Are you an existing Quickr customer? Are you aware of your new 1:1 entitlement to IBM Connections 4.5? 

As an IBM Premier Business Partner, ISW can not only provide seamless implementation across your organisation, we’re matching this great offer with a free 30-day trial of Kudos Badges, the award-winning reward and recognition engine to drive user adoption for Connections. 

Be quick to make the most of this great offer!

Register your interest to find out more: sales@isw.net.au

So what's new?

• Enhanced interface
• A step-by-step wizard to make creating your signature even easier
• In-line image support plus a built in image library
• Signature hierarchy ordering for when you need one signature to be appended over another
• Rule based signatures
• Versioning of signatures
• Advanced MIME editor

Learn more about the new features at Crossware.co.nz

Self-Support Wiki

And to help you out with Version 4, Crossware have set up a Self-Support Wiki. This brand new Wiki has been put in place for you to learn more about what you can do with Crossware Mail Signature. It's support from start to finish.

Visit the Self-Support Wiki here...

Want to Try Crossware Mail Signature Version 4?

Crossware always offer a FREE 30 Day Trial of their software, Version 4 is no different. 

All current customers of Crossware Mail Signature can Contact ISW to arrange their upgrade to Version 4.

ISW are an Australian reseller of Crossware Mail Signature. Visit our Crossware web page here.

Monday 4th February

ISW representatives have this week returned home from an incredibly successful worldwide IBM conference in the USA. An Australian IBM Premier Business Partner, ISW took out three IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) Awards at the IBM Connect conference in Orlando, Florida. IBM Connect, formerly Lotusphere, is IBM’s premier event for the ICS software suite. The event attracted over 5000 delegates this year.

The three awards ISW brought home to Australia are: Distinguished Business Achievement for Asia Pacific, Best of Show and Chief Technology Officer, and Innovation in Social Business Application Development.

For the second time in three years ISW received the award for Distinguished Business Achievement for Asia Pacific, the finalists in this category were two Singaporean companies, Lyv Connections Pte Ltd and Startin Point Pte Ltd. The winners across seven regional categories were announced at the Business Partner Development Day on the first Sunday of the conference. This award is touted as the being for the ‘top IBM Business Partners from each region’ who ‘significantly impact ICS’ position in the marketplace and are considered rising stars amongst their peers.’

Ian Warner, ISW’s Managing Director says, “It really is a testament to the hard work and great work of everyone at ISW to achieve such an accolade from IBM, particularly after winning in 2011 and being a finalist in 2012. We really value and appreciate this recognition from the IBM ICS community.”

At the Opening General Session on the Monday, without much delay ISW was announced as the winner of the Best of Show and Chief Technology Officer award. The award description explains the finalists as ‘visionary IBM Business Partners who are leading the technology charge by utilising cross-IBM Software Group (SWG) capabilities in innovative, leading-edge, and exciting new ways.’ ISW’s achievement of this award is attributed to Kudos Badges, a solution developed by ISW to encourage user adoption and engagement with IBM Connections.

ISW was also able to enter the conference having already been announced as winner for Innovation in Social Business Application Development, one of a handful of awards where winners were published on the Friday prior to the commencement of Connect. Again this recognition was achieved due to the success of Kudos Badges and presented to the Business Partner ‘who provides the best solution for creating an Exceptional Customer Experience or a Smarter Workforce through the use of ICS application development tools.’

Adam Brown, ISW’s Senior Executive Director says of the wins: “The IBM Connect conference became not only a great opportunity to learn and network, but a celebration for Team Kudos and our awesome clients. I have to say I am so proud to be part of the team that created Kudos Badges.”

Receiving the three awards increased Kudos Badges’ profile at the event, where for the first time ISW was an exhibitor on the Solutions Showcase Floor.

About ISW

ISW is the leading Australian IBM Partner for ICS. Certified across all six IBM software pillars as well as infrastructure, ISW provide complete solutions and support for IT projects. Established in 1996, ISW has offices in Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

About Kudos Badges

Kudos Badges is a gamification engine that has been designed to measure, reward and drive user adoption and engagement within IBM Connections. Launched at IBM’s Lotusphere in 2012, Kudos Badges has over 200,000 active users and many more in pilot. The global customer base includes clients in Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Switzerland, USA, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, UK, France, and India, while the Kudos Partner network has bases in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, UK, USA and South Africa.

Leader of ‘Team Kudos’ and ISW Executive Director, Adam Brown said on his blog upon news of the win, “I am absolutely stoked…now the IBM Connect conference will be a celebration for Team Kudos and our awesome clients. I have to say I am so proud to be part of the team that created Kudos Badges.”

The description for the award explains the winner to be a Business Partner who provides the best solution for creating an Exceptional Customer Experience or a Smarter Workforce through the use of IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) application development tools.

This truly is a fantastic start to what will be ISW’s biggest participation in IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere) to date. This year seven ISW representatives are making the trip to promote Kudos Badges in the Exhibition Showcase.

To add even more excitement to the event, ISW has also been named a Finalist in the Distinguished Business Achievement Asia Pacific category and the Chief Technology Officer Award. While Kudos Badges is a finalist for Best of Show.

If you want to keep track of all the fun and technology news at IBM Connect, follow @iswonline and @kudosbadges on Twitter.

See all the winners and finalists so far here...

For the second year in a row, ISW has an impressive presence in the list of 76 Champions for IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS).

Adam Brown

Adam is the Senior Executive Director of ISW and Head of Technology & Business Development. This is the second year in a row Adam has been given the title of IBM Champion for ICS. His participation in ICS conferences and events around the world, including Lotusphere, AusLUG, and Social Connections has grown his profile and network within the collaboration community. Adam is also the driving force behind ISW's successful IBM Connections user adoption software, Kudos Badges.

Words from Adam, "It is great to have achieved IBM Champion status for a 2nd year running. Being listed with such a group of experts around the world really is humbling. Also from ISW's view I am very proud that we have the only three IBM Champions for ICS in Australia!"

Follow Adam @adambrownaus

Mat Newman

Mat is the Man in the Yellow Suit. Seen around the world speaking at ICS conferences, Mat is also ISW's Director of Education, and Principle of iTeam. Mat's passion for all things 'Lotus', in particular Lotus IBM Notes has seen him be named an IBM Champion since the programs inauguration. Mat has presented at Lotusphere, served as a SearchDomino.com expert, contributes regularly within the ICS community, and has conducted hundreds of classes from End-user to Administrator and Developer sessions.

Mat is "very excited and deeply honoured to have received the award."

Follow Mat @matnewman

Tim Royle

Tim is ISW's latest addition to the IBM ICS Champion group. As a Director of ISW and driving force behind business development in Sydney, Tim has been working hard to cement his position as a collaboration guru. Tim is an IBM Redbooks thought leader and contributes to the IBM Social Business Insights Blog. He has also recently been selected as a participant in the IBM SME (subject matter expert) Select programme for social business. 2012 has seen many successful implementations of IBM Connections for ISW and Tim has played a key role in a number of them.

Tim says of his new title, "It's a great honour to be reconised as an IBM Champion. IBM has total commitment to leading the way with social software and provides us with incredible support as we implement our solutions based on IBM Connections. 2013 will be a very exciting year for social business and our team is ready!"

Follow Tim @twroyle

Congratulations Guys!!

• Best Software Product
• Best ICT Solution
• Best Business Application of ICT
• Best ICT Employer

We were thrilled to take out the first award for the night, Best Software Product for Kudos Badges. As the ceremony was winding up, the team at ISW's table were content with the single award, however we were surprised and delighted to learn we also won the final award for the evening, The Presidents Award for Excellence in ICT.

ISW Managing Director, Ian Warner accepted the award and said that "winning these awards is a testiment to ISW's hard work over the past couple of years. We are achieving goals and successfully growing a national business, and for that matter also an international one with the launch of Kudos Badges. But it is always great when local peers in our Industry recognise us for these achievements."

With ISW's headquarters resting in Hobart, Tasmania, it's a great honour to be recognised by your home state for excellence in your field. It's particularly exciting to be achieving success on an international scale.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made Kudos Badges the international success that it is.

Our partners across Europe, the UK and United States provide invaluable international exposure for Kudos, as well as the bandwidth to be able to sell our product into more markets.

Our customers who have embraced Kudos and the benefits the product can bring to your social business.

Team Kudos who have been on the project for around a year now, working hard to make this the leading gamification engine for IBM Connections.

• Independently explore, analyse and visualise your data
• Import data from spreadsheets and comma separated value files (.CSV)
• Get access to the Cognos Insight community for samples, tutorials, videos, webinars and forums

The best part, you can’t outgrow this solution as it is fully compatible with the complete IBM Cognos business analytics suite.

Download your free copy of IBM Cognos Insight Personal Edition at Analytics Zone

More Info on IBM Cognos Insight

For a demonstration or more information on IBM Cognos Insight Personal Edition, or anything related to Business Analytics, please contact Rod Jager, Business Analytics Practice Lead on +61 3 6216 0111.

For more information on the full Cognos Insight product, visit ISW's product page Here

• Track the activity of your network and respond more quickly
• Respond in context, saving time and reducing context switching
• Track and respond to the activities of community members
• Give a faster response and better customer service
• Develop insights into community adoption and usage
• Receive relevant recommendations on people and content
• Schedule team events and incorporate into a personal calendar

New Capabilities:

Better Activity Streams

• Each update in the activity stream has an associated view powered by OpenSocial gadgets, which provides an embedded experience. You can now 'Like' an item, as well as comment on, follow, download files, share content and view tags from within your activity stream.
• The activity stream is now available to communities, allowing community members to visualise what other members are doing. You can share status with members of your community.

Better Communities

• New metrics capabilities allow community owners to monitor the adoption and vitality of their community. Insights gained from the metrics can help a community owner take actions that can make the community more useful for members, which can lead to increased community membership and participation.
• A new calendar provides a central place to plan and coordinate community team events.

Better Files

• Owners and editors can lock and unlock a file.
• The redesigned files summary page and tabs provide more information such as in which folders the file resides and whether the file is referenced by status updates.

Better Forums

• Team discussions in forums are enhanced with new features such as adding content from a web page or IBM Connections source to a forum topic with the click of a button.

Better Activities

• Project management is facilitated with new Activity capabilities such as converting an entry into a to-do item.

Kudos Badges in Connections V4.0

Our Kudos Team has been working busily away for the last couple of months quitely working on ensuring Kudos is fully supported on Connections 4! In addition though they have been excitedly taking advantage of new capabilities in Connections 4 such as embedded experiences and the OpenSocial Activity Stream. Some awesome new features such as being able to "Like" and Comment on badges and awards that users have received from Kudos.

Read the full blog post to learn more about Kudos Badges in Connections V4.0

ISW are here to help you update your Connections environment, or get you started in Social Business on the latest and greatest. We're using Connections 4.0 already and it's great! Contact us today.

The Data Centre meets many of the most stringent international standards and is a strategic move for ISW to meet current growth demands. The move also enables our ability to respond quickly to increased scalability, and positions us well for the future.

Technical overview of the new Data Centre

ISW's data centre is designed and constructed to N+1 standards and includes the following features:

• AC & DC UPS systems (including redundant components)
• Diesel Generator (Back-up)
• High Security Fencing
• External and Internal monitored CCTV systems with remote backup of events
• Monitored Alarm System
• Security swipe card access and recording
• Strictly enforced site Access and Maintenance Protocols
• Carrier Grade Air-Conditioning (redundant)
• Environmental monitoring (Individual Racks & Room)
• VESDA Fire Detection
• FM200 Gas Fire Suppression System, Raised Flooring
• Cable trays for Ethernet cabling
• Warren & Brown optical cabling trays
• Centralised Patching Cabinet, Individually keyed and locked racks
• Service Level Agreement (99.99% Service Availability Metric)

Read the full technical information sheet