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Surviving the Rough Economy with Lotus Software

By John Roling. As we're all painfully aware, the current economic climate is far from wonderful. Businesses are looking for ways to cut corners and reduce costs whenever possible, and many times that leads to belt-tightening in your IT departments. I want to share with you some ways that products from Lotus can help you reduce costs in some obvious, and not-so-obvious ways.

This is the message that we are telling all of our clients, and we can pop out and spend some time with you to help you journey through this economic time. Contact Us This is the bulk of John's article. We have left out some parts to keep it short.

Lotus Symphony

Lotus Symphony provides the most obvious savings cost wise. Lotus Symphony is a free office productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software packages. Out of the box, this should be able to replace Microsoft Office for a high percentage of your users, saving you hundreds of dollars per user in licensing fees. You can learn more about Symphony at my previous article here: http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200811/ij_11_24_08a.html

Use Sametime for IM and Web Meetings

If you have current Lotus Notes licenses, Sametime instant messaging is included for free by default. All you have to do is install the Sametime Limited server software and you can get your users using instant messaging.

Encourage your users to communicate via IM instead of picking up the phone. It will save you on the phone bills, and can be done for free with your existing licenses.

And if you already pay for separate Sametime licenses, that will allow you to install and use the Sametime Meeting server. The Sametime Meeting Server is an online web meeting space. It utilises slides,whiteboarding, screen sharing, polls and chat capabilities. It also can use voice and video.

So instead of flying people to a meeting, use Sametime. You can utilise your company's bandwidth to have meetings online. It saves on hotels, airfare, parking and any other costs you can attribute to a normal travel schedule. Even if you don't currently have licenses for Sametime, you might find that the cost in buying them can be recouped by using a couple of web meetings instead of a few short trips.

Upgrade your servers to Domino 8.5

If you are under maintenance, upgrading to Domino 8.5 is a no-brainer. The new code on the server actually increases I/O performance and some new compression features can reduce the size of databases by anywhere from 30 to 60 percent.

Since Domino actually runs better and utilises less disk space in 8.5 you can keep your servers in production longer. Fewer upgrades mean less money spent on hardware or OS upgrades and a simple upgrade to 8.5 can help prolong your servers length of service.

In addition, some new 8.5 features can help reduce costs. Domino Attachment and Object Storage takes multiple copies of the same attachment and saves it once to the file system and references it internally. What that means is, if someone sends a 10 MB attachment to 100 People, that would normally take 1GB of space on the server. With DAOS that only takes the 10MB. That is a huge savings of disk space and can help extend your server life even further.

Another new feature is ID Vault. This stores copies of every users ID file in a central administration database. This ties into the new Notes client so when a user forgets their ID password they can reset their password themselves. This can cut down on help desk calls which can help with your support costs.

Consolidate

I've explained how things like DAOS and the new compression technologies can actually save you disk space on your servers. Also,with the new I/O efficiencies, you can put more users or applications on the same hardware. These two things could allow you to consolidate servers and free up hardware for other needs.

Virtualise

This isn't Lotus specific per se, but you can use virtual machines to place multiple servers on a bigger piece of hardware. For example, you could take five existing Domino servers all on their own hardware, and move them to one large piece of hardware that can host multiple virtual machines.

This saves money in a variety of ways. For one, a single big piece of hardware requires less power than five separate boxes, it also puts out less heat so it costs less to cool in your data center. And it also takes up less space in your data center, which in some cases can also save you money. Also, less power means you are more green, so in addition to saving money, you are helping reduce carbon emissions.

Telecommute

The Lotus Notes client is very well suited for use by telecommuters.You can set up Notes in various ways to allow replication through your firewall. If you open port 1352 in the firewall, you can tell the Domino server to encrypt traffic on that port for security.

You could also have one server in your network's DMZ that you can use to pass-through to your internal servers. What this all means is that you can allow your end users to access all of their Domino servers securely from home without VPN software.You can also set up replication so they can work locally and even in an offline fashion.

If you make an employee a telecommuter, you can reduce your office space. The user also doesn't have to commute to work, so it saves them money and hassle. As a side effect, it's good for the environment, and with Sametime web meetings and instant messaging, employees can still be connected while not being in the same office.

In larger companies, think of the savings you could get back if you got rid of a whole floor of office space for your sales group if they can now work from home. Also, in these tough economic times, many companies will not be able to give raises this year. In lieu of that, allow employees to work from home. It's a nice perk that still puts money back in their pocket while saving money for you.

Utilise Other Operating Systems

Lotus Domino servers can run on Linux. The savings you can see on this may vary, so you would have to do your research first to make sure, but you may be able to move servers to Linux and save yourself some money in Windows upkeep costs.

You would probably have to have Linux experience in house to make this cost effective, but it may be another way for you to save. For what it's worth, the Lotus Notes client can run on Linux too, so if you have users that want to move to Linux for their desktop OS, they could be supported and may help you save money as well.

Little Things Add Up

I'm not suggesting with this article that moving to Lotus Notes from a competing product is going to save you money (although it might). What I am stating is that Lotus products have many features that can help an existing Notes shop cut costs and save money.

Implementing one of these options might not save you much, but ifyou do several of them, you may see substantial cost savings in your environment. Right now, everyone can appreciate that.

For any demonstrations, trials, or any other information, please give us a call or drop us a line. Contact Us

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