Notes on Productivity Home Page

Last week I received a call from the folks at Phase2 - a recent Lotus Business Partner with big plans. Apparently, they are a company that hosts Notes and Domino apps on a SaaS Model. They contacted me because they had a customer (apparently an Exchange shop) that wanted to talk about using hosted Lotus Notes with our productivity software. That got my attention. I'm always delighted when I can give folks a new outlook on their productivity tools and I love it when folks decide to exchange what they are currently using for Lotus Notes/Domino.  I'm all for anything that can be done to make this process easier. I had hoped that LotusLive iNotes or LotusLive Notes might be that solution but it's not ready for SMBs yet and, from what I understand, they don't yet allow the use of custom mail templates, like eProductivity which is a deal killer for our clients that want to be more productive with Notes. I've always wanted to see someone offer Notes in a SaaS model without the heavy toll of a large startup fee or a high minimum number of users. It looks like Phase2 might fit that bill.

There's another reason why I'm interested in learning how well Notes as SaaS works: As a result of my public speaking on productivity and knowledge management, I'm frequently in a position to show how I use Lotus Notes to get things done, this invariably leads to a number of discussions with people that have never used Notes/Domino before and who want to know how to get started. Unfortunately, I can't help these people and I hesitate to encourage them because I don't want to inundate our support desk with calls from first-time Notes users that can't find the download link from the IBM site or who have questions about installation. The best I've been able to do so far is to point them to this page I wrote for first-time Notes users and then offer to refer them to any of a number of respected Lotus Business Partners that I know. For Domino hosting, I often refer people to Prominic. Clients that have used them tell me they have been pleased with the result.,

Sometimes, however, a company doesn't want to deal with the  licensing issues involved in managing their own or even a hosted Notes/Domino solution. Even with the reduced complexity of licensing (thank you Lotus!), it can take a lot of time and money to stand up a Lotus software suite with Notes, Domino, Quickr, Connections and Sametime. if someone can get this right as a turn-key operation, I think it would lower the cost (and hesitation) of doing pilots with the Lotus software suite. This is where it looks like Phase2 may comes in with their Lotus as SaaS model -- at least if I understand their web site right. They will set up the environment and provide the licensing for one monthly fee. (See update below)

This afternoon, I spoke with the folks at Phase2.com again. Apparently, one of their clients asked if it was possible to connect our eProductivity suite with their hosted Notes account. Absolutely - it's just a mail template that can be installed by end-user or administrator. I told them I was interested to see how the Phase2 customer experience worked. I wanted to know just how easy it is for a new user to request, provision, and deploy hosted Lotus Notes in order to experience the power of Notes. Well, it looks like I will soon have my answer. the folks at Phase2 are going to set me up with a few test accounts so that I can test the process. I’ll plan to write a follow-up post to report on how things went after I've had a few weeks experience with their offering.

I'm glad to see there’s someone hosting Lotus products in the cloud using a SaaS model for small numbers of users and I look forward to testing their solution.

Meanwhile, you can learn more at Phase2.com.

Update 3/8/2010: According to Phase2, they have negotiated a special license agreement with IBM which allows them to do this. I will try to share more details as I learn them.

At this year's Lotusphere event in Orlando, Lotus V.P. of messaging and collaboration, Kevin Cavanaugh, presented the Technology Keynote. The presentation is worth watching as Kevin and Lotus Product Manager, Ed Brill, talked about the Lotus product strategy, roadmap, and of course, Project Vulcan. At one point in Kevin's presentation talking about how Lotus applications can bring a variety of information to the user, he stopped and addressed a key problem that many users face: information overload.

... we don't need more calendars... we need a way to consolidate and adjudicate between competing events. [Lotus Notes can do that] ... we don't need more ways to capture text; we need ways to reduce the stress of unfulfilled commitments and organize tasks for action.

Kevin goes on to talk about how users need help managing their commitments...

...As an industry, we're kind of guilty of multiplying lists, with no real method for how those lists of tasks might be managed. However, there are some great counter-examples...

To learn what the counter examples are, watch the 2-minute video below...

Kevin and Ed get it. In a time when CEOs have extracted all the value they can from IT by cutting costs. The only thing left to increase the value from IT is to find ways to make workers more productive and effective with the tools they use. Lotus has introduced many new improvements and enhancements to the product line that can help, but at the end of the day, Lotus Knows that value creation begins with the individual. It's at this level -- increasing worker productivity -- that the next great opportunity to create value exists. It's exciting to see Lotus explore ways to increase knowledge worker productivity by looking beyond Lotus software to the best practices and tools that can complement Lotus offerings to help users get things done.

I'll be blogging more about this in the weeks to come...

Related Information:

ICA announces eProductivity 2.0 for Lotus Notes 8.51
ICA announces the upcoming release of eProductivity for IBM Lotus Foundations
Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing personal productivity with IBM Lotus Notes

It's often been my experience that when users complain about Lotus Notes, they are unaware that there are simple things that can be done to achieve a big boost in productivity. For example, I sometimes find that users do not have Lotus Notes set up to take advantage of Lotus Note's ability to keep a local replica - something that can lead to a dramatic performance improvement, especially when then the objective is to make the tool as productive as possible.

For the past 17 years, I've been serving organizations and individuals that use Lotus Notes to get things done. My focus is on high performance knowledge work and I teach the importance of having the right tools for the job and knowing how to use them to be productive. Unfortunately, many people don't give a thought to their systems and what makes them work well.

Instead of using tools that are optimized for the job, users often struggle and are less productive than they could be. That's like using a dull saw to cut a tree down -- you can do it, but it's going to take a lot more work to get the job done.

As I work with and coach clients around the world that use Lotus Notes, I'm often asked why Notes and their systems in general seem to get slower and slower. While there are many parts to the answer, the good news is that there is much you can do to improve the user experience in terms of performance.

First, let me provide some context: for purposes of this discussion I'll be referring to the Lotus Notes Mail file; however, the concepts I describe can be applied equally to any Lotus Notes database or application.

Before we can talk about the things that can be done to speed up Lotus Notes, we must first understand what aspects of your system and Notes affect performance. I have broken these down into three areas: System, Lotus Notes, and User Data. Elements in each of these areas will affect end-user performance. Some are things you can change easily; some are not. Let's take a look:

Continue Reading "Why is my Lotus Notes so slow? (how to improve your personal productivity by sharpening the saw)" »

I heard lots of good stuff, but I did not hear any earth-shattering news or announcements. I think that's a good thing. It means that IBM Lotus has a product line that is broad and deep with no gaping holes. In other words, solutions exist to not only meet the needs of business today but to transform how organizations do business tomorrow. I have lots more to share about Lotusphere and the meetings I have attended; I've taken a lot of pictures and notes and I want to spend some time thinking through the what I am seeing and hearing here at LS10 before I add my $.02.

For the latest information, PlanetLotus is a great aggregator site for all things Lotus. You can also follow the real-time twitter feeds at hash tag #LS10 or #LotusKnows.

Meanwhile, I will be presenting my session in Dolphin Southern II at 4:45 PM Today.
        BP302 Lotus Notes & Me: Maximizing Personal Productivity with IBM Lotus Notes

I hope to see you there.

As Ed Brill announced this morning, Lotus has released a new Lotus Solutions Catalog.

eProductivity is a featured app in the catalog, and I was really pleased to see eProductivity up on the big screen during a session called, "BDD101: Lotus Messaging and Collaborating drives Better Business Outcomes", presented by Kevin Cavanaugh and Mike Masterson.

Here are some pictures I took from the session (click for larger view):

Be sure to visit the catalog at http://catalog.lotus.com.

Here is a screenshot of the eProductivity catalog page (click to go to the page):

Hat tip to Mike and his team for doing a great job with the catalog.