Episode 60, recorded on Thursday 14th July 2011, discussing Social Business, the shift to the Cloud, Google Plus and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

	Alan Lepofsky (blog | twitter | company) is Director of Marketing at Socialtext, an awesome Silicon Valley startup in the collaboration and social networking software industry. He formerly worked at IBM where he focused on several aspects of Lotus Software, ranging from running customer councils and conferences, to product pricing and licensing, to working with business partners, and even on technical architecture.  Alan’s final position at IBM was working for the head of software strategy, helping think about the future directions that Lotus software could go in.
	Carlos Casas (pronounced CAH-SUS) (blog | twitter | company) is the CEO of RockTeam & Lotus Education Online (LEOnline.net), an award-winning IBM Training Center and Business Partner focused in IBM Collaboration Software and Social technologies.  LEO (IBM ECIS Award Winner)  is a division of RockTeam focused on Instructor-led Online Training for IBM Software as well as providing learning tools for IBM Software. LEO is a world-wide strategic partner for IBM Lotus Education. Personally have been working with IBM collaborative software for 14 years rooted in architecture and development.
	Travis Retzlaff (pronounced Retz-loff) (blog | twitter | company) is a Lead Delivery Consultant for Logicalis  – an international IT solutions and managed services provider. Personally have been using IBM collaborative software for over 11 years rooted in architecture and development for a host of products in Lotus and WebSphere brand software (some no longer with us). My day to day activities have me discussing business and technical problems and solutions with customers of all sizes and vertical markets, specifically around collaboration, messaging, and web infrastructure. I’ve been active in user groups for both Lotus and WebSphere software including being a repeat presenter and Group Leader.

Topics

Social Business/Social Collaboration/Enterprise 2.0, where are we at?

• For those coming from an email/IM-centric collaboration background, Social Business may still be a new vision, not well understood, or even something that is against the culture of the organisation
• How well are customers understanding Social Business principles?
• What are the challenges to purchasing, implementation and deployment?

On-premise versus cloud/SaaS

• We are seeing a focus on the cloud by most major vendors, whether full multi-tenant SaaS, private cloud, hosted appliance, PaaS or hybrid – lots of different business/technical models…
• How do we see this panning out?  Is there still a place for on-premise(s) IT (particularly collaboration)?

Google +

• Now open to the public.  What are our initial impressions?
• Can we see it replacing Twitter/Facebook in our own lives?
• What are the implications for organisations?
• How will Google make money? http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/google-secretly-invested-100-million-in-zynga-preparing-to-launch-google-games/

Tips

Darren:
Daniel Nashed’s excellent Domino on Linux start up script. Make Domino on Linux start up like a “service”does on Window. Been using it for years, but did another Linux Domino job last week where we used this. Simply fill in the form and you’ll have the scripts emailed to you in minutes. Works for AIX servers too.
Alan:
Your opinion is just that…
Carlos:
2 tips: Check out grooveshark.com (free online music streaming that you can build customized playlists and about.me ←great online business card site
Travis:
Everyone is enamored with Google+ right now, don’t discount near future networks like Diaspora. In fact I encourage people to see what it may have to offer when available if for nothing else than to promote what promises to be more user friendly policies around ownership of content and interoperability with other third party networks. We shouldn’t all have to use the same interface/network to be able to socialize and collaborate with others. Imagine if you needed Outlook/Exchange to communicate with other entities using Outlook/Exchange, dreadful!
Stuart:
Google Maps now has traffic information for Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.  Either on the web or on mobile devices.