IBM made some pretty big announcements tonight. First of all, Notes and Domino will have a version 10 released in 2018. Yeah, I know. I am as shocked as you.

Secondly, IBM is now leaving all the development of the platform to their partner HCL. IBM has already a partnership with them on several other products in their portfolio.

So what does this mean? It means that the platform is not dead, something which we’ve heard since around 2002 from people.

It also means that for the customers, there will be no change in their relationship with IBM. HCL will do the development, and maybe a times help out IBM. But sales, support, PMRs, licensing, Passport advantage will all still be done via IBM.

So the biggest change is that HCL takes over the development. IBM and HCL are committed to make sure that support, development and continuation of the platform will not be disrupted.

The journey starts now, and thus far the next version of Notes, Domino and Sametime is going under the name “Proejct Sapphire.”

Other stuff to look forward to:

• Domino will now support the Mail client for Mac as they already do for Outlook via Exchange ActiveSync
• There will be constant development for the Domino platform, so that it will be easier to integrate with other platforms and solutions
• IBM will hold jams (currently called Domino 2025) for ideas about the future of Notes/Domino where people will have meetings, talks and other ways to give IBM feedback
• IBM Champions and the user groups will be invited to be much more involved in the future
• The Think conference (taking over for Lotusphere/Connect) will have a much larger presence for Notes/Domino than what we feared

And just to be clear: This covers the entire family of IBM Notes, Domino, Sametime and Verse, both on premise and in the cloud.

Here’s the portfolio that’s a part of the HLC partnership:

IBM Notes and Domino

• IBM SmartCloud Notes
• IBM Notes Traveler
• IBM Mobile Connect
• IBM Verse
• IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook(IMSMO)
• IBM WISPR
• IBM Enterprise Integrator (LEI)
• IBM Sametime portfolio
• IBM Connections Chat/Meetings
• IBM Client Access (ICAA)

I was today on the IBM Champions call where we were introduced to this. And some of the questions raised in the Q&A was: Is this too little too late? Will we be able to get customers to invest in Notes/Domino? Will the platform be relevant?

Let’s find out. The journey is #2025.