Simplicity – The IBM Sametime 8.5 Formula for Delivering Results
If your company is like most, when you spend money on something, you want results! This is a pretty basic concept that applies in every industry segment and every organization size. No expected results, no spending, right?
OK, then, let’s talk about results in unified communications and collaboration. The vast majority of organizations and enterprises are already spending money in these areas, but are they getting all the results they expect and deserve? Often not, and one of the biggest barriers is that insidious beast, complexity.
The greatest technology, the most elegant algorithms, and the speediest processors and networks are a total waste of money if nobody uses them. Historically, there are two main reasons for lack of adoption: the product is not solving a real problem or the technology is just too complex for everyday use.
The good news, based on the many published success stories, is that unified communications and collaboration products are solving real problems. Yet, based on feedback at industry events and in our enterprise consulting engagements, ease of use is still a barrier to adoption and thus a real drag on those expected results.
When examining the problem of complexity as a barrier to adoption, the issues quickly become apparent. There’s a lot of “un-unified” stuff lurking out there. In the course of their business workday, users are often faced with a wide range of different log-ins, different interfaces, different directories, separate user lists, disparate presence information, and different functionality across their supposedly unified set of communications and collaboration tools, even when that set of tools comes from the same vendor brand or systems integrator. Some vendors try to simplify things by limiting the functionality, i.e. providing a wonderfully unified experience, but for only one media type (such as IM or IP Telephony or video conferencing). But that sort of simplification doesn’t address the users’ needs; the users require the right set of tools to do their job AND they expect those tools to be well integrated, unified, and, yes, simple.
Results, then, depend on the right set of functionality, supported by the right level of user adoption, for which ease of use is a major requirement.
The IBM Sametime team has taken this challenge to heart: “Simplicity,” but with rich functionality, is the central theme of their latest release, Sametime 8.5. In a recent interview, John Del Pizzo, IBM Offering Manager for Sametime 8.5, said, “Ease of access and ease of use drive adoption, and adoption ultimately delivers the expected business value. UC2TM (the IBM brand for Unified Communications and Collaboration – see the recent article by Don Van Doren), becomes more powerful since all the functionality is at the user’s fingertips.” Let’s take a look at how IBM Sametime 8.5 accomplishes this.
The key element is that IBM Sametime 8.5 delivers unified communications functionality in a single client – a new and improved Sametime Connect. Previously, users had two interfaces to do their job, the Sametime Connect client for presence, instant messaging, and click to call and the Sametime Meeting client for meetings and web conferences. In Sametime 8.5, the two user interfaces are combined into one interface.
As just one example of improved results, the field trials of the new, unified client showed that on-line meeting usage doubled when users no longer had to re-login to access and create or launch a meeting - I.e.; the simplicity drove adoption and value.
It’s important that the right set of functionality is being delivered and that the functionality is presented in each user’s workday context, to maximize the simplicity and adoption.
Functionality: IBM Sametime 8.5 brings together essentially the entire set of communications functions that most users need to optimize their performance in their assigned business processes. Here’s a quick look at what’s included in Sametime 8.5:
Simplified Access. The Sametime Connect client now features a meeting control panel to show the user all the Meeting Rooms she owns, who the participants are and where related meetings are in the calendar. Entering a meeting room is a single-click process – no meeting ID numbers or logins are required. Inviting others to meetings can be done by dragging names from the contact list and dropping them on the meeting room. Invitees will get a pop-up asking them if they are ready to join the meeting – just like joining a group chat. Seems pretty simple, right?
Integrated Conferencing. Sametime delivers new Meeting Room functionality, including meeting persistence. No longer will teams spend time attaching files to meeting invitations or e-mailing content to meeting attendees; the new Meeting Room includes a Meeting Library, a location where any meeting invitee can upload content that will be accessible to all participants. Want to upload a file to share? Just drop it on the meeting room. Additionally, the meeting rooms are “persistent,” meaning that for repetitive meetings such as weekly project status reviews, the Meeting Room will remain available to all invitees and users will be able to revise and upload the most current documents to the library.
Audio/Video Conferencing. Audio and video controls are also unified and simplified in Sametime 8.5. Sametime’s user interface manages both its own A/V capabilities and provides a front-end integration point to other conferencing systems in the enterprise, enabling Sametime users to join essentially any conference directly from their desktop client. IBM added improved H.264 video codecs, support for High Definition video conferencing, and SIP-based interoperability with third party audio and video conferencing systems.
As an add-on component to Sametime, Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) integrates with essentially all the leading PBX and IP PBX product lines to allow user control of inbound and outbound calls from the Sametime interface. Telephony functions are included in the IBM software to enable calling via drag-and-drop, in addition to number and name calling from personal contact lists and enterprise directories. Starting a call requires just a click, and dragging additional names into that call creates a conference. Also, users can click to call a number from any on-screen source, such as a web page, a database record, a spreadsheet or a document.
These new capabilities build on and improve the existing Sametime experience. Users continue to have robust presence functionality, including automated geographic location awareness within the enterprise network and telephony off-hook status both for SUT calls and for calls on PBX/IP PBX systems with which Sametime 8.5 is integrated. Notification options can alert the user when a specific person or resource becomes available. For more about Sametime functionality, including demo downloads, visit the IBM Lotus Sametime site, then click “Learn More” under any of the Sametime versions.
Presentation: IBM Sametime has always been a flexible, modular software-based solution, and that continues with Sametime 8.5, enabling Sametime to be presented to the user in the context that is easiest and simplest for their tasks, situation, and location. The five top contexts that are all supported by the Sametime solution are:
PC Desktop Client. This is the traditional, PC-installed client, aimed at knowledge workers or information workers with communication- and collaboration-intensive jobs.
Browser-based Desktop. For users with less demanding communications content in their jobs, or for enterprises moving to a thin-client desktop model, Sametime can be delivered in an Ajax-based, Java-less browser-based format. This format can also be a convenience to any user when they need remote access or are traveling without a laptop.
Mobile Devices. For roles such as sales, service, management, or others, Sametime Mobile delivers presence and chat capabilities to BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile devices with a downloaded application. A browser-based version, excluding the Meeting Room functionality, can be used with the iPhone.
Collaboration Tools. Sametime 8.5 integrates tightly, out-of-the-box, with the entire suite of IBM Lotus collaboration tools, including Notes (messaging, calendar, and more), Quickr (collaborative workspaces), and Connections (social networking for business). In addition, Sametime integrates into the Office suite of products, including Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint.
Business Applications. For those roles that work primarily in context of a business application, such as finance, logistics, health care, government, sales, services, retail sales, or many other similar jobs, Sametime supports embedding communications into those application environments. Similarly, Sametime UC functionality can be embedded in Web applications including those based on IBM WebSphere Portal.
Clearly, it is possible to present Sametime to each user or user category in the context that will deliver the value and produce optimized results. This flexibility feeds directly into the Simplicity theme, enabling users to access communications capabilities in whatever context they might usually, or occasionally, work. The consistency of the presentation modes should certainly increase adoption, which will in turn drive to the ultimate goal – results.
In Summary
IBM’s Sametime 8.5, with its focus on simplicity, provides users with the communications functionality they need, in the context of their day-to-day work. To learn more about Sametime 8.5 and IBM’s future plans for Sametime, and even get some hands-on experience, make plans to attend IBM Lotusphere in Orlando, Florida from January 17-21, 2010.
This paper is sponsored by IBM.