IBM Lotusphere Comes to You
Réunion de printemps du SNoUG
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
Processus d’évaluation et implémentation de Lotus Notes à l’Université de Zurich;
court rapport d’expérience de Lotus 2010.
Roberto Mazzoni
Responsable de projet, Université de Zurich
Roman Meng
Responsable applicatif Lotus, Université de Zurich 25 mars 2010
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
Content
The University of Zurich
Evaluation
Sound reasons - “Why Lotus”
Project
Present and future
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
The University of Zurich
The University of Zurich – mission statement
Carries out scientific work in research and teaching
Provides services for the benefit of the
public
Is committed to high
quality
and aligns itself to the top
international standards
Promotes free discussion and
collaboration
of the disciplines
As the largest Swiss university, it is committed to the
diversity
of scholarship and supports all
relevant disciplines
Strives for the greatest possible degree of
self-government
and shared responsibility of its
members as well as
equal opportunity
at all levels
The University of Zurich – positioning
The largest university in Switzerland with over 24,000 students
International comparison: Oxford: 20,000 students
Member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU)
Rated 54 in the Shanghai Ranking
“Academic Ranking of Word Universities 2009“ by the Jiao Tong University Shanghai
Schrödinger supercomputer ranked 96 in November 2009
The University of Zurich – numbers
The University of Zurich – structure
People – with guests approximately 35,000 members
– over 24,000 students
– approx. 490 professors
– approx. 2,700 academic personnel
– approx. 2,000 administrative personnel
– approx. 800 private lecturers / nominal professors
– approx. 2000 assistant lecturers
– numerous guests
decentralized and self-governed – 180 self-governed units
– 7 faculties
– approx. 150 institutes
– about 15 competence centers
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
Evaluation
Evaluation – needs and goals
Starting position
– The university's IT strategy retains the evaluation of a groupware (Nov 2005)
– Open tenders in April 2007
• Replacement of the e-mail systems (approx. 35,000 users)
• Replacement of an existing calendar system (approx. 1,000 users)
• Core team of 12 UZH employees, 6 of them from the IT service
Targets
– Primary:
• Schedules
• Contacts
• Synchronization with mobile devices
– Secondary (possibly also as future extensions)
• Tasks
• Document management
• Synchronous communication
Evaluation – challenges
Local and autonomous
– 7 faculties with 150 institutes spread over 3 locations at various places within Switzerland
– Institutes with very high degree of autonomy
– Local IT support
Many operating systems
– 40 % Windows, from Windows 2000 to Windows7
– 40 % Mac OS, from 9.x to OS X 10.6
– 20 % other, mostly Linux of various distributions and some exotic ones
Multilingual
– German as primary language
– English required
Evaluation – offering
Offers encompassed the following products
– Microsoft Exchange
– IBM Lotus Notes
– Novell Groupwise
– Xandros Scalix
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
Sound reasons - “Why Lotus”
Sound reasons - “Why Lotus” – criteria
February 2008: official recommendation of the university management
– Evaluation alone lasted almost 1 year
– No decision is easy
– Recommendation: Lotus implemented with the help of IBM
Clients
– Highly heterogeneous environment at the UZH (→ diversity / autonomy)
– Broad, supported client infrastructure at the latest release level
– Central importance of the Web frontend: covers basic functions
Technology
– Server infrastructure leaves a very solid and sophisticated impression. (→ high quality)
– Scalability and extension possibilities with other Lotus products
– Also great flexibility in the host operating system for the servers
Sound reasons - “Why Lotus” – criteria
Scope of function / flexibility
– Very broad (!) scope of function, very well covered to a great extent
– Coverage of demands with regard to „Accessibility“ and „Usability“ (→ equal opportunity)
– Potential for closing existing gaps (IMAP, in some cases problems with OSX clients, etc.)
– Open platform with possibilities for expansion and further development (→ self-management / autonomy)
Costs
– Within a 3-5 year perspective with a favorable and transparent cost structure
License model
– The university treats all members (~35,000) equally and offers them all the opportunity to use the system (→ equal opportunity)
– Flexible offer, well suited to the purposes of the UZH
Une décision intelligente dans un environnement hétérogène
Project
Project – Phases
Project management UZH/IBM
4 project phases
– Phase 0 Planning and Design
– Phase 1 Implementation of IT services
• Implementation
• Test
• Migration
– Phase 2 Implementation of central services (ZDU) & pilot institute
• All central service units (40)
• 9 pilot institutes from various faculties
• From 24th March 2010, 1400 Lotus users
– Phase 3 Implementation of institutes, guests and partners
Project – structure
Phase 0
– 23 employees from IT services
– 7 employees from institutes
– 2 employees from IBM
– 15 topics in 27 workshops
– Draft design completed in September 2008
– Detail design January 2009
First version 8.5 or 8.5.1 fulfilled UZH demands
– August 2009 start with 8.5 for the IT services
– Q4 2009: 8.5.1 appears
Project – implementation
Three clusters each with two mail servers (redundancy and outage security)
Rollout of roaming clients for all supported platforms
Multilingual templates and mail files (German/English)
Parallel iNotes for Web access
Parallel IMAP/POP for clean e-mail access
Everything redundant in the cluster with a solution that is transparent for the user, also for
IMAP, POP, iNotes and Traveler
Synchronization of mobile devices (iPhone, Nokia, Windows Mobile) with Traveler
Real time communication with Sametime
Project – solutions
Out of Office – RFC 5230 not adhered to (reply with lists)
– PMR May 2008
– 8.5.1 complies with RFC 5230, no hotfix!
– 18 months to comply with RFC
IMAP
– Folder sent/designs for IMAP client and Notes/iNotes not identical
• Solution contained in 8.5.2 Codedrop3
– Also in 8.5.1, only cluster-capable with hotfix
– Missing synchronization for read/unread marks (PMR since one year)
S/Mime - encryption
– Encrypted e-mails will not be forwarded
• Hotfix for 8.5, resolved in 8.5.1
Project – findings
iNotes is unfortunately not Notes
– Not identical signatures
– Not identical Out of Office settings
– Address book entries can only be marked private in iNotes, not in Notes
– Private calendar entries are not shown in iNotes with Delegation
– Mail rules in iNotes can not be removed
A smart decision in a heterogeneous environment
Present and future
Present and future – conclusion
IBM: provider and implementation partner
– Flexible, reactive and open minded to our needs
Successful implementation for the central services
– Documentation: trifold for Notes / iNotes, documentation on the Web, multi media library, blog
– No education carried out
– 2 orientation events with notes
– Four weeks after the implementation for the central services, support requests again at their normal level
– Difficulties partially caused by new Identity Management
– Difficult appreciation of the realization of function accounts via MailIn
– Mobile synchronization (10% of users with 85% iPhone/iPod Touch) without support effort
Coexistence of the old and new mail systems works
Present and future – wishes and dreams
Faster support for the current versions
– Browser
– Operating systems
Multi-lingual feature
– Transparent solution for multi-lingual feature
– Clean implementation of multiple languages
CalDav / SyncML
– Subscription for the Notes calendar
