Overview
IBM Connections (or 'Connections' for short) was announced at Lotusphere 2007, and Version 1.0 shipped later that year on June 27.
| Version | Release date | Major release points |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | 29 June 2007 | First release of a new IBM product specially meant for social business. |
| v1.02 | 6 November 2007 | New plugins for Microsoft Windows Explorer, PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. |
| v2.0 | June 2008 | Widget based extensibility for Homepage, Profiles, and Communities |
| v2.5 | 28 August 2009 | Newly added functionality: Wikis, Files, Microblogging, and social search / analytics |
| v3.0 | 24 November 2010 | Newly easily wizards for database creation and profile population, cluster functionality installed out of the box. |
| v3.0.1 | 5 April 2011 | Name change from IBM Lotus Connections to IBM Connections, Media library functionality, Ideation, Enterprise Content Manager (ECM) integration and advanced mobility possibilities. |
| v3.0.1.1 | 17 March 2012 | Forums content can be added by non-forum member. Forums question can be filtered on. |
| v3.0.1.1CR1 | 16 May 2012 | In majority this is a FixPack release, only bug fixes are fixed in this release. |
| v4.0. | 15 September 2012 | Activity Stream, Embedded Experience, Integrated Mail and Calendar, Social Analytics, Mobility |
IBM Connections has the following components:
- Homepage - a portal site which can federate information from many sources.
- Microblogging - primarily used to stay current with updates from across the social network through the home page
- Profiles - a social network service - primarily used to find people in the organization. Find the people you need by searching across your organization using tags to identify expertise, current projects, and responsibilities. Stay current with updates from across your social network through the home page, microblogs, and tags.
- Communities - a collaborative space for people with common interests to work together with an included discussion forum space.
- Ideation - Provides the ability to crowdsource ideas
- Media Gallery - Used to share photos and videos and stream those videos from the server
- Blogs - a blogging service.
- Bookmarks - a social bookmarking service.
- Activities - a task management tool for groups of people to work together on a specific project or task.
- Files - a content library for storing, sharing and revision management of computer files.
- Wikis - a Wiki system for publishing and editing content.
- Forums - an internet forum system where people can ask questions, share their experiences, and discuss topics of common interest.
- Search - for searching the other parts of IBM Connections
At Lotusphere 2010, IBM previewed features being planned for future releases, including
- changes to how user generated content is moderated
- compliance/auditing capabilities
- additional integration with IBM WebSphere Portal and Microsoft SharePoint
- expanded mobile support
IBM Connections makes significant use of open standards such as ATOM and RSS to integrate with other applications and provides a REST-like API for developers. Widgets can be added into IBM Connections, including those from Google Gadgets and other services as well as custom developed ones.
IBM Connections is often described as the leading product in enterprise social software market and IDC named it the worldwide leader in marketshare in 2011.
Read more about this topic: IBM Connections