Results

PCDF Pioneers Panel- Future of the Internet as Informed by Its Early Pioneers

Vint Cerf
Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist
Google

Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor of the World Wide Web

Wendy Hall
Regius Professor of Computer Science, Pro Vice-Chancellor
University of Southampton

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PCDF Opening Remarks and Welcome

R "Ray" Wang
Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled,&nbsp;Everybody Wants to Rule The World&nbsp;was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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What is blockchain consensus all about?

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Steve Wilson
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: - &nbsp;Identity management, frameworks &amp; governance- &nbsp;Digital identity technologies- &nbsp;Privacy by Design -&nbsp; Big Data; “Big Privacy”- &nbsp;Identity &amp; privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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Public blockchain consensus algorithms – the most famous of which is Bitcoin’s “Proof of Work” – literally create order out of chaos. They produce an agreed ordering of potentially contentious entries made in real-time on a shared ledger, in a special case where we choose to have no administrator to rule on the sequence in which entries are received, creating an official account of all transactions (and that's actually all the Bitcoin blockchain does). 

“Consensus” is one of those beguiling properties of blockchain – along with “trust” and “decentralised” – which are actually difficult to generalise beyond the narrow confines of the cryptocurrency use case.  The consensus reached in the public blockchains is not what many people think it is.  Instead of a general type of agreement, blockchain consensus is tightly defined for a singular purpose.  In most of the broader business applications for which blockchains are being planned or deployed, we don’t need to reach “consensus” about the state of a ledger in the same way as Bitcoin does, because we have different authority structures.  It is important to appreciate the special purpose of blockchain consensus, so that the algorithm doesn’t add enormous overhead and real-time delays in cases where it is not warranted.

The problem space of the Bitcoin blockchain is non-fiat digital money; that is, electronic cash transacted with no intermediaries or regulator, and no registration of account holders.  Since the 1990s at least, there had been stored value smartcard and digital money solutions using a central reserve or “mint” to oversee transactions and prevent Double Spend (Mondex and David Chaum’s Digicash being the prime examples). However, many cryptocurrency advocates reject central control, and thus remained unhappy with these architectures, until the arrival of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. 

Nakamoto’s pioneering blockchain architecture cleverly crowd-sources the monitoring of each and every Bitcoin transaction, with the network periodically reaching agreement on blocks of accepted transactions, which it commits to the shared ledger. Account holders do not need to be registered but are allowed to generate their own keys as they join the network.  Nobody knows which user goes with which key pair; the blockchain ascribes transactions to key pairs, and the community simply assumes that users remain in control of their keys. If a private key is lost or destroyed, then the corresponding balance can never be spent again; if a private key is stolen or copied, its original owner has no recourse to a system operator.

The consensus reached by the blockchain is about one thing only: the order in which transactions are deemed to have occurred. Agreement on ordering of the ledger is sufficient to prevent Double Spend of the cryptocurrency. In later generation synchronous ledgers without an intrinsic underlying currency, like Hyperledger Fabric, this function is explicitly named the Ordering Service.

Consensus about the order of ledger entries cannot be readily generalised to any other property of the data.  Anyone contemplating broader blockchain applications should be wary of how the word “consensus” can be stretched too far. 

Furthermore, the architects of non-fiat cryptocurrency are at liberty to simply reject central administration as they build their special new world.  Yet very few real-world business settings are like that.  If a program has a natural or inherent administrator (as with education, healthcare, elections or land titles) then it doesn’t need to crowdsource any question about the state of its data.  There isn't much that a distributed consensus algorithm can tell that the administrator can’t work out for itself, more quickly and for far less cost.

Finally remember that blockchain consensus creates order out of the deliberate chaos of cryptocurrency where key holders are allowed to go unregistered.  In many of the extended blockchain use cases – such as Internet of Things or supply chain – there is no such disorder.  IoT devices tend to have serial-numbered chips to securely hold the private keys; supply chain operators are generally authorised employees, typically using dedicated terminal equipment in warehouses, field locations and delivery vehicles. These types of networks are orderly to begin with, and don’t need an elaborate consensus algorithm to work out what’s going on.

When analysing potential blockchain use cases, always ask precisely what any consensus is about, and what’s the point of it.  What do you need to know about the application’s users in operation? And is it beneficial to crowdsource the monitoring of a user network if it’s cheaper or more natural to have a manager? 

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Event Report - AWS reInvent 2018 - Push, Push - AI and Hardware

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the&nbsp;cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend Amazon AWS reinvent user conference, held from November 26th till 30th 2018, across Las Vegas. With over 50k attendees, reinvent has become the yearly come and get together of the IT industry, a unique position that AWS first achieved in 2017 and has more than well defended in 2018. 

 

 

 

Prefer to watch – here is my event video … (if the video doesn't' show up – check here) 

 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn't show up, check here):

 
 
Want to read on? Here you go:

AWS announces AWS Outposts – An area where AWS risked falling behind against the rest of the IaaS competition was the area of workload portability from cloud to on-premises. The next generation computing platform as I call it has been described in the Market Overview that can be found here… And AWS was holding out likely the longest being the public cloud market leader. With the Outposts announcements, together with VMware, AWS will now bring key services to on premises, giving customer a choice between an AWS or VMware control plane. It will be available in the 2nd half of 2019 – so still a little time out. But probably the most impactful announcement from AWS – ever. It catapults AWS into the hardware maker and tech stack maker market… something you could not see coming a little back.

AWS takes AI to hardware – An area where AWS in our view was behind as well, was in custom hardware for AI loads. It has partnered with Nvidia as many others – but not brought forward a custom design… that changes with the new Amazon EC2 P3dn instances, that run a custom / optimized version of Tensorflow that increased efficiency from, 65 to 95%. They also support (vanilla?) Tensorflow, PyTorch, Apache MXNet, Caffe, Caffe2, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), Chainer, Theano, Keras, Gluon, and Torch. Not enough, AWS announced a custom chip, AWS Inferentia, that will become an alternative to GPUs, and will be optimized for high throughput and low latency. Last but not least, Amazon added Amazon Elastic Inference - making it more efficient for customers to provision just the GPU istances they need for their AI / ML worklodas. All four announcements are key make AWS more competitive vs Google, that still has a 2-3-year lead in custom AI hardware. But it is good to see AWS (finally) engaging here, more competition is good for enterprises and fosters innovation as well as price competition… all good trends for enterprises.

AWS launches AI apps – Making it easier for business users to use AI apps is key these days and the strategy for vendors is to help them with specific, targeted apps. With Amazon Personalize, Amazon Forecast (both re-using and building on expertise and technology from Amazon.com), Amazon Textract (an OCR replacement)-and Amazon Comprehend Medical (Healthcare use case with NLP) there has been a broad push into AI apps. We will have to see how well practical adoption will pan out, but interests were big at reinvent.

Database Innovation is alive and well – Amazon execs know how important databases are and how much critical enterprise load is in relational databases. The strategy of AWS is to combat the generic, all-purpose databases with more dedicated databases, all in a suite of database products. Last year Amazon unveiled AWS Neptune, it's graph database, this year it unveiled Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB – a distributed ledger database, but what a confusing name), what a confusing name) and Amazon Timestream (a time series database). A good strategy that seems to get more traction in enterprises. But AWS knows that entrenched vendors are the challenge, and Oracle specifically has almost become an obsession. Multiple references in Jassy's and Vogels' keynote as well as almost 30 minutes on the topic in Vogels' keynote are almost too much attention.

AWS open sources Firecracker – Influencing industry standards via open source has been the trend of the last two three years. Google has shown the way with Kubernetes and TensorFlow… so AWS did not want to stand back and open sources its serverless framework (Amazon likes to call it virtual machine manager)  Firecracker… with Google focusing a level higher currently at the service mesh level, with Istio, this is an open space for anyone. And AWS has good chances given that Firecracker runs Lamba at AWS, and Lambda is the leading serverless platform in the cloud (from a load / uptake perspective). Now we must see if other IaaS vendors will support Firecracker and how successful AWS is at stewarding a strategic open source project. CxOs have accepted open source by now, so it really comes back to show traction in the offering from a roadmap and consumption perspective.

Amazon QuickSight Renaissance – Two years ago Amazon debuted Amazon QuickSight a product that targets to replace the usual BI tools (remember Business Objects, Cognos, MicroStrategy?). The most promising capability was its automatic capability to visualize data. A key vision and step towards user free software, ahead of its time back then. Then it got quiet around Amazon QuickSight… but AWS does not give up easy and came back with a new attempt to win this market, and the value proposition remains strong. Time to look and evaluate this product for CxOs. True to cloud DNA, the pricing is now no longer per seat, but per session (with a maximum of $5 per reader user per month) – an innovation on the licensing side.

AWS Tooling everywhere – Last year Amazon announced its own IDE, a key strategy to get closer to developers. But switching IDEs is not easy, so this year AWS is bringing the AWS Toolkit to PyCharm, IntelliJ (Preview), and Visual Studio Code (Preview). It's important to help developers build apps fast and bringing the toolkit to the 'living room' (aka IDE) is the right strategic move.
 

MyPOV

Another monster re:Invent with progress across the board. If there are areas where AWS was weaker, or even behind (on premise support, AI hardware), AWS has reacted and is making product available. The AWS Outposts announcement is changing the market for hardware fundamentally. Given AWS readiness to commit to aggressive pricing and ability to manage tight margins successfully, it is bad news for the Dell, HPs et al… and good news for CxOs. It's a great reward for long term AWS customers, who now can move loads from the AWS cloud to on premise – should they need or wish. On the hardware front AWS is correcting its miscalculation from a few years ago when it thought Machine Learning is all about… linear regression. With the adoption of Tensorflow across the board AWS acknowledges that MxNet has not won, but is also not giving up on the toolset yet. Both are important course corrections and innovations that are key to keep AWS in the overall IaaS market leadership position.

In general AWS is impressive when it comes to delivering innovation across the board, across the product set. An astonishing feat that the AWS product teams manage to repeat year over year. And that raises the bar for innovation for the overall industry to keep up with.

On the concern side, the AWS portfolio is broader and deeper than ever before. AWS keeps staying with the Chinese menu philosophy, and it means massive choice… but staying with the analogy, when a Chinese restaurant adds a full menu every year, even the most loyal customers will have a hard time to keep an overview of the menu – and manage to repeat-order the same dishes (aka products) at the next visit (aka implementation project). I was not around to ask Andy Jassy my traditional question (Is AWS getting too complex?) but he came prepared (very Amazons style) and negated the question (no surprise). Customers though are struggling to find repeatable success across the vast AWS services portfolio. And cross portfolio QA and testing is getting close to impossible. So, simplification by grouping services, testing them together, aligning roadmaps, versioning and more … must be in AWS future – at some point. To be fair at re:Invent, AWS has made steps to make it easier for customers to run the large product portfolio - with new offerings like Landing Zone (AWS Control Tower); Security (AWS Security Hub); and, Data Lakes (AWS Lake Formation), customers should be faster and have an easier time to setup, operate and maintain AWS offerings. That is a good step in the right direction. 

But overall respect to AWS to a massive, well organized and amazing event, sharing the breadth and depth of the AWS services portfolio and innovation. Here is to another year taming the dragon.


 
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Event Review: Our People Centered Digital Future #OurDigitalFuture

Alan Lepofsky
Alan Lepofsky
Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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On December 10, 2018, Constellation Research hosted a historic event with key Internet pioneers, the People-Centered Internet coalition, as well as the next generation of positive change agents. Titled “Our People-Centered Digital Future,” the event recognizes that 50% of the world is now connected to the Internet. This inflection point marks an important moment for examining the “unfinished work” of the Internet and discussing the community norms, human rights and social contracts required in this exponential digital era. The event also aligns with the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.

Here is my review of the event.

Useful Links:

Our People-Centered Digital Future - December 10, 2018.  Videos from the event can be watched here.

People-Centered Internet (PCI) is an international coalition of positive #ChangeAgents created to ensure that the Internet continues to improve people’s lives and livelihoods and that the Internet is a positive force for good with helping people achieve their goals and aspirations.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations.

 

 

 

Future of Work

Progress Report - Ultimate HCM Analyst Summit 2018 - AI, Europe & HR Services are the growth engine

Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the&nbsp;cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend Ultimate Software's yearly analyst summit, held November 13th and 14th 2018 at the vendor's headquarters in Weston, Florida. Good attendance from the key influencers and a great evening program with a cooking demonstration. 

 

 

 

Prefer to watch – here is my event video … (if the video doesn't' show up – check here)
 

Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn't show up, check here): 

 

Want to read on? Here you go:

Ultimate keeps executing on growth – Practically most HCM vendors are doing well these days, fueled by the move of HCM to the cloud and the need to replace aging technology that is no longer in synch with the best practices that people expect in 2018. Ultimate is not only growing on the revenue front, but also on the product side, innovating with AI (Xander) and pushing forward the overall functionality of the UltiPro Suite.

HR Services is next – For a long time I have been asking Ultimate CEO Scherr on how the vendor wants to keep growing on a longer-term perspective. Until now he has always been confident that the focus on North America and HCM SaaS is enough to fuel Ultimate Software growth. And performance has proven Scherr right. Internationalization was more lukewarm effort so far, but it has not hurt the vendor. It all changed with the acquisition of PeopleDoc, unveiled July 18th, 2018. With PeopleDoc Ultimate becomes a player in HR Services (Delivery, or Integrated HR Service Delivery as Ultimate likes to call it - I refer to it simply as "HR Services) and gets a lot of exposure in Europe, particularly France ang Germany. Now it will be key to see if Ultimate can leverage PeopleDoc assets and expertise beyond the upsell in North America, making it the growth engine beyond North America. End users care for growth of their software suppliers, as it reduces the cost of R&D across them and allows the vendors to deliver more functionality.

Momentum in AI / Xander remains strong – The acquisition of Kanjoya by Ultimate Software a little more than two years ago, on September 3oth, was Ultimate's entry into AI / Machine Learning… specifically leveraging the NLP assets of Kanjoya. The acquisition has been a success, with assets and people talent having made a substantial difference for Ultimate. What is impressive is the wide adoption of AI services / Xander in the Ultimate install base and how Ultimate is moving innovation into the core of its install base. In contrast to that, many competitors see delays and hesitation in using AI technologies on a wider scale.

People first culture. Ultimate prides itself in people centricity and live these values. The core tenet of the philosophy is to treat your people right and good things will follow, most importantly, they will treat customers right. Examples for the people centricity is the inclusion of the families of employees are the fully funded healthcare. Many HCM vendors do much in this area – but none I am aware takes it to this point. The question for customers is of course, how much that matters, but most of them admire the philosophy and culture, and though not reachable for them, see it at least as an example and inspiration.
 

MyPOV

Overall it is impressive progress that Ultimate is showing on all fronts, from business overall people to technology. What matters most for customers is product and technology progress and Ultimate is innovating across the suite, with a strong push on AI / Machine Learning with Xander. The PeopleDoc acquisition is opening new potential, but also a new category software wise, as Ultimate is on the BPaaS game now and needs not only to make its customers employees, managers and HR professionals more productive, but is adding the call center reps to the equation.

On the concern side, Ultimate has added more moving pieces to an already big puzzle of moving pieces. It needs to reach the critical escape velocity in its development processes to finish the application work on an ever-evolving technology stack, without adding more technology pieces to the puzzle, that can quickly become the great idea from yesteryear. A challenge for all established and successful vendors, and it's time for Ultimate to master it.

But overall very good progress by Ultimate, the next 12 months will be key to watch. Stay tuned.
 
Future of Work Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Revenue & Growth Effectiveness ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration CX EX Employee Experience HCM Cloud Leadership HR Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

HCL Acquires the IBM Collaboration Software Portfolio

Alan Lepofsky
Alan Lepofsky
Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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What's in a name? That which we call Notes
by any other company name would smell as sweet;
So Notes would, were it not IBM call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which it owes
Without that title. 

Ok, perfection may be a stretch, but there is no denying the significance Notes has had in the collaboration market over the last 30 years, both in terms of email, applications, offline support, security, and more. It’s no secret that Lotus Notes (Plato Notes? VAX Notes?), I mean IBM Notes has played a vital role in my professional life, so I greet this week’s announcement from IBM and HCL with both nostalgia and hope.

Before we begin, let's look back at some key timeline events:
1982 - Lotus Development Corporation was founded
1984 - Iris Associates was founded
1989 - Iris released Notes v1
1994 - Lotus acquired Iris
1995 - IBM acquired Lotus for $3.5B
1996 - The server was renamed Domino (v4.5)
1998 - IBM acquired Databeam and Ubique which together would form the foundation of Sametime
2007 - IBM Lotus Connections v1 (built on WebSphere, not Domino)
2017 - IBM partnered with HCL for the development of Notes and Domino, with IBM retaining Sales and Marketing
2018 - IBM and HCL release Notes/Domino v10 (after quite a gap since v9)
2018 - IBM sells the collaboration portfolio of Notes/Domino, Connections and WebSphere Portal to HCL for $1.8B, essentially exiting the collaboration software market
2019 - sometime in 2019 the IBM era of Notes/Domino will end and HCL Notes/Domino (unless they rename it) will begin

BONUS: Take a look at this wonderful Highlights of LotuSphere video produced by Bruce Bordett

The News
 
Dec. 6, 2018 IBM and HCL announced a definitive agreement under which HCL will acquire select IBM software products for $1.8 billion. 
  • Appscatn 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, and
  • Connections for workstream collaboration.
 
I’ll focus on the last three items: Notes/Domino, Connections and Portal, and how this announcement differs from the initial 2017 partnership between IBM and HCL.
 
  • 2017 announcement: The deal was limited to Notes/Domino, Sametime, and Verse
  • 2018 announcement: Notes/Domino and Verse, Sametime, Connections, WebSphere Portal

MyPOV: The original deal focused only on the Domino-based platform, leaving the WebSphere based products with IBM. Now HCL will take over Connections and Portal as well. HCL executive Jason Roy Gary was one of the architects behind rebuilding Connections using a more modern modular architecture (a project codenamed Pink). When he left for HCL, the future of Connections was uncertain. With Connections now falling under his management again, it will be interesting to see where HCL places their focus and prioritization.

I believe customers benefit from unified/seamless experiences between products. When Notes/Domino and Connections were “separated” I was concerned about the future of integration between the two platforms. With HCL now owning both, it will be easier for them to develop a platform that can compete against the likes of Microsoft SharePoint.

However, the flip side is that when the two were separated, it appeared HCL would be able to direct all their focus on rejuvenating the rapid application development features of Notes/Domino, leaving IBM to focus on the social/collaboration features of Connections.

Many customers and partners struggled with the complexity of Connections based on its WebSphere architecture and preferred the simplicity of Domino. Will HCL continue both product lines given their architectural differences? Will they have the resources to develop, market and sell both?

It’s important to note that IBM Watson Workspace is not mentioned in this deal, most likely signalling the end of this product.

 
  • 2017 announcement: IBM retained responsibility for sales, marketing and product management while HCL took over the development of Notes/Domino.
  • 2018 announcement: HCL will completely own all aspects of the product line.
MyPOV: Under the original terms, HCL had a responsibility to deliver specific things to IBM, but was additionally free to innovate Notes/Domino on their own. An example is the work they are doing on HCL Places, which many speculate could replace the Notes client. While the pace of delivery of V10 was excellent under HCL, there were still limitations based on the alliance with IBM. As the standalone owner, it should be much simpler for HCL to focus unencumbered by IBM.
 
  • 2017 announcement: Organizations were customers of IBM
  • 2018 announcement: Organizations will eventually become customers of HCL, purchasing licenses, maintenance renewals and support from HCL
MyPOV: Previously HCL was mainly a services company. How will they evolve to include sales and marketing functions? How much staff from IBM will be coming over to handle those roles?

 

Other Questions:

  • What does this mean for the business partner community? Will those who previously worked with IBM be seamlessly transitioned to a similar HCL Partner Program? What will this program offer in terms of training, go to market assistance, pipeline generation and more?
  • Will HCL acquire any of the leading business partner products that provide additional functionality to Notes/Domino, Sametime, Connections and WebSphere Portal?
  • Previously customers engaged with IBM via events like IBM Think. Will HCL partner with IBM and hold “sub-events” tied to IBM, or will HCL start their own stand-alone events?
  • Will HCL seize this milestone as an opportunity to rebrand any of the existing products? While the old names provide heritage, they also carry with them some negative baggage. Is it better to leverage the past, or try something new?
  • What is the fate of IBM's Talent Management / Learning portfolio?
 
Conclusions
 
  • IBM no longer saw these products as strategic to their current focus in areas like AI (Watson), security (blockchain) and IoT.  
  • I was never comfortable with the 2017 “half-way" deal around Notes/Domino, as it seemed like an awkward arrangement that was not exactly what either side wanted. Now that HCL will be in complete control of these product lines, I think they will be able to evolve and innovate unencumbered by IBM.
  • Customers knew and understood IBM. They had relationships will account teams, often spanning much more than just collaboration software. HCL will be completely new to many of them. Will customers and partners stay, or will this be an opportunity to migrate to a competitor? 
  • My biggest concern is that the HCL portfolio is now back to containing the Notes/Domino family, Connections and WebSphere Portal. When it was just ND I was optimistic about their focus, but now will that be diluted across the three areas, or will they be able to capitalize on email + rapid application development + social/collaboration/communities + digital experiences (internal intranets and external websites) better than IBM did?
For additional information, it’s worth looking back at my thoughts on the original HCL partnership and the highlights of the Notes/Domino 10 launch.
 
 

 

Future of Work Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Tech Optimization IBM Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Revenue Officer Chief Experience Officer
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