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My impressions from IBM Connect 2013

February 9th, 2013

Here are my impressions from the IBM Connect 2013 conference that I attended last week.

Social collaboration
IBM connections 4.5 is coming this March and is improved in many areas such as the new file sync feature.

Customers with a valid IBM Domino entitlement can continue to use IBM Connections Files and Profiles features for free.

Embedded applications in IBM Notes, IBM iNotes (web mail) and IBM Connections activity streams make it possible to act on business applications directly within the context of your mail or your activity stream.

Business applications
The IBM platform for building powerful business web applications for the IBM Collaboration Solutions platform across desktop, tablets and smartphones is XPages running on IBM Domino 9.0 or IBM XWork Server 9.0.

The platform contains many improvements such as including the XPages Extension Library in the default server and client install. XPages Extension LIbrary makes development and deployment of modern business applications faster and more powerful.

The license for IBM XWork Server 9.0 is now $1,000 per 8 databases which further makes the IBM XWork Server a very competitive platform for business web applications.

The IBM Social Business Toolkit (IBM SBT) allows you to integrate the different IBM Collaboration Solutions products. You can as an example use  the SBT to create embedded experiences in XPages that runs in the activity stream of IBM Connections. You can check out the features of IBM SBT in the Social Business Toolkit Playground.

Mail
IBM Domino 9.0, IBM Notes 9.0 and IBM iNotes 9.0 continues to be the center of mail and messaging.

IBM Domino 9.0 makes it easy to migrate from Microsoft Exchange by using the Domino Migration Utility which is part of the 9.0 installation.

IBM Connections Mail makes it possible to use mail directly within the context of IBM Connections.

IBM Notes and IBM Domino
IBM Notes 9.0 Social Edition and IBM Domino 9.0 arrives in March 2013. The roadmap for IBM Domino has detailed plans until 2015 - showing a strong commitment from IBM towards IBM Notes and Domino.

The IBM Notes 9.0 client comes with many improvements in areas such as usability, productivity, and social collaboration - including a browser-based version of IBM Notes (Notes browser plugin) for use in combination with for example iNotes to be able to access applications that do not have a web frontend. IBM Notes 9.0 Social Edition also provides an activity stream for your IBM Connections updates and for embedded experiences for custom-built business applications.

The IBM Domino 9.0 server adds lots of improvements to security (such as the option to run IBM Notes with no need for a local ID file!), OS support (Domino is finally available in a 64-bit version for Linux), maintenance, serviceability and performance.

IBM can help you double check your investment in IBM Notes and Domino. Contact IBM for a free engagement where IBM will analyze your Domino environment and give you facts that you can use when comparing Domino with alternative solutions. IBM uses DNA by Trust Factory for this analysis. This offering is now called IBM Domino DoubleCheck - Powered by Trust Factory.

Cloud
IBM does cloud too (and at a great price) - whether it's about moving your mail to the cloud, adding social collaboration including collaborative editing of documents and instant messaging or going hybrid (cloud and on-premises servers).

With the before metioned IBM Social Business Toolkit you can extend your on-premises business applications in the cloud.

Chat
The IBM Sametime product family will be enhanced with version 9 which is expected in the second half of 2013.

Final thoughts
Overall it's a very impressive product family.

Personally, I look forward to continue to build great business applications based on XPages for my customers.

All presentations from the sessions at IBM Connect 2013 are available for registered attendees. Some of the presentations from the sessions are also available publicly. Furthermore, some sessions have been recorded and are available as video including the Opening General Session.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2013 at 11:35. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “My impressions from IBM Connect 2013”

  1. Elijah Lapson Says:
    February 10th, 2013 at 17:04

    Great summary Per I wish I could have been there. Did you see any roadmaps for the "SmartCloud" version of Connections? I would love to know when it will be upgraded to version 4.x.

    Thanks,

    Elijah

  2. Luis Benitez Says:
    February 10th, 2013 at 17:59

    Elijah,

    I am the product manager for SmartCloud Connections and I announced that SmartCloud will get an upgrade to 4.x towards mid 2013.

  3. Russell Maher Says:
    February 10th, 2013 at 18:08

    That is an excellent summary Per. Thanks for putting that together. I missed many sessions due to customer commitments so this was very helpful to me and I m sure others will benefit as well.

  4. Elijah Lapson Says:
    February 10th, 2013 at 22:37

    Thanks Luis for the update. That helps me plan a timeline accordingly!

    Elijah

  5. Chris Miller Says:
    February 11th, 2013 at 04:55

    Do not forget we have a database now with all the collected slides, samples and embeds going in! Right now there is over 40 sessions listed

    http://planetlotus.org/aad4e4

    Great summary posting for everyone!

  6. Mat Newman Says:
    February 13th, 2013 at 13:30

    Great summary Per, thanks mate.

  7. Per Henrik Lausten Says:
    February 13th, 2013 at 14:37

    Elijah, Russ, Chris and Mat: I'm glad you like my summary of IBM Connect.