Huge Savings in Domino 8.5.2 Upgrade

by Len Barker, Managing Partner - Lotus Practice

I have been working with a long time customer to move their 6,000 Notes users and scores of Notes applications to new hardware.  The need to replace the hardware allows us to reconfigure the Domino infrastructure to take advantage of the many features in Domino that will result in high availability and lower cost of ownership.  The 6,000 mail files are clustered and load balanced across two Windows 2008 servers with two Internet Cluster Managers handling web traffic.  A similar design was used to cluster the application servers.  This arrangement, while not new to Domino, will result in higher availability and make it easier to schedule maintenance.  Two relatively new Domino features that are already making a big impact are the Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) and the ID Vault.

DAOS

DAOS allows attachments to be stored once on a file store and a link to the file is emailed to users instead of several copies of the attachment therefore saving a significant amount of mail file size.  We implemented DAOS on the new servers using the following process:

1. Run the DAOS estimator on the existing Mail servers to determine how much disk space to set aside for DAOS files
2. Configure transaction logging on the new servers (required for DAOS)
3.  Assign SAN storage for the DAOS files
4. Create a program document to schedule a "compact -c -daos on" task to run every day (only for the period of time it took to get all of the files moved to the new servers)
5. Use the Admin task to create replicas of mail files on the new servers
6. Allow the Compact task to move the attachments to the file store
7. Use the Admin task to move the user to the new servers (we had a bad experience moving a user to the new server while compact was still under way)

Average savings:  50% to 75% of the mail file size

ID Vault

The ID Vault not only acts as secure repository for all ID files, it gives administrators, help desk personnel, and even end users an easy way to reset passwords.  Prior to implementing ID Vault, my client stored a copy of all ID files on a secure network share.  Each ID had a generic password. If a user forgot their password, an administrator would get a copy of the ID off of the network share, change the password, remote the users machine to replace the old ID with the new one, and instruct the user how to reset their password again.  With the new ID vault, an administrator simply opens their Notes Administrator client, selects a name from the directory, and clicks the ID Vault - Reset Password tool.  After entering a new password or allowing the system to generate a random password, the user is given the password to login with.  The user simply types in that password and they are in!  A new password can be required after login.

We created the ID Vault by following the instructions in Admin help.  For organizations that will allow administrators to reset passwords on any ID file the process is simple.  For larger organizations, the ID Vault wizard allows you to select users that will be responsible for individual organizational units.  Once the vault is configured, it is applied to users by policy.  Once the policy is applied, ID files are automatically uploaded to the vault.

Average savings: 15 minutes* per password reset and the ability to assign the task to more junior people.

*Please note that the average cost savings will also depend on your current process for resetting passwords.

by Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, WebSphere Practice

A fascinating book was recommended to me by the CIO of Global Partners, Ken Piddington entitled, "World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs" by Peter High. The book reinforces a concept that is central to the mission of Davalen - it's that information technology vendors must understand the businesses they support for both you and the enterprise to succeed. When Davalen began in 1993, we were so sure of this idea that we trademarked this concept as: "We speak business. We understand technology."

The IT department should not be a cost center reacting to a myriad of requests but a strategic partner in the business that offers solutions using the toolkit they have available, i.e. their software. As Davalen has grown, we found IBM to have the most comprehensive toolkit, which allowed us to recommend the best business value to our clients.

Getting the most out of your IBM software starts with understanding the business need and how it will increase revenue or reduce cost. These metrics are not always apparent but starting with this mindset helps IT become part of the solution and not a bottleneck. Priorities are set as an organization with clear measurements of the software impact on the business.

Early in my career, I was on a design team that automated claims processing for the Medicare B program. In every case, we doubled the IT budget of the organization - try that in your company. However, the business case was compelling because we automated much of the claims process and reduced the overall business cost by 50 percent.

Much of my time currently is spent managing the WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Portlet Factory practice at Davalen. We have found that once we go through the business analysis and define the appropriate processes to automate, that Portlet Factory cuts our development time by 60 percent or more so we can get to the solution more quickly.

Using the IBM tools available and with our deep understanding that IT supports the business processes, Davalen is in a unique position to help your business get the most from your IBM investment.

Making a Business Case for Effective Search

by Peter Wilkerson, Search & Discovery Practice Area Manager

In any information-sharing system, one of the hardest pieces to effectively complete is the way users navigate and discover the information they need.  Currently, you cannot simply install a program and expect them to automatically know where and how to complete a search query successfully and efficiently.

Recently I was approached by one of our clients, an online retailer, who was struggling to find a solution to connecting their customers to the right information. They were finding high amounts of clients abandoning their site before even viewing their products. Their current program consisted of using a traditional retail website pattern of building a hierarchical product catalog.  After evaluating their current system, we found the customers were frustrated with the excessive amount of navigation time through the traditional catalog hierarchy they had in place.

Working with the client, we developed a solution that made it possible for customers to navigate to a manageable set of products within two to three mouse clicks.  This particular solution required IBM OmniFind Discovery Edition (ODE). ODE makes heavy use of its ability for faceted searching which has the ability to focus searching based on product attributes provided by the retailer.  You may have seen some basic examples on the Internet where you can choose to breakdown results or products by smaller components such as brand or color. Our client went even farther and identified key attributes that were of most interest to their customers.  This was a very important step as it determined what order customers needed to see the attributes in order to quickly see the product they wanted to buy. 

95% of their customers have given the updated navigation an overwhelming approval.

The end result for our client is the increased product conversion rates. Their new rate ties directly into the ability to see a broader results set based on the attributes chosen and no longer relying on the traditional time-consuming catalog hierarchy to find products.