Lotus Sametime’s Support for Real-time Collaboration

   It is an irrefutable fact that organizations need to collaborate internally and also with external parties to sustain business.  Moreover, the communication ought to be real-time and cost-effective. Thus, software which facilitates real-time, cost-effective collaboration is widely used in the industry. IBM Sametime is such software which offers unified communication, providing integrated voice, data and video.

   Provision of unified experience in collaboration is one of the key features of Sametime, which can also be integrated with a number of IBM products such as Webspear portal, Lotus Notes and IBM connections as well as with applications such as Microsoft office, Microsoft outlook and Microsoft share point. Its support for client-server operating systems, directories, emails, desktop and mobile access, productivity applications, portals and social networking has made organizations utilize their investments more effectively.  In addition to that, this is software that facilitates higher quality audio and video conferencing, conforming to policies, utilizing protocols such as SIP and SRTP to ensure interoperability and security.  Since Sametime manifests vital properties of real-time collaboration, rich policy based control, centralized management, flexibility, scalability and robust security features, it can bring about competitive advantage to any business.

   Another feature of Sametime is reliable, scalable, secure instant messaging. Instant messaging is very useful to interact with colleagues in order to sort out work related queries.  Instant messaging does not only provide means of communication but also enable a view of configurable recent and frequent contact lists, searching of users, rich text formatting and using of emoticons and sharing of business card details. Sharing of files, built-in integration with emails, searching of chat history and using of widgets have even added more value to instant messaging of Sametime. Rich presence awareness is an extension to instant messaging, which notifies of the availability of a person. It is also able to post custom status messages and alerts. The geographic location of people can be updated in the system too.

   Online meetings can also be conducted through SameTime. People can be invited easily to meetings by merely dragging and dropping them and the invitees can accept or reject by a click of the mouse, with this software. This evades the hassle of summoning people through emails and calls. Furthermore, since the locations of individuals are immaterial the travelling cost can be completely waved off.  Adjunct features such as managing meeting rooms, screen sharing, document sharing and audio and video capabilities further the importance of having Sametime in organizations.

   Intercommunication via mobile devices is also a feature catered by Sametime, which enables employees to involve in meetings and messaging while being on the move. Users will have to install the mobile client in order for this facility to be available. Almost all features available in desktop client are present in the mobile client. Information such as online status, geographic location, availability and custom status messages can be shared with the client.

   To sum up, the sophisticated features provided by IBM Sametime is crucial for a company or a business because incurring high expenses and wasting too many hours on collaborating can no longer be afforded if to be in business competing with rivals.  

References:

1. IBM Sametime features and capabilities.  http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/features.html 
2. Mobility support with IBM Sametime software.  http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/features.html 
3. Enterprise instant messaging with IBM Sametime software. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/instant-messaging.html
4. Community collaboration with IBM Sametime software. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/community.html
5. Rich presence awareness with IBM Sametime software. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/presence.html
6. Online meetings with IBM Sametime software. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/web-conferencing.html
7. Telephony with IBM Sametime software. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/telephony.html

Data Management

  It is crucial for organizations to have critical and timely information available in order to make decision to make progress and more importantly sustain the business. Hence it is necessary for to be facilitated with software and systems to manage, prioritize and ensure the availability information. Moreover companies should adopt necessary precautions to protect their data and also to efficiently handle the exponential growth of the same.

Quick data retrieval became problematic with the evolution of technologies due to data being distributed among many servers, which eventually caused the introduction of data warehousing. Data warehousing has been accepted as a solution to the burden of managing data, which is considered as an asset of any organization.

Data Warehouse

   A data warehouse by definition is a repository which stores subject-oriented, historical data in an organized and quickly accessible manner, used for analytical processing such as data mining, decision making, querying and other applications.  The concept of data warehousing is strongly interrelated with data access, retrieval, analysis and visualization. Features that comprise it are organization, consistency, time variance, nonvolatile nature, real-time and integration of data, and relational and web based architectures.

   Most of the organizations adhere to the concept not only because of the features revealed above, but also its ability to structure data according to business processes such as shipping, purchasing and inventory and the provision of access to data through web based systems for the end users. In addition to that, data warehouses cater the storage of metadata, which include software programs about data, information on indexing, data summaries and rules to organize data.  Furthermore it is proven that this can benefit a company by providing consolidated information which can be used to infer cost effective solutions and also offload information processing from expensive operational systems onto cheaper servers. Therefore it is irrefutable that companies receive competitive advantage, enhanced customer service and satisfaction, improved business knowledge, help in streamlining business processes and advantages in decision making.

   Nevertheless building and maintaining a data warehouse is extremely expensive. It may also be difficult to incorporate data from legacy systems. Thus, a feasibility analysis is required when deciding to use a data warehouse.