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)

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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 🙂

 

Fidgets.. taps fingers.. waits for the pinkish hue..

Connections 6 including customisable communities and Orient Me - the first component of Connections Pink is due today.

Or this week.

Or in the next two weeks.

Or very soon at least.

Usually I’m not that desperate to be first in line but I am currently writing a presentation about integrating Verse on Premise with Connections and I really really want to write it using a new Connections 6 install….

C’MON!!!

My Caffeinated Sessions At Social Connections

I’m delighted to say that I will be speaking at Social Connections in Boston this April.  It’s a great conference entirely about all aspects of Social Software and IBM Connections.  I like to try something different so I asked for 30 minute slots for my technical sessions this year

Staying On Top Of Connections Administration

From SSL certificates to setting up application security and rebuilding searches, we’ll cover how to identify the most common problems and resolve them quickly.

To do this we’ll also discuss how to set up logging and review both IHS and WAS logs and the key information you’ll need to supply IBM when opening any PMR (and where to find it).

I then have a session on Connections identities and LDAP with Terri Warren called

Who Does Connections Think I Am?

and one on designing a Connections environment - this one is only 15 minutes long.  You can give up 15 minutes to hear how to plan your Connections environment can’t you?

Connections Design From The Bottom Up

To see the full agenda for Social Connections or better yet, to register, click here

See you there!