the problem with email

IBM Software Group

®

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!Addressing the challenges of eMail

Andy PorterSenior Technology Advocate, IBM

IBM Software Group | Lotus software

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Agenda

Who am I?

Some definitions

Some History

Is eMail the victim of its own success?

Phones 4 U – did they really ban eMail?

Collaboration vs Communication

Contextual Collaboration

Culture

Questions


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Who am I? – 17 Years of Messaging

Late 80’s wrote a graphical shell for VMS Mail

Supported DecNotes – the precursor to Lotus Notes

Early 90’s managed an MS Mail system for a National Newspaper Group

Mid 90’s joined Lotus – became cc:Mail skilled

Late 90’s – became Notes/Domino and Outlook/Exchange skilled

Now become Collaboration and Portals skilled


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Lets define our terms

• Messaging– Email– Calendar &

scheduling– Task Management– Personal Contacts

• Messaging is the bottom rung of the collaboration stack

• Collaboration– Shared team spaces– Shared document

repositories– Workflow– Collaborative apps– Expertise location– Instant messaging

and eMeetings


Before we study some of the challenges of Mail – let’s

remember that things have improved!


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Snail Mail – A bit slow


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pMail – Still pretty basic


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Remember OfficeVision/VM?


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Did you use Pine at University?


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Early 90’s Mail and Calendar were separate MS Mail and Schedule+


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Late 90’s Mail and Calendar were separate cc:Mail and Lotus Organiser


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Email worked fine within organisations

Departmental efficiencies

Improved communication

Linked distributed locations

Basic group scheduling

Less phone calls

Less “Snail Mail”


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But not well between organisations

There used to be Gateways between everything and everyone

MS Mail to cc:Mail gateway OfficeVision/VM to Lotus Notes gateway MS Exchange to Lotus Domino MTA Even like to like gateways

There was a faltering start with X.400 Very secure But too complex Still required a relationship with recipient organisation


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Open standards are the answer

Standards give inter organisational email SMTP - SIMPLE message transfer protocol RFC 821/822 - Message and Envelope format MIME - Advanced formatting S/MIME - Security

Full interoperability between organisations Message fidelity took a nose dive for a while Now it is near 100% with modern systems

Standards based Calendar & Scheduling interoperability is following iCal - invitations iCalendar - Group scheduling/free time lookup vCard - electronic business card

Real time collaboration is next SIP - Instant Messaging, VoIP etc Simple - Presence


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Integrated Collaborative Environments (ICE) – MS Outlook


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Integrated Collaborative Environments (ICE) – Lotus Notes


But many of these improvements actually caused the challenges

we have now!


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Open is fine but – SPAM!


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Open is fine but – Nigerian 419 scam

I HAVE THE COURAGE TO ASK YOU TO LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND HONEST PERSON WHO WILL BE CAPABLE FOR THIS IMPORTANT BUSINESS BELIEVING THAT YOU WILL NEVER LET ME DOWN EITHER NOW OR IN FUTURE.

IN ORDER TO TRANSFER OUT (USD$126 MILLION DOLLARS) FROM OUR BANK.

AT THE CONCLUSION OF THIS BUSINESS, YOU WILL BE GIVEN 20% OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT, 75% WILL BE FOR ME, WHILE 5% WILL BE FOR EXPENSES BOTH PARTIES MIGHT HAVE INCURED DURING THE PROCESS OF TRANSFERING.

Pub Quiz: Named after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes


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The best ever 419 scam

I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progress supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humour, but wants to come home.

In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $15,000,000 American Dollars……..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/cosmic_419er/


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Virus’ and Worms


Is eMail the victim of its’ own success?


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How many users are employed to read email?

Yet when messaging is not available people say they cannot get on with their job!

Don’t have calendar to tell them where they should be Don’t have tasks to tell them what they should be doing Don’t have eMail to receive new instructions Don’t have contacts to allow them to get in touch with

customers and collegues

Either we must guarantee 100% availability or we must find ways of working smarter


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Have we made it too easy?

People send attachments to large groups – because it’s easy

Everyone copies them locally and modify – never get the changes back

Delegation tends to be all or nothing – compromising security - because it is easy

Individual silos - mail files treated as file system – no one else can access it – but it’s easy

Mail shots sent to “everyone” or large groups despite not necessarily being relevant – because it’s easy


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Other inefficiencies

Resistance to getting rid of mail – users don’t necessarily know what is important and what not

Quotas irritate users – but large mail files can reduce client and server performance

We are sent a lot a email which isn’t directly related to our job – too many mail shots to large groups

Assumptions: If I send you an email (or cc: you) – I assume you must now know that information – but do you?

People joining mail threads late don’t get any context from previous messages

Inappropriate use


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Phones 4 U – did they really ban email?

In September 2003, Richard Caudwell CEO of Phones 4 U famously banned email

Caudwell said in a statement: "I saw that email was insidiously invading Phones 4U so I banned it immediately. Management and staff at HQ and in the stores were beginning to show signs of being constrained by email proliferation... Phones 4U staff have been told to get off the keyboards, get face-to-face or on to the phone to colleagues. The quality and efficiency of communication have been increased tremendously in one fell swoop; things are getting done, people aren't tied to their PCs."

Yet on their web site “You can email us on: [email protected]”

Proving – Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!


Collaboration not Communication


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Asynchronous Collaboration

Team rooms

Threaded discussions

Document management

Knowledge Enablement

Expertise location

Real Time Collaboration


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Real Time Collaboration

Presence awareness

Secure enterprise chat

Location awareness

eMeetings

Shared whiteboarding

Shared applications

Social paradimes Expertise location, polling etc


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Activity based collaboration

Rather than associating collaborations with file shares or team spaces, associate everything with the activity to which it belongs.

People eMail Chat transcripts Documents Meetings Web pages … Anything!


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Web 2.0/Social Networking – real or rubbish?

Wiki’s

Blogs

RSS

Flickr

Del.icio.us

Digg

You Tube/Google TV

MySpace


Contextual Collaboration: Portals


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Enterprises are Dismantling Industrial Age Workplaces

In the past, people had to go to office complexes to be near the filing cabinets and each other. The "office" is now being discarded in favor of an “e-workplace.”


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…and Building Electronic Workplaces instead

Standard IT Architecture & Platforms

Workflow Search ContentMgmt

DocMgmt

OnlineLearning

ActivityManagement

TeamPlaces

InstantMessaging

WebConferences

E-Mail

User Experience

“SmartEnterprise

Suite”(Gartner)

RoleSpecific

Dashboards

KnowledgeWorker

Desktopsor

Portal orRich Client


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Today, many people work like this...


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People could work like this …personalised and integrated with the business role


It’s not just Desktop PC’s anymore. We need eMail on all

devices.


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In Business, Laptops now outsell Desktops


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“New” types of Device offer new ways of working


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Mobile Devices – Phones and PDA’s converge


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Wireless Access – Push - Blackberry


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Culture

Technology can only ENABLE collaboration

People CREATE collaboration

Example Have Problem Find Expert Create Shared Team Space Invite expert to participate Expert says “No”

Anecdotes Ban attachments – get USB keys Executive Thinkpads - Blackberry


Thank You. Questions?

Andy Porter

[email protected]

the problem with email

Technology

challenges of mail

snail mail

vms mail

separatems mail

mail skilled late

ms mail system

mail gateway officevisionvm

lotus organiser