IBM and OpenOffice.org

I have been speaking to some of the guys working on getting Lotus Symphony launched and I must say I'm impressed. Just a little bit anyway. Symphony is still build on the old OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 but that is actually not the most important thing. The application has been enhanged dramatically and what you first find, is that extra pane to the right. The pane shows you tools that are relevant to what ever you are doing. Very much like the context sensitive right-click. The difference is, that the pane is there when you need it without having to call it.

Besides, Lotus Symphony can be extended with Eclipse plugins and soon you can write macros using Lotus Script. Lotus Script can be initiated from within Lotus Notes or from the Office application. And with access to the UNO api from Lotus Script, you can really get a long way.

Lotus Symphony can be used in composite applications and with that method, you can join data fra Lotus Notes, web pages etc. and wotk with data e.g. in a spreadsheet.

Some time ago, my advise to Lotus Notes customer was to use OpenOffice.org 3.0 for naw but wait and see about Lotus Symphony. I must say that this advise might fall soon. Lotus Notes user: Try Symphony. Its really a cool suite and you can taka advantage of some of the stuff right now, even if you are not on the brand new Lotus Notes 8.5. Lotus Symphony can be extended to wotk with data from older versions of Notes too.

My first day af my first LotusPhere

Ok. Here I am.

LotusPhere 2009, Orlando, Florida!

This is my first LotusPhere and the first day (Business Development Day) is almost over. My impresison?

Perfect arrangement. Even considering that we are about one hour late and that the last slot is cancelled, I guess thats what to expect, when you gather all business partners on one spot. Transportation and logistics are perfect and the hotel facilities are working fine. The delay wwas caused by presentations that were too long.

I'm really looking forward to the upcomming days in the labs. I expect to see much more of Lotus Expeditor, Lotus Symphony and Lotus Sametime. Thats what I'm hooked up with. I don't think I get much time doing development stuff. There are five tracks, and I just have to jump my way though the most interesting things.

Its a wonderfull place here at the Swan and Dolphin resort. It's about 24 degrees celsius outside and the ait condition in the small rooms are not cappale of keeping up with the warm weather.

LotusPhere - Here I come

I've been looking forward to my trip to Orlando, Florida for months.

Tomorrow morning (early), I'll leave Copenhagen - going to Disney World and LotusPhere.

What will be my scope ?

First of all, I'll try to find as many sessions about Lotus Symphony as possible. I hope to see some examples with Lotus Symphony binded up with Lotus Notes as Composite. I really hope to see how to merge Notes data in spreadsheets/charts and text documents.

Also I will try to find further business opportunities in Lotus Sametime.

Social networking perhaps? If I get the time.

Why not Lotus Symphony right away ?

As I often advocate for OpenOffice.org in both private and business societies, I get questions about Lotus Symphony and Lotus Notes 8 from time to time. My advise to companies that are already using Lotus Notes is, to take Lotus Symphony serious as a future possibility. Right now I say: "Use Openoffice.org 3.0".

The reason for not advocating Lotus Symphony at the present time is, that the application is basically build on old code. If you look at it from a functions- and features perspective, the Lotus Symphony is not as rich as OpenOffice.org. At the same tim IBM has been very closed when it comes to information about the actual plans. Last autumn I asked IBM if there where plans to move from OOo 1.x code base to 3.x code base. I also asked if IBM had plans to implement support for extensions. No reply. During this years OpenOffice.org Conference IBM announced that there are plans to elevate the application to OOo 3 code base but still no time frame for the plans (did I miss something?). That is the reason why I put Lotus Symphony 'on hold' as the best alternative for the moment. I hope IBM will show me that they can do better, but at the time that happens, a lot of customers will be using OpenOffice.org. With a clear and accurate time plan for the development of Lotus Symphony, lots of customers might be able to make another decision.

I see a lot of good perspective in Lotus Notes in the future. It give meaning to build productivity tools on the same (eclipse) platform and the screencasts I have seen so far from Notes 8.5 looks nice. Imaging composite applications with Lotus Notes, Websites and a spreadsheet or text document ? It gives very good meaning.

Lotus Notes integration

I've been working with system integration with Lotus Notes and Office for several years now and I have been looking forward to see how IBM Lotus would take advantage of Lotus Symphony and Lotus Notes. Both applications are build on the same Eclipse platform and I have talked to lots of customers about how IBM could take advantage of this.

Here it is. And I hope that this is only the beginning.

Bob Balfe writes on his blog how Lotus Symphony can be 'composite' in the future: http://blog.balfes.net/index.php?entry=entry080910-110959

Watch the demo video here: http://blog.balfes.net/files/ntosin6/Notes2SymphonyIn6Minutes.html and see how selecting documents in a view can update a spreadsheet chart. Woow.

OpenOffice.org in enterpise

Symfoni Software held at the beginning of June its annual BRUKERFORUM. This year the event was held in Tallinn in Estonia, where around 65 of Symfoni Software's customers from Norway, Denmark and Sweden was together.

I am working as project manager at Symfoni Software Copenhagen office , but I am also leader of the OpenOffice.org community in Denmark. I spoke at the conference about how and why OpenOffice.org can be a good business for any IT department.

I discussed the possibility of implementing OpenOffice.org as an alternative to MS Office. I pointed out that before the implementation, you must take into account four factors:

1) users should be informed and trained. First, to achieve skills in order to continue to work effectively in the organization. But also to gain acceptance and understanding for the transition to open source. The reason is that one of the biggest challenges, is actually staff resistance and not technical or practical problems.

2) it must be examined tp what extent templates, macros and advanced spreadsheet are used in the organization. Prioritize what actions are required before implementation, and which can wait until later.

3) it must be examined to what extent there are business applications (e.g. ERP systems and enterprise data) with direct integration to MS Office. In many cases, such integration does not exist.

4) it must be considered if conversion of documents should be taken into account. For example. existing documents and future documents exchanged with customers, partners.

During the presentation, I told that if the company or organization has many users and few customizations, could achieve a very rapid benefit, while few users and many adjustments will make it less rapid to achieve benefit. However, it is also appropriate to consider partial transition to OpenOffice.org in the case that few people in the company need MS Office. This possibility has for many been a bad solution so far because we have seen difficulties exchanging different document formats. But after Microsoft has promised full support for ODF format from the beginning of 2008, this solution will become very relevant and viable option for many. In most cases, it will be possible to achieve economic benefits after only a few years.

The companies and organisations using Lotus Notes as a platform for mail, calendar and applications, should consider the use of Lotus Symphony from IBM. Lotus Symphony is actually a converted version of OpenOffice.org. Whether it is better than OpenOffice I will not be able to decide, but Symphony has one unique advantage in the future: It is part of Lotus Notes platform. I look forward to see what IBM will do in the future. By creating composite applications which open for building direct integration of data from Notes to the Office applications.

Mads Andersen from FTZ Autoparts followed my speak, by telling us how FTZ has chosen to switch from MS Office to the free alternative OpenOffice.org. Mads Andersen is working as IT consultant at FTZ Autoparts in Odense, Denmark. FTZ has chosen to use OpenOffice.org as the office application in the company. FTZ is in the situation that of the 550 users is only a few who use the Office application for other than to write a letter once and in a while. Many users and not advanced needs. Some users have initially been allowed to keep their MS Office, but Mads sayd that the plan is to eliminate the last MS Office installations in the future.

Roll out occurred almost without any problems. MSI installation is easy to handle. FTZ is úsing Citrix. Mads believe that FTZ has saved a lot of money by choosing OpenOffice.org rather than Microsoft Office. There is still a recurring problem when FTZ receive attachments from the Microsoft Office 2007, but in the FTZ, they have chosen a key solution, where the IT department takes care of conversion of documents.

Roll out has been going on relatively quietly. "The first two weeks gave a little extra work in support" sayd Mads and continues "but there was no need to do proper education." The support at FTZ has taken advantage of the voluntary support forum OOoForum in cases where users have had problems such as if the IT-supporters didn't resolve a problem themselves. Most problems have been when users couldn't find a specific function or feature in the program. "If there is something we should have done differently, it should be to examine exactly what features people use, and then we should produce information about this".

Answer from IBM

Douglas Heintzman, Director of Strategy has answered my questions here

We do plan to incorporate the most recent code form open office as soon as we can into Symphony. The question of which features, such as otx files, get in and get in first is a mater of prioritization. Much of this prioritization is being driven by user feedback.

Hmm... And what does that mean ?
I guess that IBM actually don't know where and when. I'm sure that IBM will do a great contribution to the community and from this answer I can read that IBM plans to keep up with the code line in OpenOffice.org. But when this will happen is unfortunately still unclear. It could be great if we could tell existing Lotus Notes users, that they don't have to go to open standards because open standards will come to them.

Questions for IBM

In the late summer IBM announced their support to the OpenOffice.org community and about a week later, they announced a new free (of charge) product, IBM Lotus Symphony. The new product is basically a stand-alone version of the productivity tools in Lotus Notes 8.

If you ask me, I think it's great that IBM is now standing up behind OpenOffice.org together with other large companies and I think it looks great that IBM will contribute with better acceptability and usability, I'm sure that OpenOffice.org can take advantage of that. Just have a look at the work IBM did to make Symphony look that nice.

I'm using Lotus Notes 8 from IBM and I think it shows that IBM Lotus is going in the right direction. But I still need answers for two questions:

1. Will IBM Lotus productivity tools (in whatever product package you get them) follow the OpenOffice.org code line in the future ?
   The version we use now is a very old OpenOffice.org
   
2. Will IBM Lotus productivity tools support OpenOffice.org extensions (oxt-files) ?

I would very much like to tell customers that the IBM Lotus product line is on the right track, but I can't do this as long as the code is more than two years old and doesn't support one of the most important and most significant improvements in OpenOffice.org.

I have tried to ask around at IBM in Denmark without luck. If anyone here can find out who can answer these question, please let me know.

Lotus Symphony Linux Beta Review

This review of IBM Lotus Symphony on Linux http://polishlinux.org/apps/openofficeorg/lotus-symphony-linux-beta-review/ by Borys Musielak is actually quite positive:

Lotus Symphony is a really interesting initiative. There’s a great need of competition on the office suites (especially those that support the ODF format) market.

The positive outcome of the document support issue surprised me:

Testing results were quite positive for Lotus (it was a little surprise for me). Lotus viewed most of the tested documents (text documents and presentations) correctly. Documents had a little visual differences, but — and this is crucial for me — files created using Writer and then saved in Lotus, were identical after reopening them on OpenOffice Writer.

There is, on the other hand also some negative things:

In comparison to KOffice or Abiword (both can compete with OO.org on the efficiency and better graphical environments like GNOME and KDE cooperation fields) Lotus Symphony has nothing to impress us (except of few little functions).

Open source is not about cutting down expenses

The general discussion about the use of open source software like OpenOffice.org very often comes around talking about money. And most people expect that cheap (in this case very cheap) software is poor software. In some cases this is actually true, but not in all cases. There are lots of software projects that serves high quality applications for you.

Open source is not about cutting down expenses but about spending money where you get value.

Lets take a look at one of the most popular open source projects, OpenOffice.org. Compared to Microsoft Office, this project is a little bit less feature rich. But what's the difference, when your employees haven't learned how to use the application that you bought so expensive ? Nothing. A much more valuable choice could be to implement OpenOffice.org and I say implement. Not just install it, but actually make sure that everybody who needs to know, will know. Teach them how to use it. And you will find that the actual result will be, that OpenOffice.org will increase productivity, because the number of usable features is higher. You have gained more value.

Another thing to consider is, to begin thinking about collaborative software. Take the Office thought a little bit further. How about spending money on collaboration instead of fancy features in desktop applications. Features that we use because they are there - not because we need them. If you implement OpenOffice.org and spend the license fee to buy good and solid software like Software from IBM Lotus, you will see your employees work together and find them think as a team instead of individual pieces. The jigsaw will soon show a very pretty picture: Pieces will come together.

Open source software is not about cutting down, but about spending differently.

Summary from OOoCon2007 in Barcelona (II)

OpenOffice.org in the future
Louis Suárez-Potts opened the conference with a speak about the future development tasks. In overall terms:

1. Support of web2.0 technologies as Wiki, blogs, collaboration tools etc. http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/thursday_80.pdf
2. Closer integration with products from Mozilla, the so called PIM tools like contacts and calendar http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/thursday_70.pdf
3. Interoperability with other office suites http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/thursday_94.pdf
4. Tools for developing extensions as well as continue to enhance extension possibilities http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/thursday_48.pdf and
   http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/thursday_149.pdf
5. PDF support by making it possible to open and edit pdf files and create hybrid documents (both ODF and PDF at the same time) http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/completing_pdf_support_in_ooo1
6. Support pivot tables from Excel and a new solver function http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/friday_114.pdf
7. Notes- and comments http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Notes2
8. New porting: MacOS http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_769.pdf and
   http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_158.pdf

These and many other features can be expected in version 3, planned to be released spring or summer 2008. But of cause: plans can always be changed.

Chinese influence
Some time ago, Sun Microsystems made an agreement with Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co. http://www.ch2000.com.cn/english/index.htm. This company is contributing with development of OpenOffice.org and is at the same time developing a special Chinese version that respects the special Cinese culture. As it was explained to us at the conference: "Microsoft will always try to learn us to use computers the way its done in the west. Only by developing our own office suite, we can have a suite that satisfies us and respects our culture and identity".
Just a few days before the conference opened, IBM published the news, that they will contribute to OpenOffice.org development in the future. This contribution will be from China too, because all office development, e.g. Lotus Symphony is done in China. http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html