Discord vs. HCL Connections

Discord is completely suited for any tech server needs - and a million times better than Facebook. It's still lLess suited for non-tech but for sure it's getting better and with some support from Discord that could be fixed easily (just don't dumb-it down or take away features please). I have it open all day, on a separate monitor if I'm not using that one for something else. It'd be great - and maybe I've missed this - if there was a way to have an overview of messages posted in various channels. Despite using it for years now, I've never dug deeply into notifications, so maybe it's possible already. But it should be highly customisable - ie, put all messages from chosen slow servers in the feed, but only highlights from busy ones, and no messages from certain servers etc , so it remains manageable.

Incentivized

IBM Connections is possibly most suited for larger organizations where bigger teams are able to have more people to share with. Also, it may be less appropriate when there is so much security that it would hinder the anytime, anywhere access capabilities and prevent users from being able to enjoy sharing content with each other.

Incentivized

• One to many Communications to ensure that we can quickly get messages out when we have to.
• Quick polling of questions and issues
• The ability to gate channels so we can focus on folks that we know are stakeholders gives them an added feeling of belonging and that they have a say in the direction of projects.

Incentivized

• Connections has an easy to understand layout so if you are new to the tool you can catch on quickly.
• The security features are excellent, I feel comfortable that we will not get hacked.
• Connections provide a single place to store project docs, pics, emails and to collaborate real-time with your team.

Incentivized

• Adding friends for DMing is a little confusing.
• Joining new servers can have some roadblocks.
• Notification setup can be difficult, some individuals were only notified if tagged.
• Archiving a channel without losing everything.
• Having to upload images before sharing instead of accessing everything in my own library.

Incentivized

• Search in connections is incredibly poor. It's commonly joked that once data goes into Connections, you never find it again, unless you have a direct link. This alone kills usability for Connections.
• Embedded content in wiki pages in connections is poorly implemented. While the content displays, you can't interact with it, or edit it reasonably, and it's really slow to load.
• The "social" features in Connections are pretty lame, and no self-respecting user spends any time trying to build their profile. It's just disappointing.

Incentivized

Connections has continued to more than meet our needs from a collaboration point of view and we are currently working on integration with our IBM Websphere portal platform to provide an integrated collaboration solution. This scenario will provide our users the best both products have to offer in a single interface.

Incentivized

Because it is easy to use, its fun, it has everything you need to comunicate, voice, text, screen sharing, images, emojis, gifs, stickers, and even personalized ones. It also has comunication through integrations like games and music, that i think that brings people together. It is also great for keeping records of the conversations at work

Incentivized

Connections combines all the most useful abilities from various social networks. This makes it useful of course, but it also reduces user adoption time initially by allowing users to get comfortable with basic features. Once they are comfortable, it's easy for users to start exploring. They find new people in the organization to contact, new sources of information, etc. Before you know it, about half of the users are contributing back in some form -- and all with little or no training needed by IT.

Incentivized

Once Connections was installed, patched, etc. it was ALWAYS up. We only had to bring it down for OS updates to the servers. That seems to be typical of anything that runs on WebSphere; it's bulletproof and could probably run for months and years if the underlying OS didn't require constant patching.

Incentivized

IBM Connections web UI, mobile app (data sync to / from the device), and file transfer speeds were almost always very fast. It was rare for a slow-down of any kind, even when doing searches.

Incentivized

There is plenty of online documentation and knowledge base articles. As well as having an open API to be able to tie it into other products makes it a really viable solution for any business. I have never had to contact support, any questions which I have need answered can be found in the documentation,

Incentivized

IBM Support has ALWAYS been quick to respond, regardless of the product. Even first level techs seldom provide "canned" responses and they really try to help. If they can't help, they don't wallow around but engage the right person immediately. It's very rare that the first level tech needs to escalate, and even more rare when they do escalate and the next person engaged cannot solve it. We have been more than satisfied with IBM support's quick and professional responses to our issues.

Incentivized

Try to understand you will never find a product which suites all your end user for 100%. IBM Connections is the best of all breeds but if you go look on each functionality on its own there are better example out there. But as IBM COnnections delivers it all in just one platform makes it the best example about integration of different functionality into one platform.

The vast array of free features on Discord right out of the box makes it a stand-out in pricing from other chat platform options. Discord works phenomenally if you want a chat platform that is free, quick to set up, and very flexible in the ways you can start using it. It doesn't require a complex set of logins for different servers (such as Slack) or logins that are inconveniently tied to other products (like Microsoft). If you prefer to view full conversations all in one place without them "splintering" off into branches that are missed, such as is the case with Slack, Discord works great for this. If you feel seeing everything is too overwhelming or "busy", Discord may not be right for you. Discord is great for lean organizations or startup companies, but will likely not feel "professional enough" for larger, traditional "corporate" enterprises.

Incentivized

IBM Connections offers a complete package of tools that can be useful but it doesn't integrate well with other services. Competitors like Yammer offer slightly fewer features but are cheaper and much easier to maintain. If we were making a decision today we probably would choose a combination of Yammer, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other Microsoft or Google Tools.

Incentivized

Scaling UP is never an issue with IBM's core technologies like WebSphere, DB2, etc. as long as you have or can find the technical resources to implement it. Where IBM seems to fail is scaling DOWN for smaller organizations. Connections 5.0 on-premises would have required us to create 7 servers -- yes, they would be virtualized, but still that's 7 OS licenses, 40 virtual CPU cores, 80GB RAM, and a few TB of hard disk space. All to replace Quick which runs on 1 server with 1 OS license, 4 cores, 8GB RAM and 600GB of disk. Granted, there are major differences in capabilities between the two, but how do you get a CFO understand why features like a mobile app, file sync, and social sharing require 10x the back-end resources?

Incentivized

• Very feature dense on a free-level.
• Easy to build a good sense of discourse and community.
• Generally a more casual vibe than similar platforms.
• Channels with a large number of users can be overly hectic to the point of diminishing returns.

Incentivized

• Positive - Using IBM Connections has reduced the number of directories and file share repositories previously used for collaboration.
• Positive - The direction is to stop relying on email for the only method of communicating and sharing knowledge. IBM Connections is in the right step.

Incentivized