Monthly Archives: August 2019

08.23.19
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News for Ex Customers of Domino, Notes, Connections….

Here’s something I found out from HCL recently that I don’t think is widely known and is really good news for anyone who has let their licenses lapse. Previously if you chose not to renew IBM would require a penalty payment (usually equal to 2.5x what would have been your annual subscription) to re-establish your licenses. That meant once lapsed it became prohibitively expensive to start up again.

HCL does not want penalty payments. If you have let your licenses lapse you can re-activate them by paying the last subscription price you paid plus any % annual increases since then. Basically paying just the current annual renewal price even if you didn’t renew 3 year’s ago.

With the investment in the products HCL have already demonstrated and committed to (one major release a year for example) there are lots of good reasons to re-establish your maintenance. If you previously let your licensing lapse but still have Notes, Domino, Connections or Sametime , renewing your subscription gets you access to the latest versions and support so you can benefit from all the TCO and development enhancements already in v10 as well as what’s coming in v11 this year such as

  • the Nomad client for tablet and smartphone enabling you to access your existing Notes applications with no code changes,
  • the app dev pack enabling Node servers to access your Domino data and for web applications to be written using Angular , React or other frameworks accessing Domino data
  • S3 cloud storage for file attachments that can be shared across multiple servers delivering an even bigger saving in storage than DAOS does currently
  • A browser based lightweight Notes client that will support all your existing Notes apps with no additional development
  • Continual development of the web based Verse client for mail, calendar and sametime
  • A browser based low and pro code development environment
  • Sametime on mobile entitlement

Hopefully you’ve been hearing all the announcements coming out of HCL since early July In addition to many TCO features already in v10, we have heard what’s coming up for developers in v11 and the work already underway for v12. If you want to know more go here to find detailed presentations from the recent factory tour where HCL showed their current and future plans.

To get a renewal quote you can contact a Business Partner, or reach out to HCL directly

customersuccess@hcl.com

Or the sales directors for each region

EMEA Paul Mason (paul.mason@hcl.com)

North America Peter Phillips (peter.phillips@hcl.com)

APAC Sushovan Chatterjee (SushovanC@hcl.com)

08.13.19
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Onboarding With HCL

It’s now been several weeks since HCL took full ownership of what were the ICS (IBM Collaboration Solutions) products that include Domino, Sametime, Notes, Verse, Traveler, Portal and Connections. In those few weeks there’s been a lot of activity, not least transitioning over the development and support teams and setting up new systems for support, software access and community news.

You’ve probably seen many of the announcements or even attended the multiple webcasts but here are a few in case you missed them.

The new HCL division that holds responsiblity for these products is called Digital Solutions and their homepage for all HCL DS (not sure they use that abbreviation) activity is here https://www.cwpcollaboration.com. The blog you will want to follow is at https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/blogs.

So what does HCL Digital Solutions look like?

Along with the owernship of Notes/Domino, Sametime, Connections, LEAP (previously FEB), you can see all the planned integration points including Rest APIs, docker, Zoom, Salesforce and more. The Digital Solutions story is one that connects all their products together and understands the importance of other applications and services to the whole.


If you’re an existing customer you are going to want to register for both a customer account and a support account. Right now HCL don’t have single sign-on across their sites so you do need to register an account for each service. I’m not saying you “should” but you “could” use the same login and password everywhere.

To register as a customer go here

To register for support go here

To register for your software licenses and downloads (which HCL will have been given a record of by IBM) go here

HCL have also announced the first drop of the v11 beta which will be for Notes (Windows and Mac), Domino (Windows and Linux), Designer (Windows) and the embedded Sametime client. All of these in English language strings only on Sept 16th.

To register for the first beta drop you must sign up here by September 16th, after that date you will be added to the test group for the second beta drop https://registration.hclpartnerconnect.com/D11Beta

If you are interested in licensing, that has also transitioned to HCL entirely. Although I know of a few customers receiving letters from IBM, they are no longer entitled to sell your renewal or additional licenses. If you have any questions about licensing reach out to your Business Partner or visit the eCommerce portal online (you’ll need to register as a customer first) https://buy.hcltechsw.com

HCL have also committed to delivering v12 of the products in Q4 2020 so we are on schedule for one major release (and interim smaller releases) a year with v11 due in Q4 2019.

If the idea of upgrading all your clients it a bit overwhelming, don’t forget you have an entitlement to use Panagenda’s MarvelClient Essentials to upgrade from v9 at no charge. MarvelClient Essentials is built into Notes 10.0.1 and later but you can download it here if you need to get to that point.

So the question is, have you deployed v10 yet ?