I took a long break for numerous reasons, including the lack of movement in Domino 9.  Well IBM and HCL cranked up the old steam engine and launched Domino 10 with a roadmap to Domino 11 on the horizon.

Domino, formerly IBM Domino, achieved Level Version 10 in a surprising purchase of of the technology away from IBM.  Officially announced in December 2018, the movement of employees from IBM to HCL involved a bunch of legal movements, has HCL now fully in control as of July 2019.  HCL announced the launching of HCL Software division to take care of Notes, Domino, Connections, Sametime, BigFix and some others.

Back in 2017 we saw this transition coming when HCL picked up all the development of the Domino platform.  A move to acquire the IP and keep the platform moving forward makes perfect sense.  Domino and Notes needed quicker movement and development changes IBM was not ready to make.  We can argue the investment cost in redesigning a twenty year old (plus) platform, but the speed of change needed is also a driving force.

There are numerous blog posts summarizing the recent HCL "Factory" tours, so I am going to steal the keywords (and my summary) from the excellent Ben Langhinrich blost posting found here.

• Unification - less overlap between products and feature focus
• Containerization - micro services and containers
• Standards based - play well with each other and new friends in the world
• Low code development - citizen development scares me but I like the goals
• Experiences - let using the product sell itself.

So where does that leave you? If you are one of my thousands of subscribers using Notes, Domino, Sametime and Connections then HCL is the people to be in touch with.  They have the HCL Partner Connect program if you are a Business Partner needing to move your affiliation from IBM around the Domino space. If you are a customer then head to their HCL Software website and FAQs to see the next steps.

 

My personal opinion, which I wanted to place here for my subscribers, before I blogged it, is that this was a needed move to ensure Domino survives another decade as a platform companies turn to as a solution.  I know deep down we will find Domino servers running long after IBM ever killed it off.  This just gives companies a warmer feeling that they can keep doing some investment to the cost of licensing and maintaining.  I think many of us can name companies with R5 servers still up and running.

 

Do I feel this with spurn growth and gain thousands of new customers? Sadly, it does not.  Once we step outside the yellow bubble (and you can read more below on where I have been) the yellow brick road hits a hard pothole followed closely by a missing bridge and a gorge.  Companies that left Domino have moved on and threw the return ticket away.  Companies stare when you say you are still doing architectures and deployments. Most company executives thought it died a decade ago.  A new name will be needed at some point to turn heads again and grab hold of these new IT leaders that never saw or heard of Domino and give it new life.

 

I know this seems like you have waited forever for any new release and more news. IBM has made some attempts in updates and fixes during this wait. There is the debate in the blogs over whether this would kill Notes and Domino in companies or turn them into some new growth once the technology is updated.

 

Give me your thoughts via email, LinkedIn or my blog posts.  If I get enough feedback for another article I will update you next month.  And yes many HCL/IBMers subscribe to my newsletter so maybe we will get lucky with more info sent to me.  I am also running a poll (linked way down the newsletter) asking about the direction and continuation of this newsletter.

 

So hello to the thousands of you all again, and maybe goodbye if the poll says retire it.

See the Domino 10 and HCL blog postings on IdoNotes.

Back in October of 2018, I left from Connectria after 20 years as the Director of Messaging and Collaboration.  The company grew from Internet startup to multiple data center hosting provider.  I was there from the beginning as the third longest employee outside of the founder, of course.

A long IT career at one company, still doing Domino along with a slew of other technologies.  As we dug deeper into serving cloud technologies, I have been and IBM Cloud Champion for two years after seven as an IBM Champion in Collaboration.

So what the heck am I doing now? I ran through some independent consulting for a few months while I debated where I wanted to land. After some left turns, no doubling or looking back, and countless vacations to take a sabattical.... I am now deploying a Global Messaging Platform for a global location company.  We are not talking email as the focus here.  Omni-channel messaging that is spanning AWS, Lambda, serverless step functions, Twilio, email, SMS, Whatsapp, containers, push technology and even more.

This is pushing the edge of governance, new technology deployment and bringing a decades old company to the forefront of internal and consumer reach via messaging.  I stay on top of Domino tech, skills and news but the blog and newsletter with evolve.  Depending on..

Do you all wish to see this newsletter stay focused on Domino?  Offer new technologies too?  Be a minx?  Close it down entirely?

I am looking for you to be the voice that decides.  Please vote to my Facebook poll and make a choice.  Also, join the Facebook page for even more that isn't on the blog.

A lot of people ask about all of the product reviews I do. I try to post the larger ones on my blog, but you can always catch just the videos on the Spiked Studio YouTube channel or even go all the way in and follow my Amazon Public Profile too.  The more helpful votes I get on YouTube and Amazon, the more gadgets that are made available for me to review for you.

I cover everything from home automation to geek toys to everyday usage items.