Hectic Eclectic

Having spent some time at LCTY2010 in Edinburgh...

At times reduced to a Barcode...

I may still just agree that Lotus Knows...

At the event there were some great speakers, for me the Highlights being (I've retitled)

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

Don't be evil...?? Cyber attack on Google hit password system, says insider - 20/04/2010 - Computer Weekly

Cyber attack on Google hit password system, says insider - 20/04/2010 - Computer Weekly.

Bummer - looks like the old gmail account needs a password refresh!  And not 3 months too soon...

Don't be evil ... might that include full and open disclosure on information breech?  Thank goodness failure to disclose will most likely carry a fine in the UK from April 2011... but what if the server isn't UK hosted (like most of google tax avoiding UK business) will they be subject to the legislature...

#verymessycloudness

IBM wins Best Security Company in 2010 SC Awards

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

• 7,000,000,000+ security events managed daily
• 48,000+ vulnerabilities tracked in the IBM X-Force research and development database
• 15,000 researchers, developers and subject matter experts on security initiatives
• 4,000+ customers managed in security operations centres around the world
• 3,000+ security & risk management patents
• 40+ years of proven success with security and virtualisation

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  ;-)

Windows 7 Client Support Announced for Rational ClearCase & ClearQuest v7.1.1

ClearCase 7.1.1 and ClearQuest 7.1.1 introduce support for Microsoft Windows 7

You can get trial of this stuff to put onto your shiny new Win7 clients and start to test those vendor promises right away... Rational Clearcase Download Site

Unfamiliar with Rational ClearCase?  Well there is plenty to learn, Rational ClearCase is a software tool for revision control (e.g. configuration management, SCM) of source code and other software development.  Here's a screenshoot and details from IBM Support describing the explorer window.

The Rational^® ClearCase^® Explorer window consists of several panes and a toolbar.

By default, all panes and the toolbar are displayed.

• The toolbar provides quick access to frequently used commands. Move your mouse over the icon to display the command.
• The shortcut pane holds icons for your views. At the bottom it has two tabs: Views and Toolbox.

  Under the view icon Rational ClearCase lists the view tag, which is the name by which you reference a view.

• The folder pane identifies the root directory of the current view, and lists the data repositories, called VOBs, that are accessible under that view.

  Move your mouse over the root directory to display the view tag and its associated path.

• The detailspane displays the content of the item you selected in the folder pane.

  When you open the Rational ClearCase Explorer for the first time, with no view selected, or when you click the Getting Started tab in the Shortcut pane, the Details pane then displays a Getting Started Help topic.

  The details pane is replaced by a browser pane when it displays information in a Web browser.

• The status bar displays Rational ClearCase messages.
• The information pane displays information about selected views and tools in the shortcut pane. The behavior of the information pane varies as follows:
  • When you first open a view or select it, the information pane displays summary information about the type of view.
  • When you select a single item in the Details pane, the information pane displays summary information about the item. If you select more than one item in the Details pane, or an item in the Folder pane, the display changes back to summary view information.
  • The information pane is only displayed when the details pane is also displayed. Both are replaced when you display the browser pane.

Ok so that was a bit of Brain dump... but I'm not guilty cos ClearCase is pretty decent and I like what you can do.  That said  I am generally more interested in the Rational stable based on the Jazz plaform which you can find out about at Jazz.net  here is a description from draft 0.24 of the Detailed Architechture Overview of the site.

"The goal of the Jazz Integration Architecture (JIA) is to enable diverse tools to be used together providing an integrated experience to their users. This document provides an overview of JIA, and introduces the notion of a Jazz Team Server (JTS) that provides the Jazz Foundation Services (JFS) that allow groups of tools to work together. It also explains the relationship between JIA and Rational’s Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative."

The fulcrum provides flexible bridges ... simple, logical, functionally rich.  Very nice.

More info on World of Rational sometime soon... S

Some news for you iPhoners out there... though for now I still prefer Berries myself

Another one from Uncle StephenfromIBM - cool

You can see the Blackberry one here...

Small business IT support - made easy

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.