Daniel Nashed's Blog

My two cents about HCL

It has been a surprise for us that HCL is taking over Notes/Domino and most other collaboration products completely from IBM.
The deal is not yet effective (hopefully beginning of June) and it should be "business as usual" until then.
But we already see what we can expect from HCL taking over the complete portfolio including product strategy, sales and customer relationship.

From what I have seen so far from the products and platforms division of HCL (which is more like a company inside a company) is amazing. They have the chance and the need to do things different!
I have been at two events this year. One was the Factory Tour 2.0 in Milan and the other one was Admin Camp in Germany this week.

The developers I meet in both events are more than just listing to customers and partners.
They are actively seeking for feedback and want to work directly with customers and partners on delivering what we need.
Beside the Jam events and the on-line version https://domino.ideas.aha.io/ the developers are looking for 1:1 feedback at events and also talking for example to the Champion community.

Ideas they showed us in Milan got updated for Admin Camp based on feedback they got in Milan.
And we had active discussions about topics like security, S3 support for a Domino tiered DAOS store where objects are moved to a S3 compliant, cheaper storage when not needed for a longer time.

I really see the passion and energy coming back from the old Lotus times. This part of HCL is more behaving like a startup than a 42 year old company.
And the statement that I found "YOUNG enough to be BRAVE. OLD enough to be SMART." fits from what I have seen so far.
Also quote "relationship beyond the contract" is part of the corporate strategy to work close and open with customers and partners.

Interesting is how the same people we worked with before are now allowed to speak more open to us and engage directly with us!
So the Client Advocacy Program and other changes are not a coincident but part of their corporate strategy.

Today HCL cannot speak about all details but they are already working on Notes/Domino/Traveler/Sametime 11 because those products have been part of the first deal with IBM.
It is going to be an interesting but also challenging time. There will be changes (from what I see mostly positive), There will be mistakes because a lot of things are new. But they will learn fast and take actions.

For example the Language Kit G1 which had to be pulled back because it wasn't completely ready.
They fixed it and it will be available hopefully next week along with Fixpack 1.

Even before shipping again, they already announced that for Notes/Domino 11 the language kits for G1 will ship at the same time, the product ships!
And that we will even get beta versions for language kits!

They took over from a global IBM team doing all the languages and had a learning curve because of some unexpected surprises but they improved the process to get it right for the next version!
On the one side we are waiting already for a while on the other side this was exactly the right move forward! They are changing the process in the back-end based on that.

We can expect more information about Notes/Domino 11 and other products at the next Engage event and also at DNUG Conference here in Germany.
They have been both explicitly mentioned in HCL presentations at AdminCamp. And DNUG conference is around the planned time HCL takes officially over.

You can already have a look into the factory tour slides for details especially for the Advocacy and the Partner Program
Not all slides from the Factory tour have been posted but you should have a look what is there --> http://www.cwpcollaboration.com/agenda.html

Business Partners should have a close look into the business partner slides! What HCL is planning for the program differs a lot from IBM in a positive way.
The session was also a feedback session for HCL. So you can expect details to change.. But you should already become a HCL partner!

Here is also the entry point for HCL Collaboration product website  -> http://www.cwpcollaboration.com  where you can expect more information as the deal is officially effective.


-- Daniel

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