I’m told that IBM frowns on companies switching/downgrading their licenses from Lotus Domino Enterprise to a “lesser” license. I don’t really know if that is true, but it is perfectly understandable that IBM would prefer that a client continues its Software Subscription and Support with an Enterprise-level product versus purchasing a product targeted to SMBs. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that there is no “downgrade” path from a IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise license to a license such as IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration Express. Your only choice is to purchase the Domino Collab Licenses in full, outright if you decide to make the switch.

Until 2011, the line between Lotus Domino Enterprise Server and Lotus Domino Collaboration Express was very clear. With the former you got many advanced features such as Clustering and Directory Assistance that were not supported by the latter license. So, for organizations that needed more reliable uptime, integration with a foreign directory such as LDAP, and/or wanted to place a condensed replica of their Domino Directory on the laptops of their Notes users (among other many enterprise level features), the obvious choice was to go with the Enterprise version. However, this year, all but one restriction imposed upon the Collaboration Express license has been lifted and that is the size of the company that is allowed to use that license instead of the Enterprise one.

This one restriction is that IBM only allows companies with fewer than 1000 employees to opt for a Collaboration Express license. If you have more than 1000 employees then the only choice is for the Enterprise Server. With all of the other licensing restrictions lifted this means that there are a huge number, of what IBM deems to be SMBs, faced with a new choice: Do I make the switch from IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise to IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration Express?

Besides the recent lifting of the licensing restrictions for Collab Express, it is also important to note the two big advantages to this license compared with the Enterprise one. The first being that there is no additional licensing cost for installing and running Domino servers. Collaboration Express is purely based on the number of users (aka Client Access Licenses or CALs) using the Lotus Notes or iNotes client whereas Enterprise is a combination of both user (CAL) and server (PVU) licensing. So, with Collaboration Express you can run as many servers as you want without restriction, even if you purchase just one CAL.

The second advantage is that for Collab Express you do not need to calculate the number of Processor Value Units (PVUs) for each server you are installing since, as already stated above, there’s no need to worry about server licensing. I don’t think it is necessary to go into detail in this posting about how PVUs are calculated and how IBM determines the PVU value for the variety of processor types that exist in the market today (if you need more information please check out this link: Processor Value Unit [PVU] licensing for Distributed Software). Suffice it to say that PVU calculation is a fairly complex task. In fact, it is complex enough where IBM has felt the need to provide a PVU calculator on its website to aid users and resellers in figuring out how much server licensing will be for their physical and virtual server machines. In short, avoiding the need to calculate PVUs is a huge benefit to Collab Express licensing.

For companies under 100 users the choice is quite clear actually, especially if you plan to be using the software for at least another 2 or 3 years and you plan to continue purchasing IBM Lotus’ Software Subscription and Support during that time. In this case, switching from Enterprise to Collaboration Express makes the most sense. Although there is the initial sting of paying full price for the Collab Express licenses, if you compare the cost with the annual subscription for the Enterprise user and server licenses, you might actually break even or save money on or after the first year.

We recently landed the opportunity to renew the software for a company with 10 employees. They were planning on renewing their user and server licenses for Enterprise server. The total renewal cost turned out to be more expensive than purchasing 10 new Collaboration Express licenses outright. The next time this company is up for renewal their total cost outlay will be less than one fourth what they had been paying annually before for basically the exact same license.

This may initially appear to be a losing proposition for IBM since their renewal revenue stream could be drastically reduced by lower licensing costs. However, I believe that this may actually be a boon for IBM. It is a great opportunity for IBM to encourage new SMBs to Lotus Notes and Domino or even existing ones to choose to do one or more of the following:
1. Move/Migrate to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino given the recently available enterprise level features that do not exist in competing products at similar price points;
2. Stay put on the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino platform by switching from Enterprise to Collaboration Express when they might have decided to move away to a competing platform because of the much higher annual Enterprise level licensing
3. Stay put on the IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration Express platform because of all of the newly introduced enterprise level features now available at no additional cost
4. Reinstate/Upgrade an older version to the latest version of IBM Lotus Notes Domino to take advantage of all of these new features

Of course, the ability to switch will not be suitable for all SMB Enterprise level licensed companies. We researched having a 250 user company switch from Enterprise to Collaboration Express, but the switch did not make sense financially in this case, at least not over the short team Purchasing 250 Collab Express CALs outright was much more costly than renewing 250 Enterprise CALs even along with the Server PVU renewals, so it made a lot more sense for the company to stay where they were for now.

If your company is considering making the switch please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We can help you figure out whether it makes sense for you too.

We were trying to get a customer configured to use his Lotus Notes Basic 8.5 client to connect to his newly installed Lotus Sametime Entry 8.5.1 server on Microsoft Windows 2008. When the customer tried to log in, he seemed to login successfully. However, even though the Lotus Notes Basic Client status bar would show “Logged on to Instant Messaging”, his Instant Messaging status showed as “Disconnected”. When opening up his Notes mail there was no awareness showing up at all. If he had logged on successfully he should show “I’m Active” as the Instant Messaging status.

When we attempted the same process with the Lotus Notes Standard client, he was able to login to Sametime Entry server without a problem and awareness was fine as well. So we knew the problem was the user’s account or the configuration of the Sametime Server.

We did a search on the Internet for a possible solution without much success at first. However, eventually we found the following post that was extremely helpful. Although the nature of the problem described in the post linked below is different from the problem we were experiencing, it turns out that the fix was the same.

http://www.zarazaga.net/mangelcalvo/blog/home.nsf/dx/sametime-8.5.1-doesnt-like-lotus-notes-basic

As the post above states, the fix is to simply lower the number in the Sametime Entry Server’s Sametime.ini for the parameter VP_SECURITY_LEVEL from the default of 7000 to a something like 25 and restart the Domino server.
So instead of:
VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=7000
You should have:
VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=25

The reason for the value change is also explained in the above post as follows: the Lotus Notes 8.5 Basic client comes with the Sametime 6.5 Client. The VP_SECURITY_LEVEL is set too high to allow such an old version of the Sametime client to login. By lowering the value you are, thereby, lowering the threshold for what clients can access the server allowing the Lotus Notes Basic 8.5 Client the ability to login.

After changing the value and restarting the Sametime Entry Server, when our customer attempted to login again he got the “I’m Active” as his Instant Messaging status and all appeared to be working just fine.

I hope that this helps someone else experiencing the same issue.

Computer Architechs created mobile agenda applications for IBM’s Lotusphere 2011 Online so that registered attendees would be able to, not only, put the whole Conference Agenda into their pockets, but also they can create their Conference Schedule right on their device and sync the schedule with the Lotusphere Online servers.

The session data is also synchronized with the servers, so, if any updates are made to the session data, the mobile application can automatically synchronize the changes. Furthermore, attendees can maintain their schedule on their devices and on the Lotusphere Online Session Scheduler application. Edits made to either side will automatically sync up.

The iPhone application is available on the iTunes Apps store ready for download as “Lotusphere 2011 Mobile Agenda”. It will also run on the iPad and iPod devices. The Android and Blackberyry apps can be downloaded directly from the Lotusphere Online site after the registered attendee logs in.

Attendees need a Lotusphere Online six digit User ID and Password to allow the application to synchronize with the servers and to ensure that they have access to their own unique calendars on the site.

This is a huge leap forward from previous years, when only static applications were made available to attendees. For past Lotuspheres only static mobile apps for the Blackberry and Windows Mobiles were available.

On January 11, 2011, IBM welcomed Computer Architechs International Corporation into the Software Value Incentive (SVI) business partner reseller authorization group (RAG) for Lotus Messaging & Collaboration.

As part of IBM’s plan to ensure that its software and hardware resellers have adequate knowledge to sell its products, IBM has toughened its requirements for resellers by making specific technical and sales certifications in its products mandatory for proper authorization. One of those groups is the aforementioned Lotus Messaging and Collab which authorizes a reseller, once accepted, to resell Lotus Notes and Domino software.

We find that IBM Lotus Foundations Start Server (LFS) is a great solution for the SMB.  It is especially useful for those companies that need to either upgrade an old server or do not have a server installed yet.  With the all-in-one-server solution, we truly can provide our customers with a solution that requires very little IT oversight and maintenance.   It is a win-win for both us and the SMB customer, because, with today’s tight IT budgets, there is not a lot of room in the budget for constant maintenance and support of the customer’s IT environment.  The customers have better control of their budgets and we have happy customers.

However, we often get asked: “What about the Cloud?”

This is a very good question and one that needs to be addressed.  Why would a company want to invest in an on-premise solution such as LFS when investing in similar solutions for the Cloud can be much less expensive, initially, and the costs can be spread out over time?  Furthermore, isn’t the Cloud the ultimate way to virtually eliminate the need for on-site IT services since everything is already taken care of off-site by the cloud service company?

In my opinion, the answer is both, “Yes and No”.

Although Internet service is getting faster and cheaper, many parts of U.S. big cities, such as Los Angeles, still have very few options for reliable and fast Internet service.  This is slowly improving, but it will take time before everyone gets a fair shake at speedy Internet at affordable prices.  Why is this relevant?  Well, without reliable, fast and affordable Internet connections,  it becomes difficult to host all of your IT services in the Cloud, especially if you are a smaller organization.  For example,  if you want to share and print large files in the Cloud, if your connection is too slow or it is down altogether, this can be a major inconvenience, drastically reducing employee productivity and, potentially, bringing your entire business to a screeching halt.

In addition, not all applications are available in the Cloud yet.  Sure, you can get mail and calendaring services with no problem.  You can also backup your entire network to an online backup service.  Also, don’t forget, that most everything stored in the Cloud is automatically backed up so you don’t have the constant worry about what would happen if you lost some or all of your files.  However, a common complaint is that spreadsheet, word processing, and presentation applications, such as what are available on Google Apps, still have very limited functionality.   You still need to have a full office suite of applications on your local computer to be productive.  This can be said about many other applications, as well.  These applications are constantly being improved, but it will be some time before you can get the exact same experience in the Cloud that you get on your local computer and network.

So, this all leads into the title of this blog entry “Marrying IBM Lotus Foundations Start Server with LotusLive”.

For those of you who have never heard of LotusLive, this is most simply put, IBM’s answer to Google Apps and Microsoft Live Cloud solutions.  If you go to http://www.lotuslive.com you can see that IBM provides a whole slew of offerings geared to customers large and small.  They have matched Google’s 25Gb total mail size limit and provide a fully featured mail and calendaring solution based on Lotus Notes and iNotes.  IBM has also added other features such as Meetings, Activities, Files, etc… to enhance the user’s Cloud experience.  Go ahead and check it out!

In an ideal world it would be great if we could take the on-premise LFS server solution to provide all of the local IT functions that businesses need and marry those with IBM’s LotusLive functions.  So, users could store, print and securely share files on their local network.  However, for mail and calendaring they could be given a few options:

1. Use IBM LotusLive’s iNotes solution for a web browser only solution; or

2. Install the latest Lotus Notes client through LFS and use LotusLive’s Notes solution; or

3. Use LFS’s own Domino and Notes integrated solution as it now; or

4. Take option 3 above, but also give the option to store each user’s mail file using LotusLive’s Notes solution so that mail would also be available in the Cloud

With options 1 and 2 above, we could reduce the LFS user and server license fees by removing locally available Domino and Notes completely from the picture and point everyone to LotusLive at a separate cost.   This would make the LFS solution more affordable and IBM could still receive additional fees from LotusLive.

Option 3 would be it as it is today, but option 4 would provide both scenarios in a tightly knit package.

It is entirely possible that IBM is already working on something in this regards.  If so, that would be great!  Being able to provide multiple options to our customers would make it easier to make a sale while also giving the customer freedom of choice.  Another win-win.

Desktop Policy settings document can be used for domino administrator to configure and enforce the user location document in Notes Client.

However as the default desktop policy settings document, it does not allow to pass down the all location document’s fields.

For example, “Recipient name type-ahead” field of location document cannot be configured in the default desktop policy settings document.

In that case,  There is sill the way to add the desired parameters into the default desktop policy settings document by editing server names.nsf with lotus designer.

Below is the information regarding desktop policy and location parameters.

You can use Desktop Policy settings documents to set field value in users' current Location documents.This can be done by adding a new field to the policy settings document using the Domino Designer. The new field must be named LocAllVariableName, where VariableName is the name of the field you are setting in the Location documents.

Original source: IBM – Using a Desktop Policy to set notes.ini and Location parameters.

Here is the step by step example for adding “Recipient name type-ahead”  into Desktop Policy settings document.

1. Open server names.nsf from Lotus Designer.
2. Open PolicyDesktop form from form list view.
3. Click Mail tab, and then create “LocAllNameLookupPref” field in anywhere you want.
4. Save the form. and then close Lotus Designer.
5. Open Domino Administrator, and then open Desktop Policy settings document. If you don’t have any Desktop Policy settings document, create it.
6. If you click Mail tab, then you should be able to see the field which you created. Put value 0 or 1 or 2.
7. Save Desktop Policy settings document.
8. Test by the user who this Desktop Policy is assigned. This new value is set on the assigned users’ clients the next time they authenticate with their home server.

It is really difficult to pinpoint one particular feature of the IBM Lotus Foundations Start server as the “killer app”.  Lotus Foundations comes with so many handy, crucial SMB tools and each and every one of them is important.  However, if I was forced to choose one feature I would probably have to choose backups.

You’re only as safe as your most recent, reliable backup.  Without a proper backup, you could find yourself spending hours re-inputting data, recreating a spreadsheet, updating your address book, etc…  We all know how important backups are, but it is often the last thing on our laundry list of business to dos.  And, even if you did regularly take backups, what is the probability that the backup was a reliable one?  How often do you really do test restores to make sure that what you backed up is actually intact?

What about disaster recovery?  Have you planned for the worst case scenario?  Sure, you’re performing backups, but are you making sure that recent backups are also being taken off-site to another location for disaster recovery purposes?  If you are, how recent are those off-site backups?

Sure, you could use an online backup service for disaster recovery.  However, that can become expensive as you amass more files and data.  If you wanted to restore from an online backup, it will take as long as the download speed of your Internet connection.  For gigabytes of data, a full restore could take hours or days.

The Lotus Foundations Start server appliance has integrated IBM’s Intelligent Disk Backup (IDB) technology into its backup toolbox.  IDB allows you to perform incremental backups as often as 15 minutes.   You can backup daily, weekly, or as often as you need to.  If you are backing up frequently, IDB also makes “incremental” copies of recently modified files.  So, if you modified a file an hour ago and the same file two hours ago, you are able to restore either file to your system with the click of a button.  This is very useful if you realize that the file you saved an hour ago was somehow corrupted or you erased important information from it right before saving it.

In addition, the backups are encrypted.  So, even if the backup drive were to fall into the wrong hands, the data is secure.

Finally, what happens if your main hard drive fails?  Well, you just push a button and all of the server configuration and software is restored in minutes.  No need to reinstall the operating system, re-configure your software, or re-assign rights to folders and printers.  The IDB  backs everything up, not just your data files.

What about disaster recovery?  If you buy additional IDB drive cartridges with the server, you merely need to pull out one cartridge at the end of the day on Friday, plug in your other cartridge and take the first cartridge home with you so the data is off-site.  The act of plugging in a new cartridge tells Lotus Foundations to start backing up the whole system from scratch automatically.  No need to let the IDB know about the new cartridge.  It is all taken care of automatically.

If the unthinkable happens, and your server at the office were to be lost in a calamity, you would only need to buy a new IBM server, plug in the cartridge that you took home with you, push a button and you’re right back where you started, since your last backup.

So, yes, IBM’s Intelligent Disk Backup technology that comes with the IBM Lotus Foundations Start server appliance is the bomb.  Finally, no more tapes, no more carrying around an external USB drive from PC to PC, and no more worrying about disaster recovery.  And best of all, no more shelling out monthly fees to continue making online backups.  Let the IDB take care of the backups for you so you can just sit back, relax and focus on work.

We’ve begun selling and explaining the IBM Lotus Foundations Start (LFS) server software appliance to existing and potential customers.  I show them a side-by-side comparison chart with a competing small business solution so that they can compare apples-to-apples.  After a short explanation, I’ve gotten comments such as:

- “This sounds too good to be true”

- “Why would I not choose Lotus Foundations?”

However, customers still show hesitation because the underlying operating system is Linux and there is concern regarding interoperability with Windows.  Of course, we know that we can load a virtual environment with Windows on it, but that is not the same as having the whole appliance running Windows.  This is not a show stopper by any means.  Customers are wowed (as I stated above) by all that LFS can do and they are pleased that they are now afforded a choice in the SMB market.  At the same time, LFS is a significant upfront investment for smaller businesses, so they want to vet this new opportunity before taking the leap.

I’m confident that LFS can hold its own as it really is not “too good to be true”.  It is truly a great solution that, not only offer SMBs a stable and reliable alternative,  but, also, I believe will allow SMBs to streamline their IT infrastructure while also allowing them to spend more time focusing on their core business.

A potential customer for IBM Lotus Foundations Start (LFS) server recently inquired whether the server appliance is able to support a RAID configuration.   At first, I thought that a RAID configuration was not supported.  However, after some research this is what I found out.

First of all, you may already know that the LFS server appliance advertises its inclusion of Intelligent Disk Backup (IDB) for true disaster recovery by taking incremental backups, as often as every 15 minutes, of all data and operating system and software settings.  However,  if the very unlikely event that the main hard drive fails for whatever reason, the server is only available in minimal operational mode until a full restore is possible.  Of course, a full restore can occur in minutes with a push of a button, but this can still be an inconvenience for a business in the middle of a business day.

If the LFS server appliance could also support a RAID configuration, then downtime could be drastically minimized with a hard drive failure.  After looking over the LFS administration manual, I was able to verify that a RAID configuration is possible.  In fact, with only a few clicks, LFS can put a RAID configuration into place quickly and easily. RAID 1 is supported if you 2 main drives of the same type, and RAID 5 is supported if you have 3 or more.  So, from the software standpoint, RAID is obviously supported.

If you look at the server appliance hardware specifications neither the Entry Level or Advanced Level servers from IBM make any mention of RAID.  Both server types come with one 250Gb main drive and a 500Gb (Entry) or 1Tb (Advanced) hard drive for IDB backups.  This is not a supported RAID hardware configuration.  So I inquired further.  What I found out was that you can add additional 250Gb hard drives to the standard server configuration to achieve RAID through the software configuration process.  You just need to specifically request the extra hard drives be added.

So, it appears, that RAID is an “unadvertised” feature of the LFS server appliance that will make this an even more appealing all-in-one-it-solution for SMBs!