Source: helpnetsecurity.com | Original announcement: June 2020
HCL and Google Cloud Expand Strategic Partnership
HCL Technologies and Google Cloud announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to bring HCL’s software portfolio — beginning with HCL Commerce — to Google Cloud infrastructure. Under the agreement, Google Cloud becomes the preferred cloud platform for HCL Commerce, providing global, secure, and elastic infrastructure to power enterprise eCommerce strategies at scale.
A key technical element of the partnership is HCL’s stated intention to leverage Google Cloud’s Anthos platform to enable multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments of HCL Commerce — giving enterprise customers greater deployment flexibility without abandoning existing on-premises or multi-cloud investments.
What Is HCL Commerce?
HCL Commerce is a cloud-native eCommerce platform used by businesses across multiple industries worldwide. According to HCL, the platform drives more than $100 billion in annual client revenues. It is designed to support both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) use cases on a single unified platform.
Key capabilities of HCL Commerce include:
- Scalability and performance: Designed to handle high transaction volumes and seasonal spikes without manual intervention.
- Merchandising flexibility: Enables businesses to rapidly create and iterate on merchandising strategies and launch new sales channels.
- Omnichannel support: Supports B2B and B2C operations from the same platform, reducing architectural complexity.
- Adaptability: Built to respond to evolving market conditions and extend beyond the initial transaction to the full customer lifecycle.
What the Partnership Delivers for Enterprises
Running HCL Commerce on Google Cloud is intended to give enterprises access to the combined strengths of both platforms:
- Global infrastructure: Google Cloud’s worldwide network of regions and points of presence provides low-latency delivery for customers in multiple geographies.
- Elastic scalability: Cloud-native elasticity allows commerce workloads to scale up or down automatically in response to demand.
- Security: Google Cloud’s security model, including encryption in transit and at rest, extends to HCL Commerce deployments.
- AI, ML, and analytics: Enterprises can leverage Google Cloud’s machine learning and data analytics capabilities — such as BigQuery and Vertex AI — to build data-driven customer experiences and personalisation engines on top of their commerce data.
- Anthos for hybrid and multi-cloud: Anthos allows HCL Commerce workloads to run consistently across on-premises environments, Google Cloud, and other cloud providers, reducing vendor lock-in risk.
Real-World Customer Outcomes
Several early customers provided commentary on results they attributed to the partnership:
DFS (UK Furniture Retailer)
Russ Harte, Chief Technology Officer at DFS, cited the ability to react quickly with functional deployments and noted a significant reduction in total cost of ownership after adopting HCL Commerce on Google Cloud.
Intertoys
Robin Tichler at Intertoys reported that the company went live with HCL Commerce on Google Cloud in 15 weeks and was able to scale to 3× its normal transaction volumes during a period of heightened consumer demand — a result attributed to the elastic infrastructure provided by Google Cloud.
Executive Perspective
Darren Oberst, Corporate Vice President and Head of HCL Software:
“The collaboration between Google Cloud and HCL Commerce is helping customers rapidly execute their digital transformation strategy that is rooted in the new normal. With the support of our global implementation partner ecosystem, we can now deliver a proven, comprehensive commerce solution across all industries, handling the challenges of today and in the future.”
Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem at Google Cloud:
“It is more important than ever for firms spanning all industries to deliver strong, customer-centric eCommerce experiences. We’re proud that Google Cloud infrastructure will power HCL Commerce, helping businesses leverage the elasticity and reliability of Google Cloud and ultimately delivering positive eCommerce experiences for customers around the world.”
Kalyan Kumar, CTO and Corporate Vice President, HCL Technologies:
“The HCL Google Cloud Business Unit is enabling product collaboration across HCL Software and Google Cloud. The launch of HCL Commerce on Google Cloud is the first among a number of planned joint offerings built around application modernization, data center and database value unlock.”
Background: HCL’s Google Cloud Business Unit and Native Labs
This 2020 announcement builds on a partnership that began in 2019, when HCL and Google Cloud launched the HCL Google Cloud Business Unit — a dedicated organisation focused on accelerating enterprise cloud adoption worldwide.
To support implementation and innovation, HCL established three Google Cloud Native Labs in the following locations:
- New York, USA
- London, UK
- New Delhi area, India
These labs provide business-focused design workshops, help customers build minimum viable products (MVPs) on Google Cloud, and develop industry-specific intellectual property to accelerate time-to-value for enterprise engagements.
Key Takeaways for DevOps and Platform Teams
- HCL Commerce’s move to Google Cloud as a preferred platform signals a continued industry shift toward cloud-native commerce architectures managed by specialised cloud providers.
- The use of Anthos is significant for teams managing hybrid or multi-cloud estates — it provides a consistent Kubernetes-based control plane across environments, reducing operational fragmentation.
- Enterprises evaluating eCommerce platforms should factor in Google Cloud’s AI and analytics ecosystem when assessing the total data value unlockable from a commerce deployment.
- The 15-week go-live timeline reported by Intertoys suggests meaningful investment in pre-built accelerators and deployment automation within the HCL/Google partnership, though individual results will vary by implementation complexity.