Connect, a 501(c)(6) non-profit association, is Hewlett Packard's largest independent enterprise business technology community.
Formed from the consolidation of Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG in May, 2008, Connect is a community of more than 70,000 HP customers, partners and employees. Through a strategic business partnership with HP, Connect engages its members through education, community, philanthropy, and advocacy to HP.
This community of IT professionals delivers information technology solutions for complex and multi-system computing environments, focusing on HP technologies, including HP-UX, HP's NonStop, Blade, HP Helion, Enterprise Storage, Enterprise Unix, OpenVMS, Linux and Windows.
Through its advocacy channels, the Connect membership provides feedback and direction to HP and their partners and has been instrumental in influencing the direction of many HP technologies.
History
The respective Users organizations have been of significant importance as to the development of technology in the so-called mini computer business (departmental computing). It has survived multiple mergers and takeovers, as well as multiple hardware platforms and software platforms. During its history it has been a tradition of self-service and mutual support amongst customers to complement the official vendor support.
In the past more physical meetings were organized while since 2008 more online communities were formed. A separate activity was to offer universities a collaboration agreement for research and development.