Yesterday Richard Jefts published an update on the acquisition, specifically relating to cloud. Before talking about the content, I want to comment on the approach HCL have taken. Although the blog post points to a tech note, what we have is more than a tech note and more collaborative than a press release.

Historically Engage has been shortly after a major conference in US, so it’s been an opportunity to catch up on sessions missed there. This year it followed the Factory Tour by a few months. Unfortunately for me, most of the key products sessions conflicted with sessions I was delivering or preparation.

This week I’ve spent a hugely beneficial amount of time at the HCL Factory Tour Episode 2. As with the previous factory tour, the ability to get quality time with key individuals from HCL and IBM, as well as not only hear but feed back on progress is invaluable. Before going I’d also intended to use the conference to crystalise my focuses for Engage. And obviously it was a great opportunity to have influential discussions regarding OpenNTF and open source, discussions that would normally have happened at IBM Think.

There are signs you can tell summer is over. For us in the northern hemisphere, the weather starts feeling chillier (although it’s been very changeable in UK most of the “summer”). And things start ramping up as people get back from holidays and Q3 comes to an end.