This is another a series of my notes on Lotusphere 2011. I am very pleased to be back after ten years. I first came to co-present a Lotus Notes based KM project with my client. Now I return as a blogger. IBM was kind to set up some individual interviews. The first was with Kevin Cavanaugh, VP Business and Technical Strategy. This is a recent move. For the past nine years he was the VP of the Notes and Domino business.
The topic was the mobile aspects of social business. Kevin said that you can’t do social business without mobile but that all mobile is not social. For example, there might be a mobile inventory app that is not social. Someone asked about Windows Mobile. Kevin said that IBM does support it but they have not seen a lot of adoption Another person asked if there is a context for mobile awareness. Kevin said yes and this is one reason they are using native apps. An activity stream should provide location information. I would agree but you should also be able to turn off and I assume this is a capability.
Kevin said they are making a big investment in being native as much as possible. I think this is a smart move so you can bring in the core functionality of an app. It also allows for offline capability as you have with Notes replication. He said they are trying to use existing native apps when available such as with Apple but then building their own when necessary. The Connections 3.0 support for mobile is strong.
He said that SameTime clients will be available mid year or later in some cases. I did learn later that the IBM Business Partner, Meetrix, offers SameTme clients now. Meetrix has created an open standards-based Sametime platform that integrates seamlessly with third party vendors up in the cloud, including integrations with Broadsoft for VoIP/IP Telephony and Polycom.
Kevin said that with mobile, employees often buy the devices themselves so there is less control. It would seem to me that companies that supply computers should also provide mobile devices for standardization purposes. Kevin added that with Lotus Connections there will be a VPN solution. He said the IDC recently noted that IBM’s Traveler is the fastest growing mobile gateway in the market. They also have a lot of apps working on the IPad and iPhone now.
I think the big news here is the drive for native apps and this strengthens their offering.
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