Gartner Recognizes IBM as a Leader in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace for IBM Connections

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Put it in the books! For the 7th year in a row, Gartner has placed IBM as a Leader in their recently released 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace* based on IBM Connections.

We are now getting ready for another major release of IBM Connections and organizations continue to report value from deploying a social collaboration platform such as IBM Connections.

If you haven't seen IBM Connections lately, check out this video that we recently published to showcase our secure file editing capabilities for iOS and Android.

So where do we go from here? And don't forget to register for IBM Connect on January 2016. We are also just coming back from IBM Insight 2015 and I shared some content so you can see what was presented there.

Update 16/Nov/2015: To download the report, you can access it from this page. And then start a free trial of IBM Connections!

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Mike Gotta, Nikos Drakos, Jeffrey Mann, 26 October 2015



Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

IBM Insight 2015 - Check Out What You Missed

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Last week was a wild ride over at IBM Insight 2015. The IBM Verse and IBM Connections teams were there to share the latest about our products. It was a great opportunity to meet new customers, partners, and fellow IBMers.

One of the highlights of the conference, was the Super Session by my colleague Rob Koplowitz. He co-presented with Jason Silva, the host of the TV show Brain Games (catch it on Netflix). You can watch a replay of his session here:



I co-presented on 3 different sessions around Application Development on top of our cloud platform, Mobile Collaboration, and working with content with IBM's enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) offering, IBM Connections. A key capability here that I wanted to cover was the latest and greatest around IBM Docs. We actually have a major release of IBM Docs coming up here very soon. And given that IBM Docs seamlessly works with IBM Content Navigator it was really well received. If you have IBM Content Navigator, don't forget to take advantage of your entitlement to IBM Docs today!

I've uploaded the presentations so you can see the content that was shared.

IBM Connections Cloud Application Development Strategy from Luis Benitez

IBM Collaboration Mobile Strategy and a New Way To work from Luis Benitez

IBM Connections Cloud & IBM Docs: Working securely and quickly with content from Luis Benitez

So what's next ? You NEED to come to IBM Connect 2016 in January 2016. In fact, John Hernandez invites you personally:

IBM Ranked as Leader in the 2015 Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software

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And the great news keep piling up as we get ready for another major IBM Connections release. I'm just back from IBM Insight 2015 and will share some content soon about that but wanted to get this out soon!

The latest to hit the wire is that IBM Connections has been ranked as a Leader for the third year in a row in the third Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software. This is in addition to the Gartner report where IBM came out as a leader in the Enterprise Social Software MQ (more on that soon)!

According to Aragon's announcement, the report evaluates 22 social collaboration vendors against 3 dimensions: Strategy, Performance, and Reach. Based on the evaluation of each vendor, each vendor is placed in 1 of 4 spheres: Leader, Innovator, Specialist or Contender. Again, IBM was ranked as a Leader.

“When it comes to Social Software and Communities, the biggest challenge for the enterprise has been connecting people with critical content and knowledge,”said Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research. “Our new Aragon Research Globe for Social Software will help buyers understand the current state of the market and why the market has shifted from feature comparisons to use cases, and how ESNs are helping the enterprise get to faster outcomes.”

Aragon called out the growing number of apps available for IBM Connections: With its growing set of partner apps, IBM Connections can be configured to meet multiple business user needs.

A great example of a customer reaping the benefits of becoming a social business with IBM Connections is Verisure. Check out this video where they share the benefits that they've seen:

Update 19/Nov/2015: To download and read the report, click here. To start a free trial of IBM Connections in cloud, go here.

Time to Register for IBM Connect 2016

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It's time to start getting ready for IBM Connect 2016. All abstracts have been submitted and we are now finalizing the selection of the sessions. If you register by October 27th, you can enjoy some discounts as laid out here.

Not sure what IBM Connect is all about ? This is our yearly conference where we share our latest product updates and directions, a great opportunity to network and meet fellow users and partners/developers and learn from other success stories. Here's a bit more about the conference.

I'm specially looking forward to all the customer success stories. Based on the abstracts submissions that I've seen, I hope that we can select as many customers as possible. I often find myself learning tremendously from the stories that customers share about their deployments and what they are doing to drive a culture shift.

Adding to that, it's the abstracts that I'm seeing on application development perspective. Development is big part of my background and there's lots of good content there that I want to participate in as well.

Haven't started building your new digital collaboration platform ? Don't be left behind!

So stay tuned for details of the sessions that will be accepted. For now, go and register!

Check Out This Demo of the New IBM Connections Editor

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Re-sharing the news Baan Slavens, our Product Manager for IBM Connections Mobile, from earlier this week

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The new IBM Connections Editor is a companion application the to the IBM Connections Mobile application for iOS and Android devices.  The IBM Connections Editor is a full-featured mobile editor, which will allow you to take files directly from IBM Connections Files and easily view or edit those files on your mobile device.  You can edit any Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Excel spreadsheet and Word document from your Connections Files with the new editor.  You can also create new presentations, spreadsheets or documents in the editor and save them directly into IBM Connections Files. 

Full Featured Editor:

The IBM Connections Editor provides full-featured capabilities on the mobile device.  You can edit or create a PowerPoint presentation.  The editor allows you to add or remove slides, add images or video, add charts or shapes and provides a large option on fonts and colors.   You can present the slides directly from your mobile device as well as view animations and add notes to each slide.

You have the same robust capabilities when editing or creating a document as you do with presentations.  In addition to all those features you can also add or edit headers, footers, endnotes and footnotes.

When using the editor to edit or create a spreadsheet you have over 300 formulas for Arithmetic, finance, Date/Time, Statistical, Database, Look ups and much more.  You can also add charts and shapes directly into the spreadsheet.

Seamless and Secure

The seamless integration between the two mobile applications makes it easy to use and secure.  You can open any supported files in IBM Connections Files and select to edit that file, once you have selected Edit the document will automatically open in the IBM Connections Editor.  Once you have completed your updated in the editor simple select to save the document back into IBM Connections.  The file will save back to the exact place that you opened it from giving the option to add new tags and version description, this instance on the file will be saved as a new version.  The applications share a common storage therefore the documents always maintain their security settings.  The file remains secure during the entire round trip editing experience.  The IBM Connections Editor also provides MDM support for those vendors supported by the IBM Connections Mobile application.

The IBM Connections Editor is available today for download at no additional cost at the Apple App Store or Google Play

Check out the demo: