At times reduced to a Barcode...
Stuart McRae a Collaboration Evangelist - Connections plus with special sauce
John Schumacher a Director of Development at Lotus - It's the ROI stupid
and
Eliza Manningham-Buller, from the Bond movies - on being in MI5
So there was a lot to see...
Stuart's demo showcased a load of little 10second savers (widgets) being used in concert and in context within Lotus Connections and Domino (yes you could have used outlook for this bit). Widget shown were either Business Partner e.g. Snapp, Big publically available stuff like linkedin and TrippIt and some internal IBM tools, or publically available stuff from the IBM Lotus Labs.
If you can save people 5mins every day through smarter working. That is about 1% of a working day. So with hundred staff you can have 100 staff doing the work of 101. With a 1000 staff you are getting the work of 1010. So for a 1000 employee business you save 10 average salaries... Think about you average company salary for a moment.... think you should be considering this stuff? I do.
For a £20k average salary
1000 staff equates to savings of £200k p.a.
For a £40k average salary
500 staff equates to savings of £200k p.a.
or
1000 staff equates to savings of £400k p.a.
Powerful stuff ... but who believes the 5mins right? Well Stuart showed one example after another of how time could be saved.... if you couldn't easily find AT LEAST 5mins you are probably doing something mad.
Stuart McRae also touched on some of the stuff I've mentioned already about Blackberry and the iPhone but it was cool to see some iPad announces too and to hear reinforced that IBM's view is - you choose the device and we'll work with anyone. Some really cool announces on how people are working well with Alloy by IBM & SAP (wee blog on that), Connections, Quickr and the rest on the Blackberry.
Amongst other things I was reminded by a colleague to check out Ed Brill's blog - where I hadn't been for a while, which led me to some Lotus Protector articles. Zero false positives at 99% effective... not bad and ICSALabs certified. If you don't know it much check out these videos with Arthur Fontaine
Hi, I mentioned earlier that some fines were likely to come in to law - well they just have. So if you haven't got your house in order you probably should be thinking about it.
Whether you are governed by PCI, FSA or anything else this is the catchall - so make sure you are on top of it.
Oh, and it lok like a few guys
Zurich Insurance
(who lost 46,000 unencrypted records)
Royal London
just missed out on being the first big fine... good old post ex-facto... ;-(
Watch out all you data protection guys... call us if you need a hand...
Looks like the date is in for our next IPCCTV Event -Thursday May 06, 2010, 09:30-12:30
We've been working with Guys at King Communications to get the tweak the agenda for the intended audience. We've listened to the feedback from the last three events and think this one will be even better than the last.
The event will be held at the Dakota Hotel at Eurocentral will feature a number of in depth demonstrations of Milestone XProtect Corporate software and you will be able to see the systems running on IBM System X Servers and Storage.
XProtect 3.1 and Smart Client 5.0 Launch Webinar MIPS 2010 from Fredrik Wallberg on Vimeo.
The last event had over 60 attendees and we expect more this year. You can register on the Kings Event landing page here and if you want to let your network know what you are up to you can declare you are attending on linkedin.com by adding the event to your linkedin profile.#ipcctv #ipcctvscotland
IBM scooped the Best Security Company at Secure Computing 2010 Awards. Click these here links for a full list of finalists and winners. IMHO this is cos IBM has been going all aquisitive on us and snapped up, it would appear strategically (well done guys), all sorts of niche solutions over the past four or five years. Noteably for those of us at Seric Towers are of course Watchfire (2007) and Ounce Labs (2009) and we do see a fair bit of ISS (2006) out there in cyberville. Throw these bad boys into the already reasonably juicy mix and rub some GBS on it and IBM have a good story to tell those enterprise boys. Good enough to win the Security Company of the Year from SC at the largest awards in the Security Industry Calendar.
Here are some of the factoids about what IBM is doing to get just such an accolade
Why am I telling you this - well this would be the shameless plug section of the blog, we do this stuff! We supply and support the IBM's Rational AppScan Suite - covering black and whitebox application scanning. If you want secure code out there that won't leave you with egg (a fine) on your face (balance sheet) get in touch! Look, I even have a snazzy graphic for this stuff on my blog - yes, I spotted it should read PROTECTED
There are are 10 different siblings in the AppScan Family. You can compare the members of the AppScan clan here - though it is a particularly bad page as the row headings don't change with teh product changes and products look devoid of features when they are in fact irrelevant. Anyway - pick three and compare like-for-like, find what you like and then call us 0141 561 1161 - we'd like that ;-)
We are working with the Rational folks at IBM on a wee dram of and Event at the Whisky Society in Edinburgh. It should be pretty useful and a thoroughly good day out.
Event details on Scotland IS site
Probably relevant if....
You have a development team and you are interested in...
.......Or have an interest in Jazz (no comment)....
......You get all hot and flustered over Software Security & Compliance and love to.....
.... or perhaps the Software
Quality isn't quite what you would like and you have been known to say things like this but perhaps in a less marketing robot fashion
Hope to see you there....
Having just won some business in an entirely new area with client of relativley long standing it struck me how there are different dynamics in delivering on such a project. Newer contacts coupled with more familiar faces exposes the PM to increased risk of complacency, mismanaged expectations, broken promises and failure.
No one likes a broken promise!
I have spent some time thinking about how best to combat this one and some good time spent up front is the order of the day. We don't and won't do hit and run. Watch this space...
I am reminded of the only Oprah Winfrey Quotation I have committed to memory
and to those quotation snobs, may I quote the most quotable (Seneca)
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
...but must apologise to Dear Ms Winfrey, as I must confess I have never read 'Good Housekeeping', well certainly not the US edition!
Having had a look at Wolfram-Alpha it seems like Stephen and friends have been busy little bunnies. I've been a fan since the first time I got my mitts on a copy of Mathematica way back when and it just did EVERYTHING better. Of course other stuff has come along to fill little niches and do some stuff really well but it is still the biggest the best and has the most delicious syntax. If a syntax can be beautiful the Wolfster def made the best stab at it. Look at the wonderful things you can do with it. Easter eggs on Mathematica - I bet they taste even better than they look. Not bad for an Old Etonian.
But what the Real Michael J and friends have been up to recently looks like a real step forward in information collation for the nation, and I do mean the nation; though I salute more than Stephen's team's indefatigability their most recent progeny glut are certainly norteamericanos and sans passport at that. But the turtle progresses only by sticking its neck out and this lot have clearly been wearing their turtlenecks.
Music on a search engine - these guys have been thinking afresh and thinking it through. I've never read it but I can't imagine there are not at least a few synesthetes in the development team to come up with this stuff. What would Duke Ellington and Miles Davis have made of this stuff I suspect they would have loved it. I'm guessing Richard David James is already a keen follower...
So many clever boys and girls make explicit connections between what for many, are very different spheres of knowledge. The sysnethete to me seems both the extreme example of, and the niche polymath - and I note that last bit smells of oxymoron. I don't want to colour anyone's views but could this be the first steps towards a more general correlation of pools of knowledge in the population. I often say to people that clever people do a few things in the vedic tradition of little and often,
Well the boys at Wolfram have a wonderful alpha out there now and as it passes my 5-point test I'm all for it. Centred on America, sure; Does loads of things worse than Google, definitely; Loads of bugs, you've got me! Like I said earlier - you have to stick your neck out, so why not check it out and take it somewhere new?
I set up a group on Linked in for folks with some connection or another to PSYBT. Now in its 20th Anniversary year PSYBT is great charity and the one I got started up in business with. A combination of great aftercare support and a loan was just great. The little group (PSYBT Alumni & Friends of PSYBT) I set up on linkedin.com, and it has just reached 64 members. Though it has been a little time consuming trying to get the group moving along I still love it at 64... Amazing what can be achieved with numbers and a common goal. Business already being passed to keep these young businesses going.
I set up the group in order to encourage more interaction between PSYBT
businesses and to tap into the seam of goodwill that exists for the
charity and its clients.
In any case please encourage any folks with a connection to PSYBT to join and
post with any news of their businesses. A new website, new win, new
product or service... I'm sure the wider group would be glad to hear
about it and may even have some good feedback.
Although still small the group has grown quite a bit recently and
I'm sure as it continues to grow it will be a pretty useful resource
for clients and supporters alike.
Chow for niao
Due to an administrative oversight at Seric Towers it seems yours truly
is one exam short of a diet. No ad libs please. Seems the BP Police at
IBM Mansions
have discovered this technicality and been diligent enough to remove
any theoretical loophole I might have been hypothecating about. Isn't
life unfair? I know dear reader, I know.
So what excitement lies ahead for lil ole me? IBM Certified Specialist - IBM Storage Sales, Version 9. It is a bit raunchier than v7 and has a better ending than v8 - so it can't be all bad. On lamenting my prediction to SWMBO she informed me that she was as surprised as I that I didn't know everything already. I'm sure if SWMBO just keeps searching her cheek her tongue will turn up.
You spoke and we listened. So here at Seric we've re-packaged our small business support and believe we have a very competitive price for an excellent service. Simple pricing - no double talk - support for blackberries - backup and the rest. Here is our all inclusive pricing.
PC Remote Support - £7.50/mth
Blackberry Support - £2.50/mth
Server/Network Monitoring - £29/mth
Server Remote Support + Server/Network Monitoring - £99/mth
(Discounts available for large volumes)
Give us a call on (0141) 561-1161 and find out how we can help you save some time and some money... and speak to some of happy clients.
Sure it's release 1.0 and these things are never without their challenges... but it does look pretty good indeed. Steve Klinkner gives a good overview in his Simple Steve blog There are all sorts of interesting bits and bobs that plug together roughly like this...
With more than 110 software options now to go on NetApp equipment seems there are more and more reasons to be looking at this stuff. Any proper technical questions - ask our Billy. As he keeps telling me I'm just in Sales now. The very thought!
