The Time is NOW for Unica on HCL Now!

As someone who has worked within Unica for over 10 years, I couldn’t be more excited to detail the wonderful features and benefits of Unica on HCL Now. With this launch, users can now have HCL manage their instance of Unica so that they can focus on marketing instead of infrastructure!

Let’s dive into the Unica on HCL Now offering:

• What is it? Unica on HCL Now is HCLSoftware’s managed hosted option for Unica. For years folks have been asking both myself and the entire Unica team, “Does Unica have a SaaS (Software As A Service) offering?”— Now we do, and it is way better than SaaS.
  
• What is included? Unica on HCL Now has three components: 1) Multi-year term software license, 2) Infrastructure as a service, and 3) Managed Services, including migration to v12.1 and upgrades/patches.
• Why is it different? This is single-tenant SaaS, your very own infrastructure instance, and you decide when you should apply upgrades/patches.
  

Unica’s Cloud Native Journey Continues!

Unica on HCL Now continues Unica’s Cloud Native Journey, using the software you know and love!

• First, we released Unica as a Cloud Native Platform.
  
• Next, we provided support for SoFy – HCL’s Software Factory. If you haven’t had the opportunity, you can learn more about Unica on SoFy by reading this blog entry I wrote with my colleague David Williams.
  
• Now, we provide a Unica managed hosted solution with Unica on HCL Now.

Benefits of Unica HCL Now are all about the choices and control it provides to you, including the following:

1. Choice of cloud provider – we provision on the big three:
   • GCP – Google Cloud Platform
   • AWS – Amazon Web Hosting
   • Azure – Microsoft Azure 
2. It is under your control – single tenant SaaS
   • Infrastructure provisioned just for you
   • Keep your customer data
   • Decide when to patch/upgrade 
3. After the term ends – take Unica with you!
   • It is your software.
   • Off-boarding Assistance your Unica Data (System Tables and File System)
   • You can then deploy it on your own private cloud, another cloud provider, or with the business partner of your choice.

Also, Unica on HCL Now is the real deal for a managed hosted solution. It provides 99.9% SLA uptime, cloud security, major compliance elements like ISO27000, monitoring and alerting, and more.  It includes an experienced HCLSoftware Cloud Operations Team that works together with Unica SMEs who make up the Unica Application Operations Team so that you and your team can focus on Marketing.

But, What About our Customer Marketing Database?

As any experienced Unica user will tell you, access to your CDP (Custom Data Platform)/Customer Marketing Data Mart/Unica User Tables is of primary importance to your success with Unica. Ensuring great campaign execution performance is all about co-locating your Unica User Tables with your installation of Unica Campaign. The two biggest factors are 1) reducing the number of “hops” between Unica Campaign and your Unica Campaign User Tables and 2) having a “big pipe” – a fast connection between Unica Campaign and your Unica User Tables.   We offer three options for the location of your Unica User Tables:

• Option A: Your Private Cloud or a Cloud database provider – we’ll then match the Cloud Vendor (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and locate in the same Region and Zone. This reduces the number of “hops,” and a fast connection is included as part of Unica on HCL Now. 
• Option B: On-Premise – that’s correct, keep your Unica User Tables on-premise, and then we’ll use the nearest cloud provider location, Region and Zone. This will reduce the number of “hops,” and a fast connection is included as part of Unica on HCL Now.
• Option C: Host a subset of your customer marketing database as the Unica User Tables on Unica on HCL Now. We’ll perform a full replacement of that data on the frequency interval that you choose.

Existing Customers vs. New Customers

Unica on HCL Now is suitable for existing customers—we’ll provide migration assistance and upgrade your Unica System Table and File System data to v12.1 (or the latest release). If you are a new customer, we’ll perform the Dockerized deployment of Unica v12.1 (or the latest release) and perform the base configurations. From there, our Unica Professional Services Team or the Unica Business Partner of your choice can perform the implementation of one or more Unica modules based on your marketing use case(s).

Unica on HCL Now is an extension of Unica’s Cloud Native Strategy. It is the same Unica modules packaged in Dockerized Containers that you can install on-premise or in the public or private cloud of your choice, and it is the same Unica software your team knows and loves. Customers have been asking for years when will Unica be Cloud Native, so now that we are, the next natural question is, can you just host it for me? With Unica on HCL Now, the answer is YES!  

To learn more about Unica on HCL Now, Join our upcoming Webinar on Aug 24th for NA and EMEA regions and on Aug 25th for the APAC region. You can also reach out to me, your Unica Product Specialist, even your HCL Customer Success Manager, and we would be happy to share more details about Unica on HCL Now.