If you haven’t, you really should meet SoFy, which is HCL Software’s Solution Factory! It is another major step in Unica’s Cloud Native Journey. So, you may be thinking: what, how, why? Glad you asked: WHAT: SoFy provides access to dozens of HCL Software products and services! Products, including: Application Security, Databases, Integration, Testing, Workload Automation, Configuration Management, and now – Unica! Services, including: Data Stores, Scheduler, Code Security Scanning, Data Mapper, Test Engine, and Data Synthesis. HOW: SoFy provides enterprise-grade technologies that are exposed through: Dynamic deployable microservices. Accessed through well-designed REST APIs. Leveraging modern container and orchestration technologies. Integrated with smart common Services. WHY: SoFy provides bespoke solutions at your finger-tips that: It can be rapidly deployed to any cloud environment. Easily secured, monitored, and managed. Provide simple, consumption-based licensing. Once logged into SoFy, the fun can begin! With SoFy, you can: 1) Explore: A catalog of Products and REST APIs that are enabled for Kubernetes as Docker images and Helm charts, 2) Create: A set of microservice SoFy tools to help users discover and combine those APIs and products into SoFy solutions, including: a) A list APIs & products, generate solution Helm chart, deploy into test cluster and b) A simple GUI over these services, including Swagger UI for REST API documentation and 3) Release: A set of common SoFy services that run inside a SoFy solution, providing consistent setup & management of the solution. Accessing SoFy Getting started with SoFy is easy! SoFy presents as a web application available via any Web Browser.  As with any web application, users – customers, partners, and HCL staff – need to “sign up” for SoFy. You can go directly to the Register for SoFy page using the following link: https://www.hcltechsw.com/sofy/request-access. The screenshot below displays the sign-up page. Also, you can...

With the release of Unica v12.1 this past summer, we introduced Unica as “an integrated, cloud native platform that powers precision marketing at scale.” That is a really bold statement! I’ve been a proud member of the Unica Professional Services Team (first at Unica, then IBM, and now HCL) for the past 20+ years, and in this blog post, I would like to share with you Unica’s Cloud Native Journey. I want to share Unica’s Cloud Native Journey for two reasons: 1) it has been a journey, and we are not yet finished with this journey, and 2) no doubt your organization is on its own journey to the cloud and if you are like most folks we talk with this journey is not often a straight line, but more of a zig-zag, with some stops along the way! So reading about Unica’s Cloud Native Journey may help you better appreciate your organization’s journey. Before I share the details of our journey, you may be wondering, how can we make the claim that Unica is cloud native? Did you know of an organization named the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), founded in 2015 as a project of the Linux Foundation? Its purpose is to advance container technology and to align the tech industry around its evolution. The CNCF distinguishes between cloud applications – software enabled by a browser connected to a cloud-based infrastructure vs. cloud native applications – software that is containerized and supports dynamic orchestration. They have established tenets of what makes software cloud-native, so let’s have a closer look at that. There are ten tenets of cloud native software from the CNCF, and here is how we measure up. Still, before we dive into the details, this organization has only been around for 6 years, so unless an...

Just three months after releasing Unica V12.0, our amazing engineering and product management teams have released Unica V12.1!  All of us on the Unica Professional Services team are extremely excited about the new capabilities. We can’t wait to show Unica end-users everything they will now be enabled to do... but since we can’t cover everything in one article, here’s the rundown! Today, we’re going to illustrate how Unica V12.1 harnesses the power of the number 4. This means we’re going to show you 4 key features of our new integrated cloud-native platform and 4 functions that make each of the 4 features work! Key Features: Goal-Based Marketing orchestrated by Unica Journey. Digital Execution at Scale powered by Unica Deliver. Integration Made Easy with Unica Link. Of course, let’s not forget – there is more with Unica 12.1 A/B Testing and FlexOffers with Interact. Workflow simplified & more powerful, plus REST API Swagger with Plan. Goal-Based Marketing 1. Introductory Use-Case Of course, all marketing campaigns have a goal; increase revenue, sell x units of y product, have an ROI of n%, but what about marketing campaigns that have much more focused goals? As an example, let’s take a look at campaigns with milestones based on the completion of specific customer activities. In the credit card industry, the target goal may be to attain a certain number of transactions within the first month of a customer opening their account. To achieve that, after being approved, the customer must: 1) receive the credit card in the mail, 2) active their new card, and 3) start making purchases. There could also be many more customer activities along the way that leads to them completing the number of transactions within their first month of receiving their card. That is what we call Goal-Based Marketing! 2....

For the past 20 years, I have been a part of the Unica Professional Services Team, first at Unica, then at IBM via the Unica acquisition and now at HCL via Unica divestiture from IBM. In all that time, I don’t believe I’ve been more excited about a new major release of Unica! There are many great things (or should I say 800 reasons) coming with Unica v12, but I want to call your attention to the 12 things we on the Unica Professional Services Team really love about v12.0. If you haven't checked the v12.0 GA webinar. Just follow the link, and after a quick registration form, you'll be able to view the webinar recording. Register Here The reason I am personally so excited about these 12 items is that each item has been requested directly by customers, and they are so excited to see these features added to Unica. So let's jump in, here's our top 12 list, in no particular order. 1.  Centralized Offer Management (COM) As many of our customers have told us that in their organization the folks that build offers are not the folks that build the campaign flowcharts, to accommodate these request and others we have established a Centralized Offer Management (COM), for centralizing and integrating offers with other channels, across the Unica Portfolio. We gathered the feedback from other Unica end-users who want to build the offer once and then be able to deploy the same offer both on batch outbound campaigns & on real-time inbound channels. Centralized Offer Management (COM) meets both of those needs. Offers can now be created without an offer template. This means that offers can be assembled using offer attributes and tested out before needing to create a template. Only after you’ve used and determined the correct...

  ​Hello, let me introduce myself… My name is Bryce Connors and I joined a small software company named Unica Corporation on April 3, 2000.   I have been a part of “Unica” since that date.   When Unica was acquired by IBM in 2010, I became an IBMer and the Unica products became known as IBM Marketing Software.   On September 1, 2017, I joined HCL as part of the HCL/IBM Partnership for the IBM Marketing Software offerings – including the Campaign, Interact, Contact Optimization and Marketing Operations modules.   For the past 18 years, I have been involved in services delivery for the Marketing Software Suite (formally, known as Unica).   I’ve been so involved at and with Unica, that one of my Unica colleagues nicknamed me the “Mayor of Unica”. ​ I started with Unica as a Business Solutions Consultant, helping marketers become productive end-users of the software – Campaign was the only module at that time.   From there I managed Unica services engagements, first as a Project Manager and later as an Engagement Manager. I have been a Practice Leader of the Unica services practice at IBM and have that same role today at HCL. During this time, I’ve not only seen my career grow but that of others; both my colleagues and those at customers as well.   I’m very excited and proud to be at HCL and part of the HCL/IBM Partnership for the Marketing Software Suite. I have witnessed first hand the early benefits of the partnership and am excited to be part of the team that will help fulfill the benefits of this partnership for our existing and future customers. ​HCL/IBM Partnership for IBM Marketing Software ​Using the above slide, let me review the key highlights and share my first-hand perspective. 01 - IBM and HCL have entered...