HCL Connections vs SharePoint comparison

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Q&A Highlights
Question: How do Sharepoint and Yammer match up to IBM’s connection solution?
Answer: Hello, Looking at my referrers, I noticed that this question pointed out to my comparison between SharePoint & Connections (see previous discussions for the link). I didn't compare Connections and SharePoint/Yammer yet but just Connections & SharePoint Social. Now that I have a little bit more experience with Connections & IBM Products in general, I'd consider choosing either of those products the following way: - Do you plan for onpremises or a Cloud-based solution? - Do you plan for 100% out of the box or should you be able to customize the product? - Do you plan to use *only* the Social piece of Connections or do you plan to also store your documents in it? If yes, what kind of documents, Office (integration isn't as in SharePoint).? - Are you already working with SameTime or with Lync? Clearly, I'd choose Connections if : - I'm already using Sametime and/or other IBM products since you'd have an SSO for free using the LTPA tokens - I don't plan to customize the product heavily. - I don't plan to have a real document management system in it (Files+CCM) or only with PDF and non Office Documents If I'd need more than what's listed above, I'd go for SharePoint which doesn't only offer Social Capabilities but also other workfloads such as an extensive Search Engine, LOB integration, WCM, Collaboration, Social and three development/deployment models (Full Trust Solutions, Sandboxed, Apps). My experience now with Connections is that it's a nice product but it's harder to customize than SharePoint. It doesn't offer many APIs and it's rather hard to find valuable technical documentation on the product. It's also way harder to find non-IBM people working on the product. With SharePoint, you can really have an industrialization & full ALM of your devleopments and it's quite easy to find .NET/SharePoint developers all around without the need to involve Microsoft. In conclusion, for pure Social related stuff, Connections is better than SharePoint and maybe even better than Yammer but don't try to do anything else with the product nor to interoperate with other products, especially if these are not IBM ones or headaches will start :)
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
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Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

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"Its configuration management ability is critical for document-based systems.""The security feature is valuable.""Document flows, storage, and numbering take off the actions for checking and assigning the numbering and running around with approvals and pre-approvals.""It has improve our organization by speeding up document sharing.""It has made us faster and more efficient.""For any organization with more than one person in it, if they are trying to organize things to let people in the company know what others are doing, then this solution is good for them.""The most valuable feature is the ability to easily build intranet sites for communicating within teams, storing documentation, product information, pricing policies, updates on product infrastructure, and other related news.""Information is much more readily available."

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Cons
"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday.""The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."

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"The solution lacks collaboration features.""The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement.""One issue is that when users mistakenly hide files or set permissions incorrectly, it can lead to files becoming inaccessible, requiring intervention from Microsoft support to resolve.""SharePoint Online could improve the user interface and when modifying any of the user interfaces can be challenging. Additionally, there are challenges with the detail in the analytics user interface and the overall customization could improve.""Document management and the ability to easily integrate single sign-on (SSO) are areas for improvement in SharePoint.""Annoyingly, many new Office 365 apps always end up being only US locale for the first year of their life. Microsoft needs to realise that most of their customers are not in the USA.""The company also needs to make sure that their policies are dictating how information is stored and used, instead of letting SharePoint take control.""No good process to import emails from several users into a single comprehensive SP repository."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
Information Not Available
  • "As usual, Microsoft’s licensing structures don’t really seem to fit the needs of their products. This leads to always paying for a project you will never use fully or always be adding to."
  • "Licensing can be by server or by seat."
  • "It is very expensive.​"
  • "The data classification and search elements are cheap."
  • "The replacement costs for it are cheaper if you use only SharePoint."
  • "We have purchased add-ons to handle multiple site collections, form creation, and design."
  • "The cost is expensive, but worthwhile."
  • "The pricing works for us."
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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a round-up of a couple of the more well known platforms and compare their products to Drupal. In this roundup we will be comparing Jive, Sharepoint and Drupal Commons. Drupal Commons is a popular distribution created by Acquia to compete with some of these other proprietary platforms. There are many other options out there, commercial and otherwise, to compare with Drupal but I want to focus on Jive and Sharepoint for a couple of reasons. I chose Jive because it is one of the leading competitors in this space in respect to market share. Next, I chose Sharepoint because I have some history with Sharepoint. This experience dates back to when I built www.adhe.edu with Sharepoint 2007 a few years ago. I subsequently wrote this blog entry about my experience shortly after joining Mediacurrent. This roundup will also act as a refresher for those who read my original “Drupal vs. Sharepoint” blog. Yammer, which was recently bought by Microsoft and is the tool we currently use for office communication will also get some mentions throughout this article. As I went through and tested each of these tools I used three main criteria in my evaluation Cost Ability to Customize Overall features… Read more →
    Answers from the Community
    Anonymous User
    Rusty Isaac - PeerSpot reviewerRusty Isaac (PeerSpot)
    Vendor

    There are lots of reviews of Yammer at http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/yammer

    it_user120486 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user120486 (Works)
    Vendor

    This is good stuff, really helpful. Wish there was more on Yammer.

    Regards,
    Kaymaureen Shim

    it_user120486 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user120486 (Works)
    Vendor

    Great! I will check out Cisco-webex

    Regards,
    Kaymaureen Shim

    it_user104763 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user104763 (Works)
    Vendor

    This blog is extensive from a SharePoint MVP who had worked with both products. Hope this helps

    http://www.silver-it.com/node/157

    it_user105159 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user105159 (Vice President at a tech services company)
    Consultant

    Yeah - I'd agree with reviewer131589 that if the organization currently has IT/organizational capability around MSFT or IBM, that would certainly figure into the picture. And that whether one or the other would be more appropriate would be subject to business and technical requirements. Otherwise, while I'm more familiar with the SharePoint/Yammer side of things, I do know Connections should also be able to do the job. All these major vendor solutions have robust capabilities - it's just a question of how much do you want/need to invest to get what you want up and running, and whether you want to re-use/build on an existing platform (thus leveraging an existing asset) or go for more of a business point solution. In the latter case, this opens you up to options in the cloud that might be more specific to what you're looking for and give you faster time to market. For a comparison of a few social platforms, check out: http://www.r2integrated.com/digital-lab/thought-leadership/social-community-platform-comparison. While a practitioner/expert on any one of these might differ with some of the assessments, it at least does give you a nice side-by-side comparison of features. Again, in reality, given that they all can generally do almost anything, you have to take a look at each one and see if its focus is close to what you're trying to provide for your end users/customers. If you have to twist the thing on its head too much, you end up just doing more work. Hope this helps.

    it_user104490 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user104490 (Works at a tech company with 51-200 employees)
    Vendor

    The objective of any such initiative by governments is to have a wide
    applicability of the solution with rich features but more importantly a
    solution that provides the flexibility of scale. If those are the stated
    objectives then IBM Connections surely scores over Sharepoint+Yammer any
    day. The issue with Sharepoint is the ability to have a public facing
    infrastructure which has been designed keeping scale in mind. From a
    feature richness angle also IBM Connections scores over Sharepoint since
    Connections was designed to be a Social Collaboration tool and now has
    tightly integrated solutions including the ability to have analytics and
    content tools embedded in the solution.

    it_user131589 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user131589 (Works)
    Vendor

    IBM Connections Integrates well with SharePoint.
    Post the integration configuration, most of the time, we should be able to get our SharePoint Libraries and Mysite integrated with connections. By having Microsoft Windows Authentication, we would be able to see the teamsitres, contents etf through SharePoint APIs on Conections page.Availability of Uploading docs are also single click away.Its visa versa from SharePoint as well.
    Questions regarding MS Yammer or IBM Connections would be subject to business decision however it would also be dependent on wheather we have Connections in the system or Yammer. if its a fresh new set up planning then in long run SharePoint with Yammer negates the need to have IBM connection and have more cost effective solutions.

    Best regards,
    Kumar

    it_user128490 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user128490 (IT Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees)
    Consultant

    I have experience using Yammer, Sharepoint, IBM -Sametime, Cisco-webex as a social platform. I liked Cisco - webex for various reason - Easy to use, online conferencing, blog, message broadcast, desktop share, meeting scheduler and seamless integration with MS office calendar. I found webex connect to be feature rich and meets most of our Orgs social needs.

    Many Thanks
    Pratyush

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
    Top Answer:The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team to… more »
    Top Answer:I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.
    Top Answer:Alfresco scores are high on all features of an ECM solution and tools.   Back office processing, rated as 3.36 good.  Business Process Application 3.55 Good to excellent.  Document Management 4.12… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing is competitive. That's why almost all the companies are using SharePoint. I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. When we buy the license, the person buying must be well-educated on how the… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    182
    Comparisons
    100
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    649
    Rating
    9.0
    Views
    1,625
    Comparisons
    1,337
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    562
    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
    SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Connections™ is a leading unified collaboration and social networking solution that helps you filter out the noise to get work done. Connections empowers your teams and organization to engage with the right experts, accelerate innovation, and deliver results. All the collaboration tools you need to be productive are united under a single sign-on so you can reduce time spent switching between disparate tools and focus on the people and work that matters most. Experience a security-rich and business-compliant environment sanctioned by IT. Confidently share knowledge within your teams and your organization, and extend collaboration beyond traditional boundaries. Connections can enable you to improve decision-making, increase productivity, and accelerate time-to-market. Shift from being merely productive, to truly effective with Connections today.

    IBM Connections can help you: Engage experts. People-centric platform enables you to easily locate the expertise you need, right now. Accelerate innovation. Illuminate and promote new ideas within a thriving social network of teams and communities. Empower teams. Get work done together and take action; anywhere—from any device. Deliver results. Leverage cognitive insights to prioritize results and arrive at better outcomes. Extend collaboration. Safely collaborate with customers and partners, bringing them into the conversation.

    SharePoint is a Microsoft-based platform for building web applications. It covers a widerange of capabilities and while it is appropriate for experienced webdevelopers, even non-technical minded users can easily navigate through thesystem and execute functions such as collaborating data, managing documents andfiles, creating websites, managing social networking solutions, and automatingworkflow.

    Major areas that SharePoint deals with are websites,communities, content, search, insights, and composites. The purpose is to give usersthe ability to create or develop these key business components on their owneven without technical knowledge of, for example, how to build a website or howto integrate coding. Configuring SharePoint into a business's system is meantto cut out all of the complicated steps, and pave the way for easierimplementation all around.

    Sample Customers
    Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA
    Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Transportation Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    University8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Government12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise42%
    Large Enterprise40%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise39%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise60%

    HCL Connections is ranked 6th in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) with 55 reviews while SharePoint is ranked 1st in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) with 146 reviews. HCL Connections is rated 8.2, while SharePoint is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of HCL Connections writes "Provides potent document sharing with good integration with the Microsoft desktop and smartphones". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SharePoint writes "Good integrations, helps with collaboration, and increases visibility". HCL Connections is most compared with Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Yammer and Atlassian Confluence, whereas SharePoint is most compared with Citrix ShareFile, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and WordPress.

    See our list of best Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) vendors.

    We monitor all Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.