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During the last few years the situation of IBM as a provider of web store systems has not looked very good. In Finland, the situation with partners has steadily become worse, and it is not easy to recommend IBM, even though the system itself is quite capable.
Now IBM has sold a remarkable collection of products to an Indian company HCL Technologies. HCL has become known especially as a partner in big outsourcing cases. This business case seems to be similar.
North Patrol is a consulting firm specialized in the design of digital services and information systems. We shape ideas into a vision and service concept, find the best architectural and technological solutions, design a functional user experience, and compete to find the ideal partner for implementation work. We do not sell implementation projects, nor do we sell licenses; we are genuinely on the side of the customer.
23 January 2019
For HCL, this may be mostly about buying customers. With this deal, HCL gets 5000 customers to which they can provide many kinds of support services.
A quote from Bloomberg's article: “The asset-sale comes as IBM is seeking to become a leader in the hybrid cloud market, which combines software and services delivered over the public Internet with similar offerings run on companies’ own servers and data centers. In October, the Armonk, New York-based company agreed to buy Red Hat Inc., a specialist in this area, for $33 billion.”
Perhaps the fact, that the stock price of HCL declined five (5) percent after the deal was published, describes the transaction best.
The deal suits very well into the IBM story line. The company pursuits to expand its offering in many kinds of cloud services and service related infrastructures. To some extend, “old fashioned” on-premises installed software products did not sit very well in this new strategy. For example, from the Commerce set IBM excluded Watson related parts from the trade, even though the core platform was sold (WebSphere Commerce).
The conclusion of North Patrol about the transaction: Despite the capabilities of IBM WebSphere Commerce, it is now even more difficult to recommend it as a platform for demanding web stores. Magento and Hybris are thanking – at least in Finland.
6 May 2022 - Perttu Tolvanen
23 November 2020 - Perttu Tolvanen
3 April 2023 - Kimmo Parkkinen
8 December 2017 - Kimmo Parkkinen
2 November 2020 - Heikki Toivo
20 September 2022 - Mikko Jokela
30 August 2021 - Mikko Jokela
20 January 2021 - Virpi Blom
Perttu Tolvanen is a web concept design and content management system expert.
Perttu consults with clients on project planning and defining requirements, and supports customers in selecting content management systems and implementation partners. His areas of specialisation include facilitating concept design workshops and selecting content management systems.
Perttu has ten years of experience with web and intranet projects, including serving as a project manager and consultant. Earlier in his career Perttu has worked in procurement and as a project manager at a large media company, a content management system consultant at a large IT company and an independent, neutral consultant at his own firm. He is also a well-known seminar speaker and blogger. Perttu is also the editor of Vierityspalkki.fi, a Finnish blog about the Finnish internet and its creators.
20 September 2022 - Mikko Jokela
1 October 2021 - Heikki Toivo
6 September 2021 - Mikko Jokela
2 November 2020 - Heikki Toivo
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