If Facebook delights you, Twitter excites, YouTube entices and LinkedIn energises you, what would you call something that offers you the specs of all four and has additional blandishments to boot? Well, IBM Connections.
"Social business is getting smarter," says Alistair Rennie, GM (social business), IBM. All big companies are going social, he insists. In fact, he says, 60 per cent of Fortune 100 companies are now on a social platform. The path-breaking offering from IBM is the showpiece of the five-day Connect2013 that opened here on Monday.
The conference got off to a rocking performance by the band 'They Might be Giants' followed by a scintillating speech by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt , whosehitRECord is considered a community that is an epitome of social business. Getting its developers and users together, Big Blue intends to enhance collaboration and make the furious exchange of ideas sharper and focussed.
A formal yet more collaborative social media tool for business, IBM Connections is a social software platform that enables an organisation to use the right people and drive innovation through all its branches. The software also allows employees of an enterprise and its clients to store, share and post information and ideas and innovate on the fly.
So, for instance, a Daltonganj dealer of Asian Paints, a company that uses the software extensively, can blog his experiences and ask other loggers — dealers as well as Asian PaintsBSE 0.70 % employees — for a solution to an intractable problem he faces in the back of beyond . Once he discovers the solution, he can post it on the site for the benefit of all users.
Collaboration is the pivot around which Connections revolves. The software gives a leg up to team spirit and allows users to swap ideas. In fact, it encourages a potent exchange of ideas. Part of IBM Collaborative Solutions, a razorsharp bundle of umbrella software that includes IBM Notes, Sametime, Portal andSmartcloud, Connections is now into its fourth version, with 4.5 already being beta-tested.
The programme's genesis lies a decade ago in a tool the storied company started using to trade ideas and solutions among employees. IBM Connections, when it was made solid by intense exchange of ideas and made problem proof , was launched in 2007. Himanshu Goyal, country manager for IBM Collaborative Solutions in India and South Asia, says Connections reached a user base of 1 million in flat 13 months.
Only Facebook was faster — reaching a million in 10 months. Twitter did it in 24 months, and LinkedIn, too, took around the same time. With IBM's buyout of Kenexa last year, Connections will acquire a more muscular HR focus and actively use the Cloud for storing and exchanging information. Its clients in India include small and medium enterprises such as Paragon, the footwear maker, and large ones such as Asian Paints.
Most of them, Goyal says, are finding the experience enriching for both the employees and users. Allowing co-partners to develop software on its platform for Connections, the company ensures no security breaches happen.
"An IBM platform is absolutely secure," says Goyal. Security, says the ICS country head, is non-negotiable and IBM packs every product with multiple layers of defence measures . Goyal is confident of getting more Indian companies on board. It's an enticing platform where lots of collaboration happens seamlessly. Once companies take to it, they stay hitched.
Are they out to build a long-lasting connection with rapidly expanding India Inc? Yes, says Goyal and his team of diehard, always-connecting optimists.
(The writer is in Orlando on an invitation from IBM)
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