HCL Connections Reviews

The ability to have all business owners own, author, and manage content and communications is very valuable. I can use Connections and eliminate use of other software/tools, and it greatly reduces my need for IT support for simple requests. If talking about specific capabilities that make this possible, the integration of email and Connect is a huge time saver. With that, the ability to manage your community/email membership saves time. I don’t need to go to some IT staff or process to update community/email membership.

I have other business users in Connections, managing their information and communicating to 11,000 employees dispersed across the United States. I might have taken 30 minutes to train them and get them started. And that 30 minutes has allowed them to own their information, communicate it to all, receive input from all, and respond to that input. Because I spend 30 minutes training someone, I’ve gotten three years where I didn’t have to manage that information for them. Or someone else or some process didn’t have to manage that information.

I sell Connections internally by saying I can do 10 minutes of work in Connect and save an hour in email. I haven’t done a study to prove this, but I bet if I did, I’d save an hour of email for only five minutes of work in Connections, not 10. I use Connect as my knowledge base for employees. Specifically, I use the wiki capability in Connections often. I store my knowledge there.

Here are three examples of wiki pages. The first screenshot was a wiki set up by another employee who is the subject matter expert for the topic. She’s got files and videos stored in Connections, and then she delivers all the info via a wiki. The other two example are mine, and they also show the comment/interactive capabilities.

If I get 100 emails throughout the course of a year, I don’t have to take 5-10 minutes to answer 100 emails. I have that answer, already stored in Connections. The search capability in Connect is great and can be very specific. But even if a user can’t find something, the 30-second email to get someone to that info saves me a lot of time, rather than the 5-10 minutes it would take me to write that same email over and over.

Basically, Connections saves me time. Lots of it.

Prior to our use of IBM Connections, any internal web info had to go through a help desk process. It was time consuming. And the business owner of that info had no control or say of how that info was displayed or organized.

I understand this is about IBM making money. But I want all the features/capabilities in the base package. For example, one thing I don’t have is the IBM Connections full-documentation solution (FileNet). If I did, I could get rid of our use of SharePoint. Or at least greatly reduce it.

I have used it for three years.

This is not my area of expertise, but from what I see, we have absolutely not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. I work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, specifically one agency of USDA called the Natural Resources Conservation Service. There are 15-20 other agencies using this product. The ability for USDA to use this as a whole and communicate between agencies has been good, along with the ability for each agency to use it to communicate within its own agency.

Technical support is excellent. I’m sure this isn’t the norm, but because I am assuming that USDA is a large customer, we get a business and IT customer rep that checks with us on a regular basis.

Our use of IBM Connections is a case of, it’s better to be lucky than good. I do not believe we did any requirement-gathering from the business end or evaluation of other IT products.

This is not my area of expertise, but we have an in-house team that did the implementation. Technically, I believe some of that in-house team are contractors, and some are employees.

I am not involved with the ROI aspect either, although I have some awareness of it. My only advice is to negotiate hard for what you want. Know all the capabilities of the product, and sacrifice what you don’t need for what you do. For example, Connections comes with a chat service. We have that and I assume pay for it. But we really don’t need it, as we have Skype. What I really could use is the more comprehensive docs capabilities.

Sell the time-saving aspect of this to any leadership. Less email. Way less email. Less IT help desk support needed. A little use of Connections in its place.

The most important feature of IBM Connections is that it is a Social Collaboration suite covering nearly all aspects of modern enterprise communication and collaboration. As a comprehensive set of Enterprise 2.0 tools, Connections can serve many purposes in an enterprise and so be useful for many people inside. It is therefore superior to any single-purpose tools that sometimes might be better in specific functions, but are only useful for a small group. The reduction of information silos is one of the most important challenges enterprises are facing today and it can only succeed if everybody in the enterprise is using the same platform for open communication and collaboration.

The whole organization benefits from one of the most important key features of Connections: It provides context to everything either by organizing related information, data and files in communities or by simply adding tags to persons and all kinds of data. Context also means that conversations and discussions happen exactly where they belong and not somewhere else (e-mail, phone, ...).

The wiki is the weakest part of Connections, compared to standalone wiki solutions. It does not offer customizable templates for pages, a feature users often ask for. I would love to see improvements in this area.

I have used it since 2007.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. Stability and scalability are excellent due to the underlying platform, IBM WebSphere. Deployment on premises takes between 3-5 days and requires good, skilled and experienced technicians. Deployment in the IBM cloud is easy. Major upgrades on premises are sometimes challenging and should only be done by experienced technicians.

Technical support is good, but could be better, as always.

Previously, we mainly used email, which for collaboration purposes has a lot of disadvantages: It has no structure (personal email folders are not a collaboration tool), it is highly redundant, you neither know the status or the context of a message and finally, it is another silo. Sharing is way more efficient than distributing.

Initial setup is complex because you have to deal with installation and integration of several systems: WebSphere Application Server, HTTP server, relational database, LDAP, Tivoli Directory Integrator for syncing user data between LDAP and Connections, IBM Cognos for BI, e-mail integration.

We provide implementation of Connections as a service and did it ourselves.

Some IBM business partners offer very attractive prices if you combine Connections licenses with one of their add-on solutions.

IBM Connections is a software product but deploying Connections is not mainly an IT project. You should know WHY you are deploying it and which GOALS you want to achieve with it. Otherwise, it will fail even if the infrastructure is running perfectly.

We use the wikis extensively, along with activities for managing projects and sharing information globally.

Our productivity has increased by using IBM Connections. For example, an engineer in Asia used to feel disconnected and missed opportunities to contribute. By using IBM Connections, he was able to have visibility into challenges other engineers had in the US. Our US-based engineer was very pleased when he arrived to the office in the morning and saw some options presented by the engineer in Asia.

Our users would like to see more document management capabilities in the base IBM Connections package (without having to install extended components). Users also prefer using a traditional folder structure for organizing content and are not used to tags (might be a learning curve or resistance to change).

Our users are having difficulty grasping the concept of tags and tag clouds. They are used to placing items into folders for organization. I have attempted to explain how tags can provide the same functionality for locating content. I also showed how tags can be associated to one or more tags, which is not possible in a folder structure. I think it was resistance to change more than the inability in understanding tagging.

Without purchasing the additional add-on for document management, Connections offers the ability to make new versions, lock a file,etc. Users would also like to be able to do a check-in, check-out, and co-edit with revision control.0

I have used it for four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

The technical support is excellent from both our vendor, The Rock Team, and from IBM support. The technical staff at IBM are very knowledgeable and addressed all support calls efficiently and expeditiously. There is always great communication and details provided for all support solutions.

Our prior tool was the SAP NetWeaver Portal. The interface for IBM Connections is much better and is better suited to support organic growth of content in an easier-to-navigate, user-friendly interface. IBM Connections provides better search capabilities for locating content.

The setup was not complex. We did have a bit of a challenge that was overcome in setting up SSO using our Microsoft Windows Active Directory.

We also considered Microsoft SharePoint. After further investigation, we realized that IBM Connections and SharePoint are very different. The social capabilities that promote organic growth among users was the strength that IBM Connections had over SharePoint. We wanted more than SharePoint’s strength with document management and deficiency in social capabilities.

User acceptance is very important. I recommend looking at the processes within an organization and then identify the alignment of IBM Connections tools to support the processes. Then, migrate users into IBM Connections in a phased approach by showing each process area the benefit of using IBM Connections to support their process. User buy-in and acceptance is improved when users can see the immediate benefit, while at the same time discovering the power of IBM Connections for other tasks.

Ability to quickly setup a organisation in connections cloud and get them working on the full set of collaboration features - from Communities, advanced file sharing, Blogs, wikis, activity streams and good old e-mail (now via the great new way to work - IBM Verse!).

Training, education and the development of use cases is a key factor in the adoption of any Social business Solution. With IBM connections cloud you are able to get the users active in the solution from day one and start developing Social Solutions that deliver real business outcomes!

Lots!!

Directory of expertise, using communities to connect internal with external parties, merger and acquisition work and most of all - find out things in the company that you did not know where happening!

Communities, File sharing andkeeping up to date via the Connections activity stream.

IBM Connections Cloud - 2 years +

As it is cloud based and easy to onboard user, no real issues encountered!

None

None

Customer Service:

Very good!

Technical Support:

Excellent

I have used both Jive and MS Sharepoint in the past - I find Connections a lot more intuitive and easy to get people using the solution!

No real issues encountered

mix of both in house and external consutants (with myself as the main co-ordinator).

To get people who have not used any Social technology using the environment on a daily bases.

YEs, Connections On Premise. Due to the IT strategy of Cloud first, we decided to go with IBM Connections Cloud.

Start small, develop use cases with the usser community. Appoint champion users and train them in new ways of work.

Employ an experienced group of consultants who know IBM Connections and IBM Connectiosn Cloud

Fully integrated solution, love the social element of Profiles, Files and Activities all securely accessed on Mobile !

Communities of practise have gained value in communicating and sharing knowledge and improving processes using e.g. Wikis

Interface, but that has had some make-over in v.5 which has now been released. Portal can complement the UI if needed I guess. Licensing !!

3 years

It's a complicated setup, but then again it's built for enterprise and volumes. Adoption is always going to be a challenge, changing the way people work. So many people are still stuck in the email paradigm. Deployment is unique per organisation.

No, but some minor browser related issues especially with Microsoft IE.

No

Customer Service: Business Partners like ourselves often run with this task. Logging of PMR's can be a lengthy bothersome processTechnical Support: Hard to say, don't often deal with technical support as mentioned, we're a Business Partner and often provide this service.

Email, improved efficiency

Complex, leave it to the experts

We're a BP so in-house

Wikis and Blogs in combination with Activities, I like to work at home, in my office and mobile without thinking about it. I can access the solution through my tablet, iPhone, BB and Browsers.

We save a lot of mails to big groups. When we want to discuss new ideas or documents, we share them and discuss them online. No one must merge multiple mail attachments after days of changes into a final one. Files and versioning saves us time and bandwidth on the mail servers.

4.5 years

Connections is based on long developed software (WebSphere, DB2, TDI) and need some hardware resources, but when you know the basics of this software it works very stable.

No

High scalable up to multiple hundreds of thousands of users. My biggest deployment handles about 80,000 users.

We used lots of products like wordpress to blog, docuwiki as wiki, bugtracker, todo apps and so on, but Connections delivers all of it integrated in one solution.

Complex, you have to install all prerequisites like WebSphere, DB2, TDI, HTTP Server.