Integrating Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) with Lotus Bluehouse

With the advent of SaaS and IBM'e initiatives of offering Web Conferencing Service (Sametime Unyte), Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr as SaaS (in Lotus Bluehome [http://bluehouse.lotus.com], it opens up another avenue which was ignored.

IBM has another Lotus brand of product for Corporates/Universities/Colleges/Schools named Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/learning-management-system/]. This is really cool product which provides ability to the institutes set up their coursewares, conduct trainings and a lot about learning. I am very keen to see if LMS can be offered as SaaS within Lotus Bluehouse. The advantages (plenty) (ok, I will talk from the perspective of customers - IBM can think of revenues)

1. All the offering that SaaS model provides (QoS parameters including better security and responsibility lies to SaaS provider, but site administration can still be done by the customers.
2. LMS along with the collaboration tools, a great mix - do we need classrooms still :-) - Yes, classrooms are best place for the regular students to be in..but for distant learning courses (where many US varisities conducting off-shore classes from India, this could be vital)..Currently, many research scholars (or college students doing project work rely on public social networking tools such as Orkut, YouTube, MySpace and other Project Management or file storage tools, they can get benefits. They can conduct conferencing with their peers or guides. Teachers can setup blogs for various topics and we have collaborative learning and experiences.
3. Many people may not be good speakers (and hence politicans), but they may have great writing skills and providing these tools in a controlled environment is such an easy way to encourage them to speak out to concerned audiences and not going public this way.
4. VERY good tool in Indian context - why: In Europe and Americas, they already are technologically advanced and students are exposed to good and bad part of Internet. But in India, with these tools, we will encourage them to adopt to these (read Lotus Bluehouse + LMS) and we have still huge number of people, who don't know these tools exists in the world. Educational institutes are a great way to popularize these tools among the generation next - and we have people, who don't want to listen to this and want to think about immediate revenue and profit - which is good for the H1/H2 quantitative figures, but bad for the people who may benefit by using those - well they can still still use open source it they wish, but that is not controlled and no one is really responsible for those. But if they some how be able to adopt to Bluehouse, it is well controlled environment, and they can collaborate better and secured..

I hope for the best of the Indian people...

Back to basics!!!!

I did not realize that many people may not understand the whole concept behind my blogs (specially non-IT). I apologise for my ignorance.

If you are new to "social networking" concepts, then you can go to:
http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
Then to read concepts about blogging in schools:http://www.ena.com/news/get_connected_2007_05.html

This is going to be future state in schools and colleges. e.g. many students feel shy in the classrooms or may be hesitant to express themselves and teachers/parent may not know the real reason. At times, it is found that they can express better in writing, hence blogging/community sites/wikis/YouTube/Orkut provide a better opportunity to connect teachers and students together. This is very new in India, but will definitely pickup as internet availability and infrastructure improves in India (it will take its time, but need not be a big bang).
With my blog, I am trying to take some initiatives to educate people that what it really is and how can these tools can help communication among individuals.

Can Indian Education Society emulate Internet2?

Read what Internet2 is all about - http://www.internet2.edu/

The question Indian educationists (IITs and NITs speicaly) have to answer is: Can they provide similar infrastructure to other smaller institutes/schools? I guess, funding may be a problem, but then they should start bringing companies into their growth plans and vision..For Indian companies, it is really a shame that they are not taking large scale combined initiative, but are focussed on smaller areas which cater to their short term and immediate concerns or goals like to build better roads in Bangalore so that employees can reach to the office faster :-)
I think, IBM again is doing great job working with colleges and universities across most part of India and not just local..

SaaS - What is it now?

Ok..We have another buzzword "SaaS" (clarified by one of my friends as not Ekta Kapoor's SaaS (bhi kabhi bahu thi)) :-)

SaaS - Software As A Service: To me it does not sound much difference from ASP (Application Service Provider) model. ASP based model were successful and worked out well for many companies (specially timesheet management, bug posting, mail and even some banking software were hosted on ASP environments). Now, SaaS has more support from SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) community also and trends are moving towards service management and provisioning on contractual basis - with SaaS, the clients need not buy or worry abour hardware, software, maintenance, upgradation etc.

In this model, instead of on-site hosting of the application and infrastructure, everything will be out-sourced..But SaaS providers now have to provide better security and QoS (Quality of Service). This is true in case financial/insurance companies want to leverage this model, the providers will have to obtain security/audit certificates from SAS 70 auditors [http://www.sas70.com/faq/faq1.htm]. Most of the time security and infrastructure provided by the service providers is better managed than on-site infrastructure. The client will have to pay a fixed/variable fee to use the hosted services and environment (probably annual contract).

This may be very cool in Indian context, where SMB (Small and Medium Business) and small government bodies/schools/colleges may not buy the whole software and hardware to setup/manager their own applications. they can contact SaaS providers for solutions. IBM has shown keen interest in this field and definitely they have will to do and resources to provide quality services specially in emerging markets such as India, China, Brazil, Russia, African nations etc. one such example could be offering Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections itself as SaaS and fullfil the QoS paramters set by the clients (could be bandwidth, security, user access, maintenance, availability)..This way, small companies/bodies need not invest heavily on infrastructure (DEV/TEST/STAGING envrionments) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is with SaaS..I like this model very much and isn't IBM had been doing this successfully with Bharti and Idea accounts in India..So, they have shown that this model is workable, but need to standardize this model by adopting certification criteria and adhering to those to fullfil the contract with different clients.

What can we do to address poor Internet availability/access/infrastructure problem in India??

This is the major problem why many of the civil bodies in India are finding it difficult to adopt to the Internet itself and to show their own presence in the World; so it is more difficult for them to adopt Web 2.0 tools. Many departments don't have computers, internet connections, well electricity itself. How can this be solved:

• Do they rely on Government to take initiatives?
• Can IBM (or some organization) help build solar powered computers for governement or rural areas? (UPS can be charged with solar power and then companies can donate old PCs to these areas instead of dumping them)
• Do they rely on Private bodies to bail them out in the form of charity/funds.
• NGO - are they really good enough to help these bodies when they themselves don't have resources or don't want to get into troubles themselves
• Community libraries/centers can be setup where they provide limited time net access (I know it is a challenge in Indian context, but some where change has to be made)
• ...
• ...

Lets assume for this discussion that some depatment/organization has a computer with internet access. Why not an individual or a group within these bodies start using blogging or other social networking tools to promote their cause or create their own blog space on public blogs available as stop gap measure to show their presence to start with. E.g. they can create a community profile (orkut, myspace, YouTube) for their deparments to tell what they do, put photos etc. They can use Google docs to create and share documents etc. If some department is lucky enough to have their own LAN, they can download free Wiki software and setup their local Wiki site (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) and start collaborating. They may not need whole big enterprise level infrastructure to start with and should not deter them going forward.

As their blogs/wikis/community sites attract more and more people and they start getting more feedbacks from good citizens in the form of encouraging words, then they can look for government aids.

What is required is an "Initiative". As an IBMers, can we help in this cause? We all must have cotacts in these social bodies and atleast 2% of them have this vision and dream..If we can help them realize this, this will be a very good initiative from social initiatives point of view. They need not start with big bang and that is what we need to tell them..The reason why I am saying is that the next generation of workers in those bodies will have more challenges if the current generation doesn't start this now. With open world, privatization of many public offices, it is a challenge for them and we may help them by encouraging/enable/mentor them..To start with, if they don't have access, as a part of community service, we should try to help them move forward..

Comments please...

Returning back with thoughts...

I had been struggling to write for long long time now, but decided to give it a shot. I have started getting into blogging now and was reading alot about it off late.

It is very heartening that people are using such a beautiful concept to share their thoughts and different types of blogs are giving tremendous knowledge and insight into different streams, not just the work but travel, health, education, fun etc. I have started feeling better after going through many articles about Web 2.0 and what it is offering and what it will offer in future. Web 2.0 is also helping creating "2.0" wave :-)

Now, soon you will start hearing "Enterprise 2.0", "Office 2.0", "Messaging 2.0" (that is my imagination), "Collaboration 2.0"..What about including "Social Networking and Etiquette" as a part of next session's syllabus? Recently, I was reading a news about a "Virginia Student's Snow-Day Plea Triggers Online Furor" [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325209,00.html] and how this student used his knowledge of social networking to raise his voice. This triggered several concern in the society about the good old "generation gap" topic. Every few years, society revives itself and Web 2.0 (or I prefer social networking) is a new way to broaden this gap :-)

I don't know how the olders people (I know, we will get older one day) thinks right now about speed with which kids are getting exposed to Intranet and opportunities is brings about. It is not only true with the kids though, even within the corporates, individuals and management apart have started realizing the importance of this and have already taken steps to embrace this. IBM is now trying to make this concept available at corporate level by launching "Lotus Connections" last year and now there is a new mantra emerging as Enterprise 2.0.

I tried not to mix technology in this, but now it is getting very difficult to separate technology out when we talk about Web 2.0. My next blog will be for the need of governance model (different models when in public and when in corporate) in Web 2.0 world and I hope schools adopt this as a part of "Civics" or "Sociology" lessons. If you read this..then you know I am socially connected now :-)