Will HCL Domino survive in Europe?
HCL Domino’s market share is only slightly improving. We see migrations from Domino to another platform, only sometimes the other way around. Because of IBM’s laxity about the user-friendliness of their applications, organizations had to look further. What else is on the market that matches the wishes and requirements? This is where HCL has a major challenge. How do they get rid of the image “IBM” on the acquired software? How can we, as a business partner, help HCL break through this image? Are all the business-partner websites and blogs sufficient? Are the organized events, now online because of Corona, the appropriate platform to reach the organizations? Can we convince new customers of this great platform with these events, or are these events only important for existing Domino & Connections users? How can we convince new customers that HCL is doing things completely differently from its predecessor?

Different way of doing business
The market in America is completely different than in Europe. In America you buy a product because it is from a certain vendor, mostly. We don’t have that in Europe. Here we are a bit more down-to-earth and investigating the functional application possibilities and the integrations with other products that are needed within the existing services. When IBM announced that HCL was taking over the Collaboration stack, I got a shiver. I saw this as the end, because who and what is HCL? In Europe HCL was not very well known in the Collaboration branch of ICT. It’s a completely different story now. I wish HCL had done this 10 years ago. HCL has worked tremendously hard to catch up from a backlog way back to 2007 and all new features as well, wow!! I have deep respect for HCL that they have managed to do this in such a short period of time.

Gaining market
But we are not where we want to be yet. My aim is that HCL Notes and HCL Domino take back a big piece of the market and to become an enterprise solution again in Europe. For now, we disarmed the cloud because it was the only way to save the active market. Business partners and designated hosting organizations have set up their own cloud to host the Domino cloud market. This also offers the opportunity to persuade new customers. Because say for yourself: What could be safer than your own closed and secured cloud, all for yourself? There are plenty of organizations that never allow their users to work in the public cloud. The only option is a private cloud.

HCL Connections, everything in 1 package
HCL Connections is a unique collaboration platform. No other vendor can, in any way, offer the features offered by Connections. It is 1 total package in which everything is connected with everything. All information is even transferable outside of Connections so that there is no information/vendor lock. Unfortunately, only the existing users are super enthusiastic about it, but we cannot convince the outside world of this great platform (yet). Why oh why? What is the reason why peoples view is too limited to “what others do”? You don’t have to follow your neighbor in his/her decisions. Do you own thinking.

The grass is always greener on the other side
Humans are “habit animals” and easily influenced by the crowd. If your neighbor works with a certain application, you want to have that too. Then you make a decision from a wrong starting point. A choice based on an emotion is never good. Create some kind of wish-list for your Collaboration solution. What are your requirements and wishes for working together, and share information? Especially now during Corona, this has become more important than ever before. I am not only talking about video calling, but also about storing information when everyone works @home. Actually, an organization does not have 1 location now, but the number of locations is equal to the number of employees. Centrally storing information is very important. Because where and how you save your information, will ensure that others can find it easily or difficult or perhaps even NOT.

Where it all began
Again, my love for all of the above platforms is, without a doubt, endless. Personally, I can’t understand why people switch or choose another platform. Those other platforms cannot even compare to HCL Domino and HCL Connections. My love for this product was made when I came across Lotus Notes 3.x. From that point on: “never anything else”. The simplicity and the way of working with these platforms can simply be called perfect. I can do everything with it and what doesn’t exist, we just build on it. It’s that simple.

Will HCL Domino and HCL Connections survive the European market?
I do think so. As a HCL Ambassador, i work hard talking to customers and companies about the great work HCL has done and is doing at this moment. I already see that more and more organizations, which store data on premise, choose for HCL, or are looking at what HCL is building. The positive reactions are beginning to gain weight in the scale of “potential decisions”. Unfortunately, that decision has yet to be made. It seems as if people are waiting for the promised client-less environment. No expensive client upgrades (anymore). I know HCL is working hard on this issue, so my feeling about those potential new customers is positive. HCL, keep up the good work.

I am a believer !!!!!

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By angioni

2 thoughts on “Will “HCL Domino/Notes” and “HCL Connections” survive in Europe?”
  1. “No expensive client upgrades (anymore).”
    That’s a nice way to describe a total lack of updates; for years.

    The Domino/Notes area has ended years ago. Time to move on.

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