We all know the functionality of Visual Studio to add a Service reference to your project. With this you can consume available Services rather easy in your application. From the code you can get to the methods of the services rather easy etc. More information can be found here.
Service Reference is a burden if the service needs credentials. The credentials with which you create the reference are often not the credentials you use in your application. Sometimes more configuration is needed and you need to read the documentation to find out. Can be done via the configuration files, but not fairly easy without good documentation.
Sometimes you need additional components or libraries while using a Service Reference. In Visual Studio we have NuGet to accomplish this. NuGet is anonymous and very generic; as provider of the component you can provide it to others, but configuration wise there is again without documentation nothing to support or help.
You need a combination of both.
In VS2015 they have added Connected Services. With Connected Services you will be helped with a Wizard to fill the correct parameters and adding the correct components to your project.
For now the number of Connected Services is not big yet, but App Insight, Mobile Services, Storage and SalesForce are available.
It is a open system. Everyone can add their own connected services and provide the to everybody. You can create your own Wizard to support your users.
Nice right? At Ignite there was a nice session BRK3706, which can be viewed via Channel 9 (https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3706).