Yesterday the HCL Masters were invited to a webinar where we were given a presentation about Domino Volt. This webinar also revealed very interesting stuff about the future of Domino Licensing
IBM had a very complex licensing model for Domino that was very hard to understand and get a handle on. This has also created a lot of work for HCL as they’ve had to sort through it to see how they could offer a simpler licensing model.
This uncertainty has made it very hard for business partners to give good renewal prices for customers. Because they simply don’t know that the pricing model will be like in the future.
During the Volt webinar yesterday, we were told that HCL is soon ready with a much simpler licensing model.
Now, even if this licensing model is supposed to be easier, we were several persons in the meeting that were still confused. But here’s how I understood the new licensing modell will work. And please correct me if I’m wrong, HCL, and I will update this.
As of today the following licensing models exist:
- Domino Utility Server or Domino Utility Express (D55MVLL, E0227LL, D18JXLL and D1D1BLL)
- Domino Messaging Server or Messaging Express (D0B7JLL, D53V5LL, D55J9LL, E07UNLL, E01B3LL and E020ILL)
- Mail Dual Entitlement Only (D1HY2LL)
These licenses cannot be converted to the new licensing models, nor get licenses for Volt.
In addition we have the following licensing models today:
- CEO Communications (D0C1YLL and E08BRLL)
- Collaborations Express (D18JWLL, D52VQLL and E00ZZLL)
- Domino Enterprise CAL (D0B7HLL, D1D17LL and E07UMLL)
- Mail Dual Entitlement Plus Applications (D1HY5LL)
- Mail Dual Entitlement Plus Applications and S1 (D1HY8LL)
- Customers on Dual Entitlement for Mail & Social Collaboration (D1HYBLL)
All of these may be converted to one of the two new licensing models:
- Complete Collaboration Bundle (D1VC7LL, D1VCLLL and E0NXRLL)
- Bundle Mail and Social Collaboration (#TN100231M01)
And here is the good news: If you convert to any of these two, the licensing price for your customer will be the same as it was before!
Here is the neutral news: If you want to use Domino Volt, you have to convert to one of these two licensing models!
Here is the less good news: You will have to buy an extra license for Volt, for every single user in your organisation. This means that if you have 450 users, you have to pay for 450 Volt licenses, in addition to the usual Domino license fee.
And: As of today, Domino Volt does not support anonymous users. So if you want to let people outside of your organisation use your Volt applications, you have to register a completely new Domino user for them, and pay for it.
Anonymous users will be a part of the next release of Volt, but HCL still hasn’t presented plans on how the licensing for those users will be.
So, you can convert your customer to the new licensing models for the same price as before. But what will the pricing be if you want Domino Volt too?
Well, that’s very simple:
- If you have 1-200 licenses, add 10% to the price of each user license per month
- If you have more than 200 licenses, add 6% to the price of each user license per month
“But wait”, I hear you shout. “What if I have new customers not using Domino today?” HCL has a solution for that too:
If you purchase licenses for a new customer that will renew annually:
- 1-200 users: $7.50 for each Domino user license pr month. If they want Volt, add $1 to each license pr month
- 201+ users: $5.63 for each Domino user license per month. If they want Volt, add $0.75 to each license per month
If you purchase licenses for a new customers and they have perpetual licensing:
- Complete Collaboration Bundle AU LIC + SW S&S: $315 for Domino and $33.58 for the Domino Volt Tiers
- Complete Collaboration Bundle AU S&S: $82 for Domino and $6.72 for the Domino Volt Tiers
Phew! I think that’s an accurate summary on how this will work. What do you think?