Lotus had adopted the SIMPLE protocol early in its branching off from SIP, and it still a work in progress.  Now, like many others, Lotus has adopted XMPP, the protocol behind Jabber as well.  This means that there is yet another mainstream product that is interoperable with other XMPP-based services, including APU IM and Google Talk.

Source:  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2068781,00.asp

I ran across a phrase that reminded me of "the spice must flow" line that rings in the head of any fan of Dune.

enabling the flow of data in such a way as to make its location immaterial

What a great way to describe our recently proposed architecture principle relating to data:

Leveraged Data - Data is an enterprise asset that should be leveraged across the organization over time.

 
The seventh annual Educause Current IT Issues Survey Report highlights two areas which I have been following.  First, Security & Identity Management (IdM) rose to the top, displacing IT Funding as the most strategic issue needing to be resolved for future success.  Second, Portfolio Development & Management was a new category this year and immediately received attention, appearing among the top-ten issues expected to become more significant in the coming year.  Other issues I have been tracking of late were also covered, including ERP, Academic Alignment, and Web Services (SOA). 

Here are some of the highlights from the report, with additional resources referenced at the end.  Overall, this report is a treasure trove of Higher Education IT strategic thinking:

Nicholas Donofrio, IBM's executive vice president of innovation and technology, declared:

"If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing," he added.

..these days, people are looking for value that arises from a creation and not just looking at technology for its sake.

So what is it that people are looking for?  Not entirely new technology, but better packaged, better managed, and more congruent services in line with the way humans interact.  Sounds familiar.

innovation today is more about services, process, business models or cultural innovation than just product innovation.

Source: cnet news article

Its been five years since Sun Open Sourced the StarOffice suite they purchased from German company Star Division.  Today OpenOffice has released version 2.0 which represents a very significant re-engineering of the 1.0 codebase.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

ZDNet Coverage: 

Version 2.0 brings some significant new features, and Google has pledged to help distribute OpenOffice through a high-profile pact with Sun. But perhaps more significant, OpenOffice.org uses the standardized OpenDocument format that stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's proprietary formats.

Massachusetts has required support of OpenDocument, and Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source, has urged computer users to pressure software companies, governments and corporations to support OpenDocument.

Interesting IBM developer works article:

Standards and specs: Early adopters

Follow the pitfalls and perks that come from adopting a standard before it becomes one

This is a rather hardware focused standards article, but there are some valid lessons to be gained.

Remember that standardization is about interoperability first and foremost. If competitiveness between prospective partners in a standardization effort sinks the standard, everybody loses.

Which is why open standards are so important.  There is a great difference between industry standards and open standards.  Industry standards are lead by companies who form loose partnerships with eachother when developing new product lines with the desire for interoperability.  Open standards are those lead by independent standards bodies, usually with open participation and vendor independence.  This doesn't mean that open standards sometimes don't suffer the results of vendor competition, if they are implemented inconsistently (thus breaking the standard for advantage).

Anyway, good article.  I attempted once, to explain the difference between Open Standards and Open Source, which may provide some relevant background to this topic. 

For my evaluation this year, I was asked to perform a self evaluation, a reflection of the lessons learned from the last year.  Sometimes I think that an exercise such as this would have been easier if I had kept a journal or had been more open and honest on my work blog.  With that in mind, I am posting it for what it is.... maybe by writing down my lessons, I won't forget them, or perhaps they may be of some use to others.

 
Lessons Learned at APU during 2004/2005 

I think most of the lessons that I have learned in the last year have had to do with things that were necessary to learn about myself.  It is apparent that this better understanding of the way in which I am motivated, the times in which I am successful and those which I am not, is necessary in order to be effective in my unique position at APU.

"Alfresco is an open source, open-standards content repository built by the most experienced content management team that includes the co-founder of Documentum. The Alfresco product has a lean, modular component architecture that allows new functionality to be added without any system disruption and is significantly faster than proprietary commercial systems."

http://www.alfresco.org/

I haven't yet investigate it much.  Its strongest features at this point appear to be file based repository and light workflow, and not extensive on the web content management front.  Therefore, I am not sure I would yet put it in the ECM space. 

A while back, I reviewed several desktop content search engines, as faculty on campus had desired something better to search all the research they had collected on their PC's. We recommended X1 for most users, and ISYS for advanced users. Since then, google of course released google desktop search as well.

One of the things that a faculty member suggested at the time of our investigation was perhaps a better way to search the internet from their desktops as well. So I included Grokker, which was sort of a new face on search. A fancy way to view results by visual categories. Categories are built in, or you can define your own. The only bummer was the technology was limited to Windows.

Now they have released a web based grokker which appears to be a Java applet with most of the same functionality as the desktop version (except of course indexing your desktop content). It uses the Yahoo! search engine.

Anyway if your looking for an interesting way to view search results, check it out.

When APU was to deploy our first LDAP directory service, we were looking at running both OpenLDAP and Netscape/iPlanet Directory Server. The sole reason we were going to purchase the iPlanet directory server was because it had a password synchronization mechanism with NT 4. It was a major goal to have a single username and password for all major services running on windows and unix. However, when implementation time came around, we had moved to Windows 2000, which the iPlanet directory did not yet support sychronization with.

Much time has passed...