Now that the dust has settled and the IBM/HCL transaction has come to a close, we can all take a deep breath and go on with our lives.
It’s time to forge our relationships with HCL either as a customer or a partner and in some cases, as both. I feel a genuine sense of collaboration between all parties as relationships are more than skin deep. Developers and architects that we have known and trusted for years are now working for HCL instead of IBM. We all invested time and money developing our expertise on the platform, understanding the digital commerce business which encompasses payment, shipping, billing, fraud prevention, PCI compliance, and more. Commerce is in our soul and we live and breathe every day thinking about how to help each other succeed, so we don’t become another casualty to Amazon or the latest disruptor.
It’s time for us to focus on the business and figure how to move forward with the hands that were dealt to us. It’s time to figure out how to make the most out of our investment.
WCS V7 Decisions to make
If you are on WCS V7, you are faced with an important decision because it’s unlikely that HCL will be able to support you under the Extended Support Agreement. Why? Because the WAS team won’t be able to support the underlying application server. WAS 7 support ended in April 2018.
If you are interested in staying on WCS (HCL) V7, please read my blog post on Extended WCS V7 Support here.
In any case, here are my recommendations:
- Stay on WCS V7 and buy Extended Support from IBM. You still have to upgrade WAS and DB2 first. We can give you a ballpark estimate on this option. This conversation may not be too popular with management because you are basically standing still or thinking of switching platforms.
- Migrate to WCS V8 or V9 with a better front-end, fast, responsive and mobile-friendly. Instead of a migration strategy that is strictly to be compliant with HCL S&S (Subscription & Support), you will have a competitive weapon that can bring in more revenue than planned. This competitive weapon is Mobiecom which is the world’s-first SPA (Single Page Application) in ReactJS for HCL Commerce.
Find out how fast your site could be
We can benchmark your site against Mobiecom as a start using Google PageSpeed Insights and set a goal to improve your site speed by 50% or more on every single click or transaction. We can improve your conversions, and cut down on shopping cart abandonment and bounce rates. The truth will be in the numbers so let us help you be the superstar in the migration conversation. And of course, you get to decide which version you would like to migrate to: WCS V8, V9 or IDC.
Once you are running Mobiecom, you can pick a back-end and we will help you migrate to that version. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that conversation with executives? A migration that gives you a competitive edge, rather than just compliance with HCL Subscription & Support?
Are you up to the bake-off?
For a limited time, we are offering a free PoC (Proof-of-Concept) where we load your products into Mobiecom and benchmark it against your current site.
You will love the experience. Email me at tzobrist@zobristinc.com.
