Deal with meetings

GETTING PEOPLE TO WORK together is an effort under many circumstances; even the best of team players usually has a personal agenda. Anything that makes it easier to tap into a company’s knowledge capital has a built-in benefit. The fact that most businesses still rely on e-mail and face-to-face meetings means that IBM’s Lotus software division still has a reason to exist, if only as a logo.

IBM/Lotus’ latest efforts, Sametime 3.0 and Notes/Domino 6, remain proof that you don’t have to run a 100 percent Microsoft shop to have first-class collaboration tools. When we previewed Domino and Notes back in March (” Truly noteworthy “), we were cautiously optimistic about the prospects for Notes’ survival. Most shops with Notes/Domino installations will find that the benefits of deploying Version 6 far outweigh the inevitable pain of upgrading. Sametime 3.0 — best described as an “instant meeting” package — has enough going for it that even shops not currently using Domino should consider it.

While our evaluation of the two products took place simultaneously, we weren’t able to evaluate them together because Sametime 3.0 requires Domino versions 5.0.10 or 5.0.11, and it’s not supported on Domino 6. Sametime will be supported on Domino 6 in 2003.

We rarely complain about IBM software’s lack of documentation, and this holds true for both Sametime and Notes/Domino. Between the two packages, we’ve gone through more than a thousand pages of guides for setup, administration, and use, and were it not for our deadline, we’d have several hundred more to read. While the manuals are thorough, we’d like to see more illustrations highlighting the entry points to certain steps. A screen shot is worth a thousand words, after all.

Notes no goat

As we noted in the spring, a number of cosmetic improvements have been made to the Notes client — which is all that most end-users care about anyway — but from the perspective of managing desktops and servers, the enhancements are more valuable. Better control over e-mail relaying, improved policy-based management, and simplified synchronization with Windows 2000’s Active Directory are among the most important of the many new features that may tempt CTOs and IT managers to stick with Domino a little while longer.

IBM has maintained a Notes client for Macintosh, but there’s a catch — it won’t run on Jaguar, since the latest version of Mac OS X doesn’t support booting to the Classic environment. A Notes client will be released in 2003 that will remedy this deficiency, and some hope that it will lead to the development of a Linux client.

Shops that have already made the jump to Notes/Domino R5 will have an easier time of upgrading than one might expect. Companies still using older 4.x versions will have to upgrade in stages to release 4.6.3 before jumping to Version 6.

Overall, we’re pleased with Notes/Domino 6, but we don’t limit our recommendation of it to shops already using Notes. With Microsoft’s next version of Exchange — code-named Titanium — not due out until sometime next year and rumblings that customers haven’t flocked to Exchange 2000 in numbers anything close to expectations, now may be a good time for frustrated CTOs to consider jumping back on the Lotus bandwagon.

Sametime, this year

Given that Domino is a more mature platform than just about anything in Microsoft’s catalog, it should be no surprise that we found Sametime relatively easy to set up.

From the user’s perspective, it’s a flexible tool for creating and managing virtual meeting spaces, and storing the creative output in the form of documents, whiteboards, and what have you. The Sametime Connect client can run as a stand-alone application or from inside a browser, and if permitted by the administrator, it can be used with AOL Instant Messenger to a limited degree. The user desktop must be running a minimum of Windows 95 OSR2 with Internet Explorer 4.01 or later. Earlier Netscape browsers (4.5 and 4.7) are also supported.

From the IT department’s perspective, Sametime unleashes a plethora of options that may strain your network, including voice-and video-conferencing capabilities. On the other hand, that can provide an excuse for rolling out gigabit networking to the desktop if your budget permits. Fortunately, Sametime can be managed from a Web browser or from the Domino Administrator client.

In our book, “virtual meeting space” is a highfalutin way of saying “chat room.” If all a business needs is some insecure instant messaging and unrestricted file swapping, then the problem isn’t finding a provider, it’s getting people to agree which one to use. Even if one never touches the voice and video tools, Sametime provides a more controlled and professional environment for online collaboration than those found on the free chat services.

Most chat rooms we’ve visited could benefit from the example of the Sametime Moderator, who controls access to shared file spaces and the virtual whiteboard. Meetings without Moderators can also take place, but many features will be denied to the users.

If your company has chosen to cut back on travel and make do with virtual meetings of whatever form, you should give Sametime serious consideration. While the price tag for hardware, software, and management may look formidable when compared to a free chat provider, the extra security achieved by using a controlled virtual meeting space may in the end prove priceless.

Source: www.infoworld.com