HCL Connections , some news and consideration after Social Connections 15

Social Connections 15 was run last week in Munich, from 16th to 18th September.
First 2 days was full of sessions and round-tables, during last days was made 2 interesting desing workshops about mobile applications and external users collaborations.


Event

WoW: full Venue , nice sponsor room and a lot of enthusiasm drived by HCL announcements from the OGS until the roadmaps sessions before the CGS. :-) .

This was be my first Social Connections event as team member and I love to thanks once again the other team members for given me the opportunity to be part of the group of friends that every year organize this amazing conference for our outstanding community.

I love also to thanks the speaker and the HCL peoples present at the event !
Thank you all for your work , availability, passion and friendship.

I like to close this section with an advice for who wasn't able to attend : don't miss the user group event !
HCL has changed also this thing of our world and user group has a great impact and gives you the opportunity to interact in person with HCL exec, devs, offering manager in a level you was never able to dream in the past.

Join us or another user group event in the future and you will not be disappointed.

Connections 
From my point of view we have listen a lot of awesome news !
To start .the rebranding is live ! New logo ,slogan and marketing for all former ICS products including Connections.

 "People power business connections powers your people"

Connections 6.0 CR6  will be launched during September/early October and will includes:

• bugfix
• component pack optimization with a reduced TCO

Connections 6.5 it's scheduled for  November 2019 with a nice number of improvements:

• activity plus! HCL made an agreement with ISW and a lite version of Kudos Boards will be included in the new component pack withut any increment of the TCO. To be able to use all features of Kudos Boards , customer could buy the license and ugrade to the full experience only upgrading the serial number !!
• Connections sidebar:integrate Connections into any website, share status updates without the need to switch to Connections. 
• Touchpoint: step-by-step onboarding wizard, connecti with relevant people, suggest important communities.
• Connections Invite: invite external users , self service, email templates.

Connections 7.0 scheduled 2h 2020

• integration: round trip edit with O365.Users will be able clicking edit button to work directly with O365.
• Outlook: files, profiles, updates and communities available from the MS client.
• Docs next will be delivered with improvements from aha ideas.
• Orient me next will able to suggest files, apps necessari, and manage workflow
• Multi tenant:will be possible to handle multiple separate setup inside an installation. This feature will be needed by service providers or umbrella corps that needs to manage and keep separate different brands.

Connections Cloud
According to previous announcement,  during July 2020 the current IBM Connections Smartcloud environment will be shut down.
HCL has identified some partners names MSP that will be enabled to provides Connections cloud as a service. This partners will be able to import customers dataset exported by support to the new instances, using the HCL tools currently under development.

MSPs are sadified several requirements in term of security , reliability and certifications and are required to satisfy some condition like mantain their Connections environment upgraded.

If you like to know more about this topic, please read this HCL blogpost and don't miss this webinar scheduled on  2th October where will be unveiled the names of the first MSPs.