Every now and then I like to set myself and ISW a short term target around specific offerings. In November last year I set a personal target of ISW working with 4 clients to review and decide to implement Connections before Xmas. Well we nearly got there with 3 out of 4 sales completed before xmas. Pretty good but not the 4 out of 4 I was aiming for.

Well I have just found out that we just received the order for the 4th order on Friday so I am wrapped.

The customers come from a range of different industries and each have approached Connections from a different angle:
 - First is a large truck company that has a significant investment in Notes/Domino and Portal already. They want to use Connections initially internally to enhance the sharing of Profile/Expertise knowledge as well as the ability to create shared bookmarks. We will be integrating Connections fully with their Portal environment.
- Second is a small business of about 30 users however they are also the largest international racehorse transport company. They operate in offices in the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand and use Notes & Domino to co-ordinate the business processes required to move horses from country to country. They are very successful and Notes is a big part of how they do it but that is another story. They are going to implement Sametime and Connections to increase the awareness and collaboration between their sites. They are one team and they want to share their knowledge and make themselves "closer".
- Third is quite interesting. They are part of the Catholic Education Office in Australia and they wanted to provide an online White Pages Directory of up to 70,000 school teachers/staff etc. They have gone with a Connections Extranet server and initially will just implement Profiles however as this grows to the other features I think it is quite exciting.
- Lastly, the 4th is the Australian division of a multinational printer and copier company. They rolled out 20 users a couple of months ago and have found is has spread well. They have now increased their user count by another 50 and plan to let it spread thru out the entire business over time.

So Connections is a very hot product for ISW and IBM. I will be spending plenty of time at the various Connections sessions at Lotusphere to pick up some tips that might help. I wonder what target I should set for other new customers for the next few months!