HCL announce PartnerConnect Program

In the midst of all the news (or non news as they can’t really talk too much about the deal) of the HCL acquisition of ICS from IBM, the awesome people at HCL have announced the HCL PartnerConnect program. Registration will be open in January.

A quote from the announcement
“HCL will continue the critical partner ecosystem model. We believe that all our product groups rely on highly technical experienced partners with great market presence.”


Partners have always been a massive part of the Collaboration Solutions ecosystem and this is great news that HCL are going to carry this on.
Looking forward to to finding out more about this when registration opens.

HCL to acquire key IBM software

I woke up to the news that HCL tech are going to acquire select IBM software products – This is big news

IBM already had a partnership with HCL where they would develop the code for IBM – Notes and Domino were among this group.
HCL have injected a massive amount of enthusiasm with thier aggressive development plans and release cycle for Notes/Domino which has given the Community a shot in the arm that it needed.
But the news was trickling out slowly and a lot of Domino customers are already moving mail off the platform – HCL are not backwards in coming forwards and they have budget to market – ICS was a tiny fish in a very big IBM pond so now it may get the attention it deserves.

This deal is still ongoing and may not be completed until mid 2019 and is subject to change, but these are the solutions on the table

  • Appscan for secure application development
  • BigFix for secure device management
  • Unica (on-premise) for marketing automation
  • Commerce (on-premise) for omni-channel eCommerce
  • Portal (on-premise) for digital experience
  • Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development
  • Connections for workstream collaboration.

Of course there was already a partnership set up for some of these products, when the deal goes through these will be HCL products not IBMs.

I am super excited for this .. all of the tech I have worked with over the last 20 years from an IBM standpoint is in this list – I am especially excited about the future of Commerce. I spend 8 happy years as a WebSphere Commerce admin and consultant and it is still my favourite product to work with (I may need to brush up on some commerce skills now) .. We have already seen the possitive impact of HCL working with Notes and Domino and the new products they are spinning out of it (HCL Places being one of them). I have high hopes for Connections, Commerce and Portal – I am really looking forward to seeing what the furture will hold.

The press release can be found here

and the Register’s take on the deal

Social Connections III

Social Connections III will be upon us soon – I am very pleased to be part of the group that organises these events for IBM Connections users, administrators etc.

One thing I would personally like to see is more people that are thinking about using connections and existing domino admins (who are likely to get asked to look after a potential connections environment) to these events – we cater for potential users and admins as well as existing.

So my question to those potentials is what would you like to gain from comming to a social connections event?

Admins would you like some technical overview, training, etc?
Users would you like to hear more user stories and current customer case studies?
Community Managers – what would you like to see?

These events are all about our audience and what sessions they would like. For Social Connections 3 we are having two tracks the afternoon one business related one technical, it is also possible in the future to have a half day tecnical or development workshop – if this is the kind of information you would be interested we would love to hear from you.

As an installer, implementer and administrator I know what its like to get new technology thrust at you – we have a good network of community people who will be more than happy to share experiences, and assist where they can – we just need to know what you would like us to talk about.

Either leave me a comment or contact me via skype or twitter – I would love to hear from you

Registration for the Social Connections III event can be found here