2014-07-01T11:06:00Z

How do Sharepoint and Yammer match up to IBM’s connection solution?

How do Sharepoint and Yammer match up to IBM’s connection solution for a government-wide social business initiative which facilitates interaction with the public to hear their issues and ideas and provide feedback, set-up communities, blogs, back-end collaboration to find experts, provide responses etc?

9
PeerSpot user
9 Answers
it_user139536 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2014-07-10T15:08:53Z
Jul 10, 2014

Hello,

Looking at my referrers, I noticed that this question pointed out to my comparison between SharePoint & Connections (see previous discussions for the link).

I didn't compare Connections and SharePoint/Yammer yet but just Connections & SharePoint Social. Now that I have a little bit more experience with Connections & IBM Products in general, I'd consider choosing either of those products the following way:

- Do you plan for onpremises or a Cloud-based solution?
- Do you plan for 100% out of the box or should you be able to customize the product?
- Do you plan to use *only* the Social piece of Connections or do you plan to also store your documents in it? If yes, what kind of documents, Office (integration isn't as in SharePoint).?
- Are you already working with SameTime or with Lync?

Clearly, I'd choose Connections if :

- I'm already using Sametime and/or other IBM products since you'd have an SSO for free using the LTPA tokens
- I don't plan to customize the product heavily.
- I don't plan to have a real document management system in it (Files+CCM) or only with PDF and non Office Documents

If I'd need more than what's listed above, I'd go for SharePoint which doesn't only offer Social Capabilities but also other workfloads such as an extensive Search Engine, LOB integration, WCM, Collaboration, Social and three development/deployment models (Full Trust Solutions, Sandboxed, Apps).

My experience now with Connections is that it's a nice product but it's harder to customize than SharePoint. It doesn't offer many APIs and it's rather hard to find valuable technical documentation on the product. It's also way harder to find non-IBM people working on the product.
With SharePoint, you can really have an industrialization & full ALM of your devleopments and it's quite easy to find .NET/SharePoint developers all around without the need to involve Microsoft. In conclusion, for pure Social related stuff, Connections is better than SharePoint and maybe even better than Yammer but don't try to do anything else with the product nor to interoperate with other products, especially if these are not IBM ones or headaches will start :)

Product comparison that may be of interest to you
RI
Vice President at PeerSpot
Vendor
2014-07-03T06:49:27Z
Jul 3, 2014

There are lots of reviews of Yammer at http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/yammer

Vendor
2014-07-02T20:08:27Z
Jul 2, 2014

This is good stuff, really helpful. Wish there was more on Yammer.

Regards,
Kaymaureen Shim

Vendor
2014-07-02T20:07:00Z
Jul 2, 2014

Great! I will check out Cisco-webex

Regards,
Kaymaureen Shim

Vendor
2014-07-02T06:28:49Z
Jul 2, 2014

This blog is extensive from a SharePoint MVP who had worked with both products. Hope this helps

http://www.silver-it.com/node/157

it_user105159 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a tech services company
Consultant
2014-07-01T16:15:20Z
Jul 1, 2014

Yeah - I'd agree with reviewer131589 that if the organization currently has IT/organizational capability around MSFT or IBM, that would certainly figure into the picture. And that whether one or the other would be more appropriate would be subject to business and technical requirements. Otherwise, while I'm more familiar with the SharePoint/Yammer side of things, I do know Connections should also be able to do the job. All these major vendor solutions have robust capabilities - it's just a question of how much do you want/need to invest to get what you want up and running, and whether you want to re-use/build on an existing platform (thus leveraging an existing asset) or go for more of a business point solution. In the latter case, this opens you up to options in the cloud that might be more specific to what you're looking for and give you faster time to market. For a comparison of a few social platforms, check out: http://www.r2integrated.com/digital-lab/thought-leadership/social-community-platform-comparison. While a practitioner/expert on any one of these might differ with some of the assessments, it at least does give you a nice side-by-side comparison of features. Again, in reality, given that they all can generally do almost anything, you have to take a look at each one and see if its focus is close to what you're trying to provide for your end users/customers. If you have to twist the thing on its head too much, you end up just doing more work. Hope this helps.

Find out what your peers are saying about SharePoint vs. Yammer and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user104490 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2014-07-01T14:26:30Z
Jul 1, 2014

The objective of any such initiative by governments is to have a wide
applicability of the solution with rich features but more importantly a
solution that provides the flexibility of scale. If those are the stated
objectives then IBM Connections surely scores over Sharepoint+Yammer any
day. The issue with Sharepoint is the ability to have a public facing
infrastructure which has been designed keeping scale in mind. From a
feature richness angle also IBM Connections scores over Sharepoint since
Connections was designed to be a Social Collaboration tool and now has
tightly integrated solutions including the ability to have analytics and
content tools embedded in the solution.

Vendor
2014-07-01T11:43:11Z
Jul 1, 2014

IBM Connections Integrates well with SharePoint.
Post the integration configuration, most of the time, we should be able to get our SharePoint Libraries and Mysite integrated with connections. By having Microsoft Windows Authentication, we would be able to see the teamsitres, contents etf through SharePoint APIs on Conections page.Availability of Uploading docs are also single click away.Its visa versa from SharePoint as well.
Questions regarding MS Yammer or IBM Connections would be subject to business decision however it would also be dependent on wheather we have Connections in the system or Yammer. if its a fresh new set up planning then in long run SharePoint with Yammer negates the need to have IBM connection and have more cost effective solutions.

Best regards,
Kumar

it_user128490 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
2014-07-01T11:39:06Z
Jul 1, 2014

I have experience using Yammer, Sharepoint, IBM -Sametime, Cisco-webex as a social platform. I liked Cisco - webex for various reason - Easy to use, online conferencing, blog, message broadcast, desktop share, meeting scheduler and seamless integration with MS office calendar. I found webex connect to be feature rich and meets most of our Orgs social needs.

Many Thanks
Pratyush

Related Questions
AB
User at University Of Greenwich
Nov 12, 2022
Hi peers,  I work at a large university and am researching web content management tools. Which tool do you prefer: SharePoint or WordPress? What are the pros and cons of each tool? In addition, please provide a comparison of the tools' functionality. Thank you for your help.
TR
User at About the House
Dec 19, 2021
Hi, I work at a governmental institution. Currently, I'm researching whether we can replace Micro Focus Content Manager (for CMS) with Microsoft Sharepoint? What's your opinion about it? Please also elaborate on "why". Thanks.
See 2 answers
SR
Director and Senior Consultant at PowerMark Solutions
Oct 6, 2021
Not if you are managing physical records in CM. You would need an add-in for M365 such as AvePoint Cloud Records or RecordPoint Records365.  Both help another important issue - M365 Compliance and SharePoint Online are complex user interfaces.  In a lot of organizations, records management staff don't have direct access to RM functions, with IT doing the administration based on service requests from IM. Both add-ins hand usability and RM functions back to the IM team.
JG
User at FDIC
Dec 19, 2021
What are the records management requirements that you are using to vet and determine the best capability?   Should there be requirements to maintain temporary and/or permanent records?
Related Articles
Sudesh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Kernel Data Recovery
Mar 14, 2023
SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online Migration You may move material from on-premises SharePoint sites to Microsoft 365 using the free and simple-to-use SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT). To benefit from the most recent collaboration, intelligence, and security technologies in Microsoft 365, migrate your SharePoint Server sites and content. Microsoft SharePoint’s contemporary experience...
DG
Tech blogger
May 30, 2022
PeerSpot takes a user-centered approach to creating product comparisons that help IT decision-makers arrive at informed decisions. Instead of relying on the word of the companies that create the technological solutions, they go to the users themselves. Real users offer true feedback without any of the partiality that the solutions’ vendors may have. This is a place where peers in the tech world...
Product Comparisons
Related Categories
Related Articles
Sudesh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Kernel Data Recovery
Mar 14, 2023
SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online Migration
SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online Migration You may move material from on-premises Sha...
DG
Tech blogger
May 30, 2022
Top Corporate Portal Solutions 2022
PeerSpot takes a user-centered approach to creating product comparisons that help IT decision-mak...
Download Free Report
Download our FREE report comparing SharePoint and Yammer based on reviews, features, and more! Updated: March 2020.
DOWNLOAD NOW
706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.