “Log me in to instant messaging” link doesn’t do anything. He can log on with Firefox or IE for Windows. After several logout/login cycles, he and I were able to see each other– giving us a plain-text IM window reminiscent of BBS chat in 1982. It’s a far cry from Communicator Web Access, that’s for sure (much less a rich client like the desktop version of Communicator or iChat).

I’m finally able to take some time to dig into IBM’s Workplace product line. Long-time readers will remember that I wrote about buying licenses last year, but I’m just now getting around to working with the product (currently at version 2.5.1).

So far, here’s what I’ve learned. Bear in mind that I’m working with the full Workplace product, not Workplace Services Express.

First, when IBM recommends 4GB of RAM, they mean it. I tried running a single-server Workplace install in a VM with 1.5GB, and it was page-faulting like a madman– it took more than 15 minutes just to get a logon page. On a single-CPU machine with 2GB, performance is more acceptable but still not great. (I remember complaining that betas of Exchange 2000 on a single-CPU machine were slow with less than 384MB of RAM… technology marches on!)

Second, if you don’t already know what you’re doing, too bad; there’s no “getting started” documentation that I can find. There’s a redbook called “Deploying IBM Workplace Collaboration Services on the IBM eServer iSeries Server” that purports to explain some of the getting-started stuff, but it’s a draft, and there’s a lot of missing content (like, say, the index). For example, chapter 4 (on directory services) has a note that says “new drafts will be published at least weekly”, but it was last updated 13 July 2005. Oops. The DeveloperWorks site has a ton of Workplace-specific information, but it’s focused (as you’d expect) on developing and customizing apps, not on basic administrative tasks.

This is problematic because it’s not obvious (or even discoverable) how to perform many common tasks. How do you add a user? Well, it depends. If you’ve set up Workplace to use an external LDAP directory, you add users using your normal directory service and Workplace provisions them for you… but the default install uses WebSphere Member Manager vice an external directory, which is (AFAICT) completely invisible in the Workplace management tools. (For fun, try searching for “member manager” on the WebSphere Portal technical library… completely worthless.) In fact, as near as I can tell, WMM is always used as a lookaside DB to store Workplace-specific properties that may not be supported by the underlying LDAP directory. However, I can’t find a list of these properties, so it’s not clear whether other applications could make use of them. Users can self-provision (a nice touch) from the Workplace logon page, but that doesn’t scale well.

Interestingly, the install instructions for a single-server demo deployment say you should use the default Cloudscape DBMS. However, the planning guide says that Cloudscape isn’t robust enough for production use, so I guess you also have to buy a license for either DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server.

Finally, as far as I can tell, ordinary mortals still can’t buy the rich client. It’s reportedly available from IBM’s PartnerWorld, so I guess I’d better sign up as an IBM partner if I want to test it. Sheesh.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t post this announcement here, but I’m going to break tradition and do so because I’m one of the conference co-chairs. As such, I have to help find speakers, so I want this call for papers to go out far and wide.

Windows IT Pro is now accepting session proposals for the Oct-Nov. 2005 Windows Connections conference. We’re heading to San Diego October 30 to November 2, 2005, for the premier Windows technical conference, and we’d like to hear from you!

If you’re interested in speaking on Exchange-related topics at the show, send your abstracts to paul@robichaux.net by February 18. We want proposals for regular 75-minute sessions, as well as 1/2 day and full day pre-conference and post-conference sessions.

Note that we have a limited number of speaking slots, and all participants must be able to present a minimum of three 75-minute sessions. There are three basic requirements:

• Send a minimum of 3 session proposals (4 or 5 is ideal for discussion purposes)

• Include a biographical statement with your session proposals

• Include any additional pre- or post-con session proposals, if applicable

Please adhere to the February 18 deadline as we need to make speaker and session selections right away. (We plan to have a conference brochure ready to distribute at TechEd in June.)

I had a very interesting phone call yesterday with an IBMer named Jim Colson. Jim actually is the chief architect responsible for the Workplace Client Technology platform, and he’d contacted me after seeing my earlier post complaining that WCT wasn’t generally available to tell me that it is available. Clearly there was a disconnect if it appeared that two different parts of IBM were telling me two different things, so I was eager to get the lowdown.

Jim explained that WCT is a client middleware platform, which  includes a wide range of technologies (including a managed client container, access technologies such as messaging, distributed business logic, data synchronization, and interaction technologies such as Embedded ViaVoice, and other presentation services including browser based and widget based interfaces from Eclipse).  These technologies can be used to build applications on various types of embedded, mobile, desktop, laptop, and server devices. The underlying technology has been in development for about 7 years; and  has been deployed in a wide range of solutions such as cars from Honda, Nokia mobile phones, laptops and tablets with Nissay,  and a wide range of line-of-business apps.

WCT is currently available to customers in a variety of forms. It’s already built into a number of other products, and the WCT Micro Edition SDK offers a freely downloadable set of WCT components that can be used to evaluate WCT as an app dev platform. (To be perfectly unambiguous: the SDK is for production use, but you can download it to play with.)

WCT supports building deployable assemblies of components– think of them as packaged runtimes– to support particular applications. The Enterprise Offering (more properly, the Workplace Client Technology, Micro Edition Enterprise Offering, or WCTME-EO) bundles the most commonly required components and middleware services for desktop and laptop-class devices into a single deployable bundle. So, mea culpa: WCTME-EO and the WCT SDK are both generally available and widely used, my earlier claims notwithstanding.  Thanks Jim!

Still with me? OK, back to my previous post. Among other WCT customers, Lotus is using the WCT platform to build their own client, the Workplace Client Technology, Rich Edition. This is the actual client middle platform that I’ve been trying to get, and it is not generally available– at least according to my IBM sales rep and the Lotus WCT Project Office. That’s supposed to change with the release of Lotus Workplace Messaging 2.5 and Lotus Workplace Documents 2.5.

To put this in more familiar terms, my earlier post was roughly equivalent to complaining that Microsoft wouldn’t let me have the .NET Framework (which is freely available and widely deployed, and for which beta/preview versions exist) when what I really wanted was Office. You can argue over whether Lotus is being forthright about exactly who can get  their WCT-based clients, and under what circumstances, but the bottom line is that WCT itself is available, and that’s what Jim was trying to help me understand. Now I know what specific term to use next time I complain to Ed Brill.

Since my earlier posts on Workplace, I’ve been struggling with a problem: IBM won’t sell me licenses for the Workplace Rich Client (echoes of “The Soup Nazi“…) After the earlier pricing misfire, I got another email from my sales rep, invoking the mighty power of the Workplace Client Technology Project Office:

The Workplace Client Technology Project Office has as its mission the job of implementing the Workplace Client Technology into customers environments in a controlled and measured manner and they are running pilot programs for customers. They have asked the following questions be answered in order to be considered for this piloting. We need to ensure the customer has



1. gained a thorough understanding of the technology

2. applied that understanding to real, known business pain(s) in their organization

3. high level sponsorship within their account that will consider making this technology part of their architectural strategy moving forward

Upon completion of this pre-qualification process, the Project Office can then select customers to pilot the software. Once the customer is accepted into the pilot program, we provide the customer information to download software from Passport Advantage.

We went back and forth a few times, as I sought to reassure my sales rep that I wasn’t about to start madly deploying WCT in my Fortune 100 clients without any succor from the Project Office. That didn’t help; the Project Office then wanted to know why we were an MS partner, how much Notes application development we did, and what IBM products we currently had deployed. I then sent a more detailed response that explained what we do (including an explanation of how we do capability assessments and product evaluations) and why we wanted the software. I haven’t heard back from the project office yet (or from my sales rep, for that matter), although this might be due to the holidays.

Why is IBM being so tight with this technology? Sure, it might just be a matter of risk management; they don’t want customers to have bad experiences with the product. That’s understandable, although I note that Microsoft and Oracle (among others) restrict access to beta versions of their product, not the released versions. (As a side note, I find it a little offensive that IBM expects me to audition to gain the right to buy their product, but maybe that’s just me. At least there’s no swimsuit competition).

IMHO, IBM’s overdoing it, because this approach (“we have a ‘game-changing technology‘ but we won’t let you have so you can start gaining an understanding of it”) is not exactly going to speed their product’s adoption. The WCT information page says that you need to contact your sales rep if you want to pilot or deploy the product, but it doesn’t mention the fact that the Project Office is liable to tell you to go pound sand unless you survive their evaluation process. In fairness, that result is alluded to here, but I would be happier to see a forthright acknowledgement.

So, for now the answer I’m giving my customers is simple: “WCT is not generally available to customers, although neither IBM nor press reports have made this explicit. Draw your own conclusions about what that says of its deployment readiness and maturity. I can’t comment because I haven’t been able to work with it.” I am hopeful that the strictures on WCT will loosen somewhat when 2.5 ships, but we’ll have to wait and see.