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Lotus Bloody Notes/Domino Sold

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For a time, I was the designated dumb person who managed a Lotus Bloody Notes deployment. This includes the server and desktop application plus a range of internal developed apps. But mostly it was an really poor attempt at an email solution. 

The ‘bloody’ is my way of being polite 

It was horrible. Everything about it was horrible. Everything. IBM would  make huge promises about improvements and features, about optimisations and improved performance on Windows. 

Looking back I am fairly sure that Lotus Notes contributed substantially to financial problems of the company. Sending email was so unpredictable that people would use the internal voice mail system to record memo’s and then forward them. Literally. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING. I wasted so much time on this rubbish. 

I was happy to find a way out of the job and let some other schmuck do it. 

IBM wasn’t the first company to deliver unstable products and make outrageous claims. Novell and Microsoft were my first experience of that. So by the time I got to working on network gears, I had really low expectations on product quality. 

Turns out. That was good preparation for working as network engineer. 

Links

Link: HCL Technologies to Acquire Select IBM Software Products for $1.8B – Dec 6, 2018 – https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-12-06-HCL-Technologies-to-Acquire-Select-IBM-Software-Products-for-1-8B

Oct 2017: IBM Announces Investment in Notes Domino Version 10 and Beyond – Collaboration Solutions Blog – https://www.ibm.com/blogs/collaboration-solutions/2017/10/25/ibm-announces-investment-notes-domino-version-10-beyond/ 

Link: IBM offloads Notes and Domino to India’s HCL Technologies • The Register – https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/30/ibm_hcl_notes_domino_partnership/  

Link: IBM selling Lotus Notes/Domino business to HCL for $1.8B | TechCrunch – https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/ibm-selling-lotus-notes-domino-business-to-hcl-for-1-8b/


Thought: Face-to-face is effective, No One Talks About How much it costs

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This HBR article from April 2017 highlights a researcher talking about their paper that face-to-face is more effective than email.

Well, duh.

However, prior to making their requests, we asked participants in each condition to predict how many of the 10 strangers they asked would agree to fill out the survey. Participants in the face-to-face condition guessed that on average 5 out of 10 people would agree. Participants in the email condition guessed that on average 5.5 out of 10 people would agree. This difference was not statistically significant; participants who made requests over email felt essentially just as confident about the effectiveness of their requests as those who made their requests face-to-face, even though face-to-face requests were 34 times more effective than emailed ones.

Here is what few people in Enterprise IT talk about: cost. It is way cheaper to communicate on email, chat or even a bloody telephone call (in emergency) than it is to communicate face-to-face. Lost productivity in travel time, booking meeting rooms, waiting for people to turn up etc etc.

Who the heck has time for face-to-face meetings these days ? 

PS: if companies really cared about face-to-face they would have SO MANY MEETING ROOMS but they don’t.

Link: A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Successful Than an Email – https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email

Virtual Design Clinic 3 at Packet Pushers

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Attending conferences has always been expensive, time consuming and tiring. Most people don’t talk about this but prefer to highlight the positives of meeting people, sitting in high quality sessions and enjoy some time off from the repetitive activities of the $dayjob.

If you have questions that you want answered but can’t attend, head over to the Ask Me Anything page and submit your questions in advance. All sessions are recorded and published as a free course at Packet Pushers Ignition. 

Registration Required for Conference

Note: We don’t track you or give away your details but Gotomeeting works that way. Wed, Dec 19, 2018 4:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT

Virtual Design Clinic 3

Wed, Dec 19, 2018 4:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT

This live, half day-long event presents technical design challenges–and solutions–from the Packet Pushers, industry practitioners, and vendor sponsors. 
Designed for network engineers and IT professionals, this free, online event presents real-world problems and provides in-depth, practical insight on how to solve them.

Agenda for VDC (American EST GMT-5)

11:00a – 11:05a Welcome from the Packet Pushers
11:05a – 11:30a AMA Session 1 – Carl Niger, Erica Cooper, Nick Buraglio, Denise Donohue, Ivan Pepelnjak, Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks
11:30a – 12:15p Continuous Integration/Continuous Testing for Networking – Carl Niger
12:15p – 12:30p BREAK
12:30p – 1:00p AMA Session 2 – Carl Niger, Erica Cooper, Nick Buraglio, Denise Donohue, Ivan Pepelnjak, Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks
1:00p – 1:45p Sponsor Session – Apcela, Mark Casey – Three Steps to Boost Your SD-WAN ROI
Most enterprises deploy SD-WAN based on an ROI from just the ‘Day 1’ automation benefits. In fact, most SD-WAN deployments overlook the next steps that boost performance and can double your ROI. Join Apcela as we explore these next steps and discuss how to double SD-WAN ROI while delivering major improvements to hybrid IT and cloud application performance.
1:45p – 2:15p AMA Session 3 – Carl Niger, Erica Cooper, Nick Buraglio, Denise Donohue, Ivan Pepelnjak, Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks
2:15p – 3:00p Network Design For NVMe Over Ethernet Fabric – J Metz
Registration Required for Conference
Note: We don’t track you or give away your details but Gotomeeting works that way. 

Tools: MacOS Mojave Dark Mode with Safari in Reader mode is blissful

By Filed Under: Blog, Tools Leave a Comment

I don’t always work in Dark Mode on Mojave but I’m is liking a lot more than I expected. I guess I’m using it about 70% of the time.

In particular, I use the Reader feature from Safari to block out the distractions and other bits of branding ‘chrome’ that make it difficult to read. I get more done this way.

That is much easier to read than this:

 

Email is a problem since HTML encoded emails always present black on white text. I wonder if its realistic for websites to have two colour schemes and automation switch to a dark mode by detecting the desktop setting ? I wonder if there is the will to do that.

STFC Data Centre Tour 2018 – 45PB of Distributed IP Storage, 3 Tier CLOS network at 100G/200G/400G

By Filed Under: Blog, Video 1 Comment

This is a tour the JASMIN project at Science and Technology Facility Council. The JASMIN facility is a “super-data-cluster” which delivers infrastructure for data analysis for science research at Rutherford Appleton Labs near Oxford.

Its been my privilege to support the team over several years and today I took my camera to conduct a tour of the impressive facility and particularly the 45PB storage system and its 3Tier CLOS network.

Network Break Podcast

Network Break is round table podcast on news, views and industry events. Join Ethan, Drew and myself as we talk about what happened this week in networking. In the time it takes to have a coffee.

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A podcast on Data Networking where we talk nerdy about technology, recent events, conduct interviews and more. We look at technology, the industry and our daily work lives every week.

Our motto: Too Much Networking Would Never Be Enough!

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