Updates from HCL & IBM In London

Today Tim and I attended the Domino 11 Jam in London with Andrew Manby as the ringmaster, it’s been a year since the original Domino 10 London Jam and it was great to see things continuing with Domino 11.  What was made clear in today’s discussion was that whereas Domino 10 was primarily about the back end and TCO features, Domino 11 is all about the client experience.  There were two new HCL UX designers present today to listen to what was said and provide their input.

First up Richard Jefts (VP & General Manager @ HCL) laid out for us what the HCL deal with IBM entails.   There are new products that are now owned by HCL including Portal, Connections and BigFix (love BigFix and want to dig into that more). The $1.8bn purchase included not just the products but taking on board all the related staff  (basically everyone except services)

fullsizeoutput_3596

As HCL say on their Collaboration site

“A customer centric approach is the foundational element of the HCL Products business philosophy and a key component of the HCL Products and Platforms strategy to drive overall success of the product portfolios.”

That means working with customers and partners.  As Richard Jefts said today “This is an opportunity for us to revisit what we want the products and solutions to be” - Think Differently.  This isn’t just marketing speak - in the past few months we’ve seen a lot of effort by HCL to reach out , from presentations to the factory tours where many of us got to meet the development teams directly (and those continue this year) and direct sponsorship and involvement at user group events.  They are walking the walk.

Finally I wanted to share what they are calling the future of Low Code to No Code - these platforms are developer driven and regardless of your level of expertise as a developer, there will be a way in for you with Domino 11 and its successors.

Unfortunately I had to jump out of the jam far too early because I had a support emergency so I missed a lot of the big thinking fun but I wanted to share these screenshots with you as I think they explain a lot about where HCL stand and how they see the future.

Also on my way out the door I met and briefly chatted to another Business Partner - if you were the guy who talked to me about this blog, please connect on LinkedIn, I didn’t get your card 🙂