PROMEVO, MESSAGING & COLLABORATION EXPERTS

MWV has gone Google

2009-12-30T09:56:00.001-08:00

MWV (formerly MeadWestvaco), a global packaging company based in Glen Allen, Virginia, has migrated its 12,000 technology-enabled employees to Google Apps. A 165-year-old company with a diverse set of commercial and consumer solutions, MWV products are ubiquitous in everyday life – Mead Five-Star notebooks, coffee cups from your local barista, canned beverage FridgePak cases you see in your grocery store, collectors edition DVD cases, and fluid dispensers for luxury perfumes and lotions – among many others.

MWV has grown extensively through acquisitions, which left it with twelve siloed email systems, including multiple instances of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes across the globe.

MWV embarked on a journey to unite its global workforce on a single email platform. Critical to their "One MWV" initiative was to enable users in 34 countries and speaking a wide variety of languages to collaborate and easily communicate as one global team.

Mark Gulling, MWV's CIO, explains that "The shift to Google has enhanced our ability to effectively collaborate by simplifying our email infrastructure, and delivered a richer set of communication tools. Google provides not only a rich collaboration suite, but a constant stream of innovative, market-defining products that enhance and constantly evolve our user's working experience." Gulling reports a number of benefits since switching to Google:

Increased productivity. Users, from executives to individual contributors, have reported increases of over 30 minutes per day, thanks to powerful search capability and the organization features of Labels, Filters, and more.

Online information sharing. Users have rapidly adopted Google Sites to share information and media. Approximately 200 group, product, and project collaboration sites have been created since MWV switched to Google Apps.

Real-time communications. MWV has used Google Docs and video chat to help people stay in touch and collaborate in real time, avoiding unnecessary travel or videoconferencing costs.

Innovation. MWV's product sales team was able to quickly roll out a new quote management framework based on Google Forms and Google Docs with the help ofGoogle Apps Script.

MWV's users are excited about the switch to Google and the new features available to them. As Mel Shaffer, VP of Global Service Delivery, says, "Moving to Google has givenMWV the ability to ride a wave of collaboration and technology features that would be difficult to duplicate in any other product."

Continuing, Shaffer adds, "Google's innovative product design and commitment to user experience translate into a feature-rich user experience that is unparalleled in the IT marketplace today. Additionally, Google's price point enables IT to reduce costs and minimize or eliminate capital investment – a true win for our enterprise and our users."

Join us in welcoming MWV to the growing ranks of businesses who have gone Google.

Posted by Colleen Horan, Google Enterprise team

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Lotus Sametime 8.5 to Ship December 22, 2009

2009-12-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

New Sametime Web Site: www.lotus.com/sametime

Description of Sametime 8.5

IBM® Lotus® Sametime® is IBM's award winning platform for unified communications and collaboration. It provides a core set of real-time communication services that make it easier to find, reach and collaborate with colleagues, customers, and business partners. These include:
• Rich presence
• Secure, enterprise class instant messaging
• Online meetings with audio-conferencing and video- conferencing
• Integrated Voice (VoIP) and high quality desktop video
• Community collaboration, including Federation with Public Instant Messaging services
• Mobile device integration
• Optional one number phone service, softphone, and call management capabilities

Lotus Sametime delivers these services, as well as those from hundreds of Business Partners, through a unified user experience. Moving among text chats, video calls, and online meetings is seamless to the user and driven by what's most effective for the task at hand. Services can also be delivered through the applications that people use everyday - e-mail, productivity, enterprise and Web-based applications. In contrast to numerous isolated, unconnected collaboration technologies, Lotus Sametime's consistent, integrated collaboration experience promotes end-user adoption. This helps turn the long held promise of unified communications into a reality.

IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5 represents the next generation of unified communications and collaboration software. It incorporates:
• A new online meeting experience that is integrated into the IBM Lotus Sametime Connect client. Join a meeting with a single click. Easily invite others by dragging their names from the contact list. Accept meeting invitations with a single click. Upload meeting materials via simple drag and drop.
• New zero-download, browser-based chat and meeting clients that extend the desktop experience to wherever the user is working.
• A new standards-based audio and video infrastructure that enables interoperability with third party audio and video conferencing systems.
• New audio and video codecs that provide higher quality native voice and video services for a more compelling collaborative experience out-of-the-box.
• New Web 2.0 APIs that let developers embed Sametime capabilities into Web sites and applications so users switch context less.
• A new, browser-based Apple iPhone chat client, support for the Blackberry Storm, and an improved mobile client for Microsoft® Windows® Mobile devices.
• New social views that make it easier to find the people you collaborate with the most.
• A new System Console that centralizes infrastructure configuration, deployment, management, and policy management for all Sametime services.
• New upgrade options if you have basic Sametime services from other IBM offerings.

What's new in Sametime 8.5

Effective online meetings - never lose the first ten minutes of a meeting to sharing meeting information again.
• Meeting rooms are reservationless - they can be instantly created for a single meeting or kept and be reused. Of course, they can be scheduled through Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook calendars.
• Persistent meeting rooms are available 24x7 and have their own file library. Users can create rooms devoted to specific projects and store the appropriate materials there.
• The meeting experience is fully integrated into the Sametime Connect client. Users can create, find, and join meetings right from Connect Client.
• A zero-download browser-based meeting experience is also available for meeting participants to view meeting content.
• Invite others to meetings by dragging names from the Connect Client contact list and dropping them on the meeting room.
• Accept meeting invitations in a single click - it's just like joining a group chat request.
• Upload materials via simple drag and drop.
• Standards-based meeting recording and playback.

Simplified audio and video takes the guess work out of multimedia collaboration
• A single audio and video interface delivers both built-in and partner media capabilities.
• Desktop video supports variable video window size, full screen mode, and resolutions up to high definition.
• Audio/video is now based on the industry-standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), improving interoperability with third-party audio/video conferencing systems.
• New administrative controls over the video experience (size, bitrate, and quality).
• H.264 video and G.722.1 audio codecs provide higher quality multimedia experience at lower bandwidths.

New tools to presence and communication enable any Web 2.0 application. These make it easy to extend collaboration throughout your organization and improve productivity.
• New Representational Sate Transfer (REST)-based Web 2.0 APIs allow the next generation of developers to use standard AJAX tools to embed a full range of Sametime capabilities into Web applications and portals.
• A new customizable, zero-download browser-based chat client makes it easier to integrate the Sametime chat experience into your Web sites.

More effective instant messaging and mobility options.
• A new customizable, zero-download browser-based chat client makes it easier to deploy Sametime to more people.
• Two new views in the Connect Client - Frequent Contacts and Recent Contacts puts the people you collaborate with most often at your fingertips.
• An expanded Microsoft Outlook Toolbar makes it a more effective collaborationtool.
• Rich text chat between Sametime communities over the Sametime gateway.
• A new Apple iPhone optimized browser-client for instant messaging.
• A new Windows mobile client for a more refined mobile experience.
• Support for the Blackberry Storm.

Simplified management with the new Sametime system console.
• Configure, setup, and test LDAP from a single location.
• Facilitate deployment planning and installation of Sametime servers.
• Central policy management for all Sametime services.

Multiple infrastructure enhancements that make Sametime more cost effective tooperate
• A new architecture delivers componentized services that can be flexibly combined, distributed, and clustered, as needed.
• Meetings use HTTP and HTTPS to connect users, improving firewall friendliness.
• Meetings include failover and clustering eliminating the need for the Sametime

Enterprise Meetings Server.
• Sametime Media Manager provides policy-based controls over the video experience (size, connection speed, and quality).
• Audio/video is now based on the industry-standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), improving interoperability with third-party audio/video conferencing systems.
• Sametime Proxy Server provides Web 2.0 APIs to simplify integration into Web
applications.
• Sametime System Console make Sametime easier to manage and administer.
• Wider platform support: Lotus Domino® 8.5, Microsoft Windows 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit editions), 64-bit Linux® operating systems.

New and easier ways to license
• Current customers of other IBM offerings that include basic Sametime services - including Lotus Notes - can take advantage of new upgrade options for more complete functionality.

Note that Sametime Entry provides online presence, basic text chat, and integration with Microsoft offerings. Online Meetings, Audio/Video, SDKs and Toolkits, Mobility, and browser clients require Sametime Standard.

One button to merge all duplicate contacts in Contacts

2009-12-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

One button to merge all duplicate contacts in Contacts

You can now merge any duplicate contacts in your contacts manager all at once

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
To tidy up your contact list in one go, just click the "Find duplicates" button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the "Merge" button.