Adam Gartenberg's Blog

Sametime Gateway discussion

• Author: Adam S Gartenberg
• December 7, 2006
• Category:  Sametime 

I bet Ed never expected that he would start such an extended discussion when he posted a news article on Lotus Sametime Gateway yesterday.  I wanted to at least begin to follow up on the items raised in the comments there.  I'm sure this won't be the last time we discuss it.  (And I'll cross-post this on Ed's blog later; I'm offline as I write this.)

1.  Why does the gateway require DB2 and not use Domino (or cloudscape).  I'm actually going to not go into full detail on this right now, as I want to provide as complete an answer as possible, especially since I think the questions raised weren't as much "why DB2" as "why not Domino" (or Domino, too), I want to be sure I'm properly answering that question.  What I can say is that we did not make any decisions - architectural or otherwise - lightly, especially when it involved introducing new requirements (WAS, DB2) that weren't previously there for Sametime customers.

2.  Based on the requirements for the gateway, it looks like IBM doesn't care about SMB customers.  As Ed noted in the comments on his post, a good deal of the Notes business comes from SMB (and SMBs with <1000 users, at that).  And we do see a similar pattern with Sametime, as well.  Some of my favorite examples of the innovative ways companies are using Sametime are SMBs, actually.  And if you look through the companies using Sametime profiled in press articles over the past 1-2 years, you'll see that most of them are SMBs, too.  

Truth be told, I've been spending a lot of my time lately (and I'm not the only one) looking at how to make Sameitme more attractive for smaller companies.  And your feedback (on the gateway and in general) would be greatly appreciated.  Feel free to post a comment below, post on your own blog, or e-mail me directly.

A comment was also posted on Ed's blog about having the gateway available as an appliance.  The appliance model is something that we have in fact looked at in general as we look at the offerings we have or will have in the future around Sametime, and is something that we will be exploring further (and I'd welcome comments on that approach, as well.)  And in general we will continue to look at what we can do to make the installation process as smooth and easy as possible.

3.  I can do this with Trillian without all this infrastructure.  Yes, you can.  You've been able to do this for some time.  And yet our customers still came to us asking for a solution like the gateway.  There is a lot that you don't get with the Trillian model.  Your users still need to register personal IDs to connect out to external users rather than being able to use thier corpriate ID.  You don't have the same management policies over who can or can't access public IM users or other functionality in the client.  And you don't get the integration and extensibility possible with the Sametime 7.5 client.

As I said at the top - you'll continue to see more posts on this.  And I do want to thank Chris, Carl and others who posted comments and clarifications on their experiences to date with the gateway.  

And I also want to reiterate what I wrote above about seeking feedback on what we can do to better meet the needs of SMB customers.   We're listening.

Comments

1

Carl Tyler | Website: http://www.instant-tech.com | 12/7/2006 9:37:24 AM GMT

"Based on the requirements for the gateway, it looks like IBM doesn't care about SMB customers"

I think this question is wrong. It is not that IBM doesn't care, it's that I don't believe IBM understands the true SMB, less than 100 employees. I think Small business accounts for something like 52% of America's businesses for example. Sponsoring SmallBusinessSchool does not mean IBM understands SMB. Just my $0.02

2

Chris Miller | Website: http://www.IdoNotes.com | 12/7/2006 9:53:55 AM GMT

I have plenty more to say, I will toss it on to my blog. I am sure Carl and I can come up with about 50 things each

3

Greyhawk68 | Website: http://www.greyhawk68.com | 12/7/2006 10:37:34 AM GMT

I think the problem I have is that I love Sametime, and as it sits now, I can integrate Sametime into my Domino environment leveraging my typical Domino skillset.

But, if I want the gateway, I need to know Websphere App Server and DB2.

I think that if you can create an installer that completely hides the Websphere/DB2 portion and makes that as painless as possible, then that will solve issues many people are having.

An appliance box would be good as well as it eliminates even the install. But, THAT would have to have an auto-update mechanism.

Anyway, I'm happy to see the new features, but don't force me to become a DB2/Websphere admin just to support them.

-Grey

4

Craig Wiseman | Website: | 12/7/2006 10:44:28 AM GMT

@3 - I agree with you on the install part, but that doesn't help me troubleshoot when it breaks (what, software breaks!?).

If you're familar troubleshooting Domino, the skills, um, don't map to WAS/DB2.

And that's a problem.

5

Craig Wiseman | Website: | 12/7/2006 11:10:16 AM GMT

Just to clarify the discussion:

How does IBM define SMB?

6

Greg Walrath | Website: http://www.univarusa.com/ | 12/7/2006 11:27:11 AM GMT

I would have to echo what Craig and Greyhawk both say - it would be nice to have a one-button install of this environment, maybe with the option of either pointing to an existing DB2 instance, or installing one locally.

On the other hand, knowing WAS/DB2 at this point is necessary and, dare I say it, inevitable. Sametime long ago outgrew its Domnino underpinnings - remember that the Servlet engine on which Sametime depends has not been updated since Domino 5.x - it's getting pretty long in the tooth, and any experienced Sametime admin will tell you that it can get a bit wonky at times. Backing up config files and re-isntalling from scratch are not unknown to us.

Moving this environment to a Websphere Application Server is long overdue, and I think this is a good toe in the water for most admins, especially the SMB's.

7

Dave Madison | Website: | 12/7/2006 3:34:40 PM GMT

"And yet our customers still came to us asking for a solution like the gateway."

Which customers would those be? Because i can't imagine any SMB asking for a solution like this.

8

Nathan T. Freeman | Website: http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf | 12/7/2006 6:32:45 PM GMT

Manual Trackback...

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9

David Bell | Website: | 12/8/2006 12:29:24 AM GMT

@7 - all the customers who recognized that a Trillian-like solution would not cut the mustard for them.

The statement is made in the context of a Trillian comparison, not the size of customers who were asking.

10

Adam Gartenberg | Website: http://www.adamgartenberg.com | 12/8/2006 6:26:37 AM GMT

@3/4/6 - Thank you for the feedback. And I do realize that simplifying (or hiding) the install process doesn't remove the need for any ongoing administration.

@5 - IBM typically defines SMB as under 1000.

Yes, I know that this is still 10x (or 100x) larger than most of the SMBs out there. And to Carl's point, I'm not saying that IBM doesn't still have more improvement to make in understanding their needs, or more to the point, to delivering solutions that show that we understand their needs. I was mainly trying to make the point that we're not ignoring it; that we haven't deselected it as a market whose needs we're *trying* to meet.

@7 - Following on David's comments, this was not a statement specifically about SMB, or even about the specific implementation of the gateway, it was a statement that when customers asked us about connecting Sametime and Public IM networks, and we told them that we would be providing a server-based gateway to allow for that, there was general agreement that this was the right approach.

11

Adam Gartenberg | Website: http://www.adamgartenberg.com | 12/8/2006 7:42:25 AM GMT

@8 - Thanks for the lengthy comments on this - I've posted additional comments over on your site.

12

David Schaffer | Website: http://bloginprogress.us | 12/8/2006 8:46:23 AM GMT

@10: Adam, you've hit the core problem exactly:

"I'm not saying that IBM doesn't still have more improvement to make in understanding their needs, or more to the point, to delivering solutions that show that we understand their needs. "

Notes/Domino can be a great solution for small business. I support 25 consultants who travel internationally. I would be hard pressed to do it without replication -- and DWA when client access fails.

But IBM just doesn't have a clue as to how to relate to these small business customers. They're well treated, getting the same service as large customers, but it's often just too hard to get an answer, a price, etc. for a specific product or issue. And clearly when you talk about a three-server solution to implement a single function the very small installation has not been considered.

13

Mike Gotta | Website: http://mikeg.typepad.com/ | 12/9/2006 11:56:17 AM GMT

I assume that IBM will eventually "black box" the underlying platform so that it will install without any knowledge needed per se of the embedded components. The management and problem resolution tools will also need to ramp up quickly to satisfy the valid issues related to skill sets. But I do believe this is the right approach (WAs, DB2, etc). This gateway has an underlying architecture that can carry it in different directions over time so it is likely to evolve to support a variety of "business boundary" services beyond IM and presence. That's why I actually preferred the other name (avoiding the tight coupling to Sametime). If you call it "duck" and the initial behavior "quacks like a duck" then people expect it to be a duck (e.g., Sametime over Domino).

14

Roy | Website: | 11/23/2007 6:49:49 AM GMT

Good and informative blog, keep it up

15

e-okul | Website: http://e-okulnotlar.blogspot.com | 1/14/2008 8:22:53 PM GMT

nice. thanks

16

John | Website: | 2/12/2008 12:10:36 PM GMT

great Info