I’m working on a project where a customer is evaluating several social business platforms for an onsite implementation. To get him a better feel of what Connections could do for them I helped him set up a community in Greenhouse and told him how to invite his project members. I was somewhat apprehensive to let him loose on it as it can be overwhelming but I clearly underestimated him as it took him no time to get his team involved and experimenting. He loved it:

“…I wish more vendors would offer something like Greenhouse! Being able to have my project team members experiment within a fully functional and operational environment where they can interact in a real-life scenario with the software and experience how others do that before having to commit to buying or locally installing it, means they now for the first time get what a social platform can do for them. It means I no longer have to peddle abstract concepts about Social Business and can finally move on to discussing actual use cases and possible implementations!…”

I’m sure todays upgrade of Greenhouse to the brand spankin new Connections Next is going to make him even happier.

Living, breathing and working IBM software I sometimes take for granted that we have something like Greenhouse. The truth is: I love it and use it daily. Not just as a demo or test environment but also to interact with other business partners, IBM’ers and customers over Sametime, to share information and to learn what’s going on in the community. Silently it has become a staple in my social diet and I actually missed it when it went offline for the upgrade last Friday!

It’s easy to take things for granted. Sometimes it’s good to step back and appreciate what you’ve got

Kudos to the Greenhouse team!