Over the past year, HCL Digital Solutions has been on a journey to consolidate our customers’ HCL Domino licensing around our modern, per user, licensing model – HCL Domino Complete Collaboration Business Edition (a.k.a. “CCB”) including unlimited Guest Users, and the additional external user capability under the HCL Domino Complete Collaboration eXternal User (a.k.a. “CCX”) entitlement.  The majority of our customers are now licensed under this model. With the upcoming HCL Domino V12 release, we are further enhancing the CCB/CCX entitlements as described below.   Additionally, with the release of HCL Domino V12 we are aligning all Domino products on consistent license terms, which will be available imminently and include the compliance rules outlined in “HCL Domino Support Update” from February 3, 2021.  CCB Recap: Simplifying HCL Domino Licensing CCB is the key step in our journey to provide one license model for HCL Domino, eliminating the uncertainty of server capacity and sub-capacity (PVU) licensing and ambiguous entitlement rules.  A simple “Per User everything model” - use any client and any protocol for any server capacity to run all applications – including enterprise e-mail.  Transparent license compliance management by simple user counting.  Adding additional capabilities to the core Domino environment under CCB entitlements from V12 – for example HCL Nomad for Web Browsers and HCL SafeLinx.  CCB entitlements are needed for all employees and contractors of your enterprise needing access to your Domino CCB servers – covering all B2E (Business-to-Employees) scenarios. All CCB entitlements include unlimited external web user access as needed for most B2C (Business-to-Consumer/Citizen) scenarios:  Guest: unlimited anonymous browser users can freely access your Domino based websites.  Known Guest: unlimited registered users with credentials to log-in and access applications limited to being a “Reader” with permission to “write public documents” (controlled by Domino application access [ACL] – see Known Guest Use Cases later in this blog post). For B2B (Business-to-Business) or advanced B2C scenarios, where the external users need to fully engage in applications beyond the access permitted for Known Guests, we introduced the CCX entitlement as an add-on for CCB licensing. (See “Introducing CCX, External User Entitlements“ from September 23, 2020. Extending CCX entitlement to address additional use cases CCX users have full functionally to use Domino or Domino Volt [see below] applications and workflows but cannot create applications themselves. CCX users do not have a personal mailbox but can use task/functional mail for workflow routing or applications generating mail.   The CCX Authorized User entitlement is always assigned to a unique person or role,...

HCL Digital Solutions would like to take this opportunity to clarify the requirement for offering Support subscription for the various HCL Domino Programs. This blog covers two such cases related to partial renewals that are not permitted. Specifically, HCL Digital Solutions does not permit: 1. Partial renewal of HCL Domino Programs under Non-Expiring (“Perpetual”) License. I.e., Licensee cannot renew a lesser quantity than the entitled volume to obtain Support. 2. Separate renewal of Client-only or Server-only licenses where both are needed for a production environment and must be on Support for all users.   Here are the requirements for the HCL Domino Programs that can subscribe to Support (1) for Perpetual Licenses beyond the initial 12 months: All-inclusive Per User Licenses (i.e., all server entitlements included with the per user license)  HCL Domino Complete Collaboration Business Edition (CCB/CCX) HCL Domino Volt User HCL CEO Communications User HCL Collaboration Express User HCL Messaging Express User  To receive Support for any above Program, each User must be under Support. Licensee cannot have some Users on Support and others not, which precludes any partial Support renewals of Perpetual Per User Licenses. 2. Stand Alone Server Licenses  HCL Domino Utility Processor Value Unit (“PVU”)  HCL Domino Utility Express Processor Value Unit (“PVU”)  To receive Support for either of these Programs, all PVUs as entitled must be under Support. This precludes any partial Support renewals of Perpetual Utility Server and Utility Server Express Licenses.  3. Client and Server Licenses    HCL Domino Enterprise Client Access HCL Domino Enterprise Processor Value Unit (“PVU”)  As stated in the License Information (LI), each of these parts are interdependent and form one logical Program. Specifically, the HCL Domino Enterprise Server License Information mandates the corresponding Client License for any productive use (for all in-market versions).  From the HCL Domino Enterprise Server V10.0.1 License: “Use of the Program by any means of Authenticated Access requires an entitlement to HCL Domino Enterprise client access, or a subscription to either HCL SmartCloud Notes or a HCL Connections Cloud S1.” (2)  Further, the most recent Domino v9.0.x and Domino v10.0.x Support Update [KB0085697] documents the packaging and Support dependency for HCL Domino Enterprise Client and Server side as one Program, why these cannot...

This year, HCL Digital Solutions has delivered a modern, per user, licensing model for Domino – HCL Domino Complete Collaboration Business Edition (a.k.a. “CCB”). CCB has helped facilitate the growth in the Domino customer base and new user adoption and we’re proud to announce the completion of CCB licensing with the introduction of an eXternal user entitlement – the “CCX” Authorized User.  CCB: Simplifying HCL Domino Licensing  CCB is a key step in our journey to provide one license model for HCL Domino, eliminating the uncertainty of server capacity and sub-capacity (PVU) licensing. A simple “Per User everything model” - use any client and any protocol for any server capacity to run all applications – including enterprise e-mail (HCL Verse). Transparent license compliance management by simple user counting. Adding additional capabilities to the core Domino environment under CCB entitlements – like HCL SafeLinx 1.1 which is now entitled for all CCB users. We recently added a Guest user entitlement to permit web applications to run on CCB licensed servers – vastly improving the value of CCB. (This blog post contains updates to the announcement, “HCL Complete Collaboration (CCB) Guest Licensing” from July 29, 2020) More capabilities will be provided using a simple “add-on” scheme for CCB licensing, which now includes: Domino Volt: can be licensed to all CCB users at renewal or new CCB license sale Sametime Premium v11.5: special price add-on to all CCB users , as soon as Sametime 11.5 goes eGA in November. (Sametime Premium stand-alone will also be available at full price.) CCX: per user add-on for external users, from the end of September. Introducing CCX   CCX is an add-on to a CCB entitled Domino environment extending applications to external users at an attractive per user price. We now distinguish between internal users - who must be...

Since July 2019, it has been HCL Digital Solutions’ mission to help our customers and business partners by introducing contemporary licensing and making license management easier for all our products. Today, we are taking the next step towards consolidating all of our Domino licensing on a "per user" license model – the HCL Domino Complete Collaboration offering a.k.a “CCB.” Effectively immediately, customers with HCL Domino Servers deployed under CCB Authorized User entitlements can be accessed by a Licensee’s entitled CCB Authorized Users and Guest Users. A “Guest User” can be an anonymous web user (no authentication), or an authenticated web user with a predefined maximum level of Domino application access (ACL) as “Depositor.” In addition, HCL Domino servers under CCB may participate in mail routing (SMTP), directory lookup and authentication (LDAP) for non-HCL Domino programs and permit access to free/busy time calendar information. HCL made the following changes to the CCB license based on customer requests to facilitate: • A read-only external website for guest users • Data collection using surveys generated by Domino Volt 1.0.1 and its anonymous user support available today. • Removing the need for a separate Utility Server license for Guest Users with complex PVU reporting requirements. • Clarifying licensing for mail and calendar interoperability in multi-vendor scenarios involving our partner’s solutions. In August, HCL plans to update the formal License Information found here. In the meantime, you may refer to this blog or you can request a formal Product Notice for compliance. If you have any questions about this announcement or have any licensing questions, please contact your HCL product specialist or Business Partner. Uffe Sorensen & the Domino Product Team Disclaimer – HCL’s statements regarding its plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice at HCL’s sole discretion. Information regarding potential future...

Since July 2019, HCL Digital Solutions has been committed to introducing modern licensing, license management, and support lifecycle practices for all our products. We know this is a journey over multiple years and we know that managing license compliance is complex. Specifically, dealing with virtualized servers and sub-capacity licensing for products on a Processor Value Unit (PVU) metric.  While we intend to replace Domino PVU-based licenses with a simpler approach in the foreseeable future, we know that our customers want to know how to document their compliance with the IBM or HCL capacity-based licensing terms. Today, we are announcing that we will be consolidating our PVU compliance rules across all our products, starting with the Domino family – see “Reporting” section below for reporting methods accepted. Importantly, this announcement has no impact on any customer’s entitlements or license payments.  DEFINITIONS  What is Processor Value Unit licensing? A Processor Value Unit (PVU) is a unit of measure used to quantify licensing of software on different processor technologies and configurations. HCL defines a processor, for purposes of PVU-based licensing, to be each processor core on a chip (socket). Each processor core has a specific PVU capacity dependent on physical implementation as can be seen in IBM’s PVU Table by Processor Vendor, Brand, Type and Model Number here.   What is Sub-Capacity licensing? A program can be deployed using either Full Capacity or Virtualization Capacity (Sub-Capacity) licensing.  For Full Capacity licensing, (“bare metal”) customers need PVU entitlements to cover the entire physical server hardware where the program is running.  Where Sub-Capacity (Virtual Servers) licensing is permitted, customers need PVU entitlements to cover all activated processor cores made available to the Virtual Servers used by the Program. This is normally a lower PVU count than bare-metal licensing. Likewise, Sub-Capacity licensing applies to BYOSL deployment on Public Cloud environments.  REPORTING  All Domino customers are required to maintain a record of their total PVUs allocated to the product. The report must be presented to HCL on request (per HCL...