South Africans in Ireland for Lotusphere event

See from Ed that some South Africans will attend a Lotusphere Comes to you event. Wonder who this South Africans are and hope they are going to take some notes so that they can bring the event also to us poor sods that have to stay behind here in South Africa.

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IBM SA delivers bumper year

Yes I know this is mostly old news but it only hit the press here in South Africa yesterday.  It is good to see IBM South Africa doing so well. 

IBM SA had a record year, delivering a 20% rise in revenue for its 2006 financial year, says Mark Harris, IBM SA country GM.
Speaking at the annual IBM gala dinner for channel partners, Harris noted the year saw growth of 33% from the company’s Server and Technology Group, 30% from Business Consulting, 33% from its Software Group and 59% from its Services Group.

 
This contributes a bit to the $91.4billion revenue that IBM made during 2006.

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Collaboration: New from IBM

A lot has been written and said about Notes 8, Lotus Connections and Quickr since announcement at Lotusphere 2007.  I like particularly what Bill Buchan wrote and I quote:

Notes – my long term partner – well. She’s been tucked, trimmed, lipo’d, exfoliated. A complete makeover. But she’s still the rather interesting person behind this new facade. Some new tricks, of course. But the old ones still work. The in-laws – IBM – well, they cant get enough of her. The twin sisters – Quickr, and Connections. No talk of the ugly cousin -Workplace -anymore.

and then Bill gets a stab into MS also — love it

Let me tell you – Quickr just makes Sharepoint look like an ugly sister. Ouch.

I have run the latest beta build of Notes 8 and must say I like what I see. Much more slicker and responsive and that for a beta build.  Cannot wait to get my hands on Connections and Quickr.

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Wisdom from NASA on Project Management

While reading John Tolva’s blog I came accross some NASA wisdom around projects and I quote:

“If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
— Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module* that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.

Now at IBM we strive to be innovative for the customers we serve … does this mean that we as Project Managers should not be bound by fixed project cost and fixed project schedules?

Being innovative means that some leeway must be provided for.  To be innovative also means that there is no history and/or experience on which costs and schedules can be based.  However what goes hand in hand with this is to make sure you have good Risk Management processes in place since being innovative also means that one must take more risks.

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Will IBM be an orca or a penguin?

Now you may be wondering what I have been drinking by asking a question like that … well wonder no more — see this article.

It is a very intriguing question which side IBM is going to take.  Join Microsoft and stay away from legal battles or stand up for freedom and openness.  I genuinely hope the latter.  My view is that MS has no leg to stand on when it comes to Linux infringing MS intellectual property.  All they after is pocketing some money from somebody for nothing … just a lot of FUD from MS.

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IBM invests $100million in new ideas

IBM’s Sam Palmisano announced that $100million will be spend over the next 2 years on new ideas that was generated earlier this year.  Of the 10 that caught my eye was:

“Digital Me”: Creating a secure, user-friendly service that simplifies storage, management and long-term access to the deluge of personal content that people accumulate (digital photos, videos, music, health and financial records, personal identification documents, files, etc.).

3D Internet: Partnering with others to take the best of virtual worlds and gaming environments to build a seamless, standards-based 3D Internet — the next platform for global commerce and day-to-day business operations.

and

Simplified Business Engines: Developing and bringing to market an intuitive, easy-to-use and pre-packaged set of Web 2.0 services and blade server offerings that allow small and mid-size businesses to easily tap applications customized to their own specific business needs.

 
Will keep and eye on these and see how I can get involved in these initiatives.

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Greater IBM

Just read on the GreaterIBM blog about their visit to Germany.  Quoting

….opportunities for this network to support business goals in key current markets, such as Germany, as well as emerging ones like China, India and Brazil.

I would like to see this also extended to South Africa which is a growing part of the world when looking at IBM.

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Move to IBM now in the final stretch

ITWeb has a story on our move to IBM … as they say in South Africa — it is now  “min dae” (for my non-Afrikaans friends and readers that mean that we almost there).

On the one side I am a bit sad in leaving SCS behind and some of my coleagues that are staying behind in Safmarine.  On the other hand I am realy existed to become an IBMer with all the opportunities and new things to learn.  It is almost like being born again.  I have already virtually met some great IBMers like Kelly and Andy.

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Sun open source Java under GPL

One of the best pieces of news in a long time.  I quote from ZDNet:

After years of requests and debates, Sun Microsystems is ready to release Java source code under a Linux-friendly license.

On Monday, it plans to put the code for the programming software under the version 2 of the General Public License (GPLv2), which governs Linux and many other open-source products. The Sun-hosted Java.net Web site will provide access to Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME) software for mobile phones and Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software for desktop applications.

This is good for everybody and in particularly the Linux community where distributions like Ubuntu is now free to re-distribute the Java platform.

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IBM still leads the race when it comes to Super Computers!

The lastest Top 500 list of Super Computers will be released on 14 Nov and to get a sneak preview head over to Top500.

IBM still heads the list with a computer with the performance of 280.6 teraflop/s, more than double the 2nd position. Overall IBM have 47.8% of the entries on the list with HP in second place with 31.2%.

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