AT&T on Telepresence … AT&T said that its recent semi-annual AT&T Asia Pacific Group meeting was conducted entirely through Cisco Telepresence equipment. The meeting brought “21 customers from 15 countries together virtually. As a result, AT&T saved more than $100,000 in travel costs and saved 62 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from avoiding air travel. Will Thomas, the customer chairman of AT&T’s Asia Pacific Regional Advisory Council, said that the meeting served as a positive test case for demonstrating how well telepresence meetings can be put to use.” More

Microsoft Partners Going to IBM … IBM claimed that 200 Microsoft Partners a month are signing up to sell the IBM Lotus Foundations Appliance. “IBM Lotus Foundations provides all the hardware and software needed for a business to get up and running and grow exponentially without incurring any upgrade costs. The IBM product enables small businesses to move to a single platform for all their IT needs, a stark contrast to Microsoft SBS, where additional software from Microsoft, as well as hardware and software from third parties must be purchased.” More

Toby on Intranet Strategy … Toby outlines the Prescient Digital approach to creating an intranet strategy. “An intranet strategy has definition, is well documented and shared by all stakeholders, and has key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics. The strategy provides direction for executable actions (in the context of this article, we will treat strategy as synonymous with plan, though a strategy in the broader definition might contain many plans). For an intranet, a typical strategy would include the following elements: (1) Vision, (2) Mission, (3) Target audience definition / segmentation, (4) Governance, (5) Goals, (6) Objectives, (7) Action plans, and (8) KPIs (or CSIs).” More

Other Items
– Ray Ozzie is okay with netbooks, as long as they run Windows.
– Barry outlines an extensive set of thoughts about how to give a great talk.
– Brooke outlines some complaints re Mac laptops (and re the lack of a docking station, hear hear!).
– Kevin talks about the Lotus upgrade going on at his firm, including Notes 8.5 (“going quite well”), Quickr, and Sametime (“on the fence for us”).
– Andrew comments on SharePoint ROI and getting ready for SharePoint 2010.
– Palm launched the Pre, with some Sprint outlets attracting waiting lines. Victor discusses the differences.
– People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.