Adam Gartenberg's Blog

Thoughts on the Sametime NYC Launch Event

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• Author: Adam S Gartenberg
• September 13, 2006
• Category:

Well, I'm sitting in the airport on the way back home from the Sametime launch kickoff.  I know I'm biased here, but it really was an amazing event - and before I go any further I want to thank everyone on the extended team who did all the planning, coordinating, promotion, execution, and everything else to take this from concept to a flawlessly-run event.  I couldn't have imagined it coming off any better (nor could I imagine having done this with any other team).

Hopefully many of you were able to watch the webcast, and for those that didn't, I would strongly recommend that you take a look.  (It will be available for the next 6 months or so, and will be translated into 8 languages, as well.)  If you, or anyone in your organization, have questions about why you need a real-time collaboration solution, or have any doubts as to why Sametime is the solution you should be looking at, have them watch the webcast.

Since we were in a standing-room-only situation, I couldn't "live-blog" it from my PC, but I did manage to take some notes down on the highlights.  I actually need to go watch the webcast myself, because Mike Rhodin spelled out the business case and vision for Sametime so well, and so passionately, that I want to make sure we're capturing what he said and how he said it.

Mike Rhodin opened the keynote talking about how when IBM went out and interviewed and surveyed the top executives of leading companies, collaboration continuously came out as a top-of-mind issue in the Chairman's office.  He then went on to talk about what it takes to stay competitive in the global economy we all operate in today.  To innovate, you need to collaborate.  And you need to make sure you have the skills you need to solve problems right now - and that also means being open to finding those skills wherever those people happen to be.  Much of his portion of the keynote also focused on how Sametime 7.5 isn't just the next release of Sametime, but a next generation platform... with platform being the operative word.  And I'll say it again - I'm not doing his talk justice here - but the key areas he hit on were the value of speed and openness, and the importance of having a solution that can carry companies forward into the future as a platform for real-time applications and a strong ecosystem of solutions building off of that.

Ken Bisconti came up next and provided more details on the key themes for how businesses using Sametime 7.5 can:  Realize immediate business value, streamline communication and collaboration (serving as a foundation for unified communications), and easily integrate into and extend their solutions through a broad ecosystem of partners.

Throughout that segment, Ron Sebastian provided demos of Sametime 7.5 in action.  As I said before, if you have any doubts for how much more valuable Sametime 7.5 can be over a "first generation" IM or Web Conferencing solution, watch the webcast.  He demoed a plugin that can automatically extract data from a back-end system and insert it directly into a chat conversation.  He showed a plugin that pulls together contact information from a corporate directory, sales data from a backend database (which he updated on the fly, with Sametime automatically showing the refreshed data), and reminder text entered directly into Sametime.  He also demoed the latest beta of the Sametime Mobile client on a BlackBerry, click-to-call capabilities with Cisco and video capabilities from Radvision - just two of the many partners we're working with to provide unified communications solutions.  My favorite demo, though, was of a plugin from Dassault System's 3d modeling software.  Ron showed how with a click of a button, he was able to upload a part and - directly in the Sametime chat window work collaboratively with his chat partner to rotate the object, mark it up, and otherwise control/edit it.  This is the type of thing that really begins to show the power of Sametime 7.5.  

The last segment of the keynote was an industry panel, which I will need to write more about in my next post.  (As well as the breakout sessions.)

I don't want to end this without talking about the partner showcase, though.  It really was an indescribable feeling walking around a room filled with partners, all of them running Sametime 7.5 at their booths and showing off solutions that are integrating into it.  

Anyway - more to come.  Off to find my plane.

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