Digital Solutions License Transformation

Within HCLSoftware, the Digital Solutions business has made significant investments in the platforms that power millions of business-critical experiences, applications, and collaborations for thousands of organizations globally.

Our considerable development effort in HCL Domino, HCL Notes, HCL Digital Experience, HCL Volt MX, HCL Leap, HCL Sametime Premium, and HCL Connections has retired technical debt and delivered thousands of innovations that enable our customers to realize value in better and new ways. For IT, we protect their investment in these platforms in multiple ways, including providing security updates, adding support for the latest standards and enabling the skills of the new resources entering the workforce to work with our platforms.

Looking forward, our portfolio is increasingly moving from a major release cadence to a continuous delivery model (CD) to deliver bursts of fixes and new features. We are also modernizing the way HCL builds and delivers software, which translates to immediate value to our customers and partners. This transformation continues.

Another aspect of our HCL business evolution is modernizing how we license our portfolio in a world of SaaS solutions and subscription-based pricing. This has led to the following changes to address business challenges across the digital solutions portfolio:

• The use of business metrics — We are using easy-to-understand business metrics such as total unique user counts and unique user sessions, representing usage (or consumption) of our products rather than hardware capacity-based metrics, such as processor value units (PVUs). The PVU approach is outdated for a Digital Solutions portfolio offering self-managed solutions from on-premises to private cloud. Total unique user counts and unique user session metrics are more transparent and predictable to track and relatable for anyone involved in the purchase and renewal process.


• The move to subscription term-based licensing — since software innovation is moving at such a fast pace, for example, with AI-fueled innovation, the mode of purchasing perpetual licenses works for fewer and fewer scenarios and was more relatable in the days of buying combined hardware and software. Subscription term licenses offer a more flexible, predictable and manageable approach, with lower costs than perpetual licenses as quantities increase. For example, they give customers the benefits of the flagship offerings, support and the ability to start and stop their use of the software as required. Term-based licensing also provides the flexibility to more easily add new users as the business grows without requiring the management of a combination of new license and subscription licenses and the unpredictable implications for the IT budget.


• Retiring older license types — for many of the Digital Solutions products, our HCL customers had a myriad of IBM license types within their organizations for the same product, which made administration and understanding of which license should be used complex. For example, it wasn’t uncommon for a Domino customer to have Utility Server, Collaboration Express and CCB licenses simultaneously. HCL Digital Solutions has streamlined the license options into easier-to-understand options, such as Domino CCB, featuring a business metric, i.e., users and term license option.

HCL is laser-focused on ensuring we are responsive to the market and our customers’ needs. Hence, we need to simplify our licensing, pricing and packaging for clarity and easier management no matter where our software is used. Ultimately, all of the above changes are helping customers and business partners working with our platforms in a heterogeneous and fast-paced world more manageable.

Here’s some additional information that’s pertinent:

CCB: Simplifying Domino Licensing
HCL DX License Simplification: More Value and Flexibility
HCL User Session Licensing for Subscription (Term) Pricing

Please contact your HCL Business Partner or HCL sales representative if you have any questions related to your specific licensing needs.