[Guest Blog] Why is IBM doing such an easy job for Microsoft?

Here is another guest blog entry from Matthias:

Problems with Sametime embedded clients and their compatibility against each other running a sametime 8.5 Server.

  1. IBM did a great marketing job to get existing notes 6 or notes 7 customers to Notes 8.5 (new features like DAOS, id vault and so on)
  2. Lotus Notes  8.5 comes with the  8.0.1 Sametime client embedded. Everything works just fine. Doesn’t matter if you have ST751 or ST801 client. You can video call or just call, chat etc.
  3. Now you upgrade your sametime infrastructur from ST751 or St80x to ST85 and you want to use the new meeting rooms and the new audio and video codecs.

Everything great so far.

Now the first big issue where it seems that domino development does not collaborate with sametime development:

It is not possible to upgrade the embedded ST801 clients to ST85 cos some guys decided to switch the eclipse framework between Notes 8.5 and Notes 8.5.1

Assume you have around 2500 clients running Notes 8.5.0 FP1 with embedded ST801 and you have a new Sametime 8.5 Server.

Second big issue.

  • How can you achieve that the 2500 clients can use the new functionality of meeting rooms and codecs when you cannot upgrade from embedded ST801 to ST85??
  • Well, 8.5.0 Client is not that old that I want to migrate now every machine again to 8.5.1 just to use the embedded ST85 client and can have the meeting rooms and the other functionality.

Fortunately we are migrating at the end of the year to Windows 7. We decided to use  Lotus Notes 8.5.1 clients and upgrade the embedded ST802 to St85.
And exactly here starts the next problem:

  • A Notes 851 client with embedded ST85 cannot video or audio call a Notes 850 client with embedded ST801. The funny thing is that there comes the error message that the other user has no audio or video tools. If the ST801 clients starts the call then the error comes up that the ST85 user declined the call.

So there is not compatibility between those clients for video and audio call and no clear error messages why it does not work.

Now IBM please tell the customers

  1. Why the development teams do not talk to each other and are doing such annoying stuff
  2. How to avoid different versions between a Windows7 or Lotus Notes 851 rollout between the users and that the functionality of a ST85 can be used.

Now I have the choice between not using the functionality and leave all 851 clients on ST802 with win7 and start a second rollout after the big win7 rollout or tell the users that sometimes it will not work cos someone is running ST801 and the other one is running already ST85.
Do you think that the users will accept this or even understand this???

As a customer, I have to say that this is very, very annoying and it makes it very easy to switch to Microsoft. If it is better there doesn’t play a big role in that case, it is just a political decission that it might be better there.

Your turn IBM Wink

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4 thoughts on “[Guest Blog] Why is IBM doing such an easy job for Microsoft?”

  1. I Think I should printout this and take to DNUG next week? I think I should ask this some people as Maja Kume or Kevin Cavanaugh and Ed Brill. To get the answer “why do you call this >>smarter IT<<"?

  2. If you use Windows 7 with ST Client 8.5 you only get video working in meeting roons. If you want a video call to another user it will not work.
    Sametime 8.5 Client is not supported, yet, with windows 7

  3. @Carvalho

    I have here a working Sametime Client 8.5 with Fixpack 1 (standalone version) using Windows 7 64 Bit.

    Audio/Video works with the client and in Meeting rooms. I guess it is configuration problem.

  4. Writing to respond to some of the information posted here..

    Sametime 8.5 is not supported on Windows 7. For Windows 7 and Sametime audio video you will need to use Sametime 8.5.1 which is due out in early Q3. The reason is that the version of the codecs used in earlier Sametime releases including 8.5 predated windows 7 release and hence is not compatible with Windows 7 graphics engine. Hence ST 8.5 is not supported on that platform – sounds like some of you have been lucky other not.

    We were however able to do a limited test of the IM embedded in Notes 8.5.1 in Notes 8.5.1 FP1 but the other ST Standard features on 8.5 or earlier have never been tested on Windows 7. As stated above this is about to be resolved in Sametime 8.5.1. Sametime 8.5.1 client will be able to be be installed inside of Notes 8.5.1 FP2 and higher.

    Second point is that Sametime 8.5 and higher use SIP standard signaling and 8.0.2 and earlied use a pre-SIP call signaling protocol that is not standards based.

    Please reach out to me if you have questions on this at ringram@us.ibm.com. I’d be happy to provide information you need.

    Rob Ingram
    Senior Product Manager
    Lotus Sametime

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