I think @jaybaer summed up MailNext perfectly in one word: #amazeballs #IBMConnect pic.twitter.com/4aEDD0hg7a
— Paige Sandhu (@paige_sandhu) January 27, 2014So what I wanted to do now was take a break and recap what we said and showed about IBM Connections during the conference.
The Keynote
The keynote demo was mostly built on the November 2013 release of IBM Connections. Therefore, you got to see some new stuff such as:
- New IBM Connections Mail capabilities to better integrate email and social (more details in Kramer's blog)
- New look-n-feel and user experience to better guide users to tasks
- Optimized activity stream experience to focus on attention management and helping you get your job done
- A new getting started capability powered by Touchpoint, an ISSC asset
- Expertise location powered by an intelligent Question & Answer system available as Social Q&A, another ISSC asset
- Embedded real-time web meetings powered by Sametime 9
- Collaborating with external users in a community
- The latest on IBM Docs
- The upcoming release of the updated IBM Connections Mobile app also focused on attention management and personalization
- File Sync on desktop and mobile available in the cloud
- An awesome Portal + Connections experience built on jQuery and the existing Connections APIs
As you can see, most of what I showed at the keynote is already available!
The What's New Session
Like last year, this year I had the opportunity to share the 2014 roadmap. If you missed it, or want to see it again, here are the slides for our session (though the actual session was pretty much all demo):
As you can see, there are three focus areas for the next release: External Collaboration, Content Sharing from Desktop and Mobile, and a Personalized Experience. These three areas respond to trends in the market were organizations feel ready to start engaging more with their customers through their social collaboration platform. Additionally, it's meant to focus on end user productivity. As an end user, I'm looking for a platform that helps ME get my job done faster, better and more effectively... you can't forget ME in social MEdia ).
As usual, all new things will be delivered to the cloud first and then sometime in the middle of the year we will do a release which will take whatever is on the cloud and provide that for our on premises customers. And, in case you missed it, we've already started delivering on the 2014 roadmap!
Now, I'm going to take 10 days off and relax. See you on the other side!