‘Hindustan’ Goes On ‘International’ Buying Spree: HCL Inks $1.8 Billion Deal For Acquiring Seven IBM Products 

HCL, India’s third largest software services firm is set to acquire software products from historical software giant IBM for $1.8 billion. It is the largest acquisition by HCL yet and the deal is expected to close by mid-2019, Economic Times has reported.

The products which will be acquired include, Appscan for secure application development, BigFix for secure device management, Unica for marketing automation, Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development, and Connections for workstream collaboration, Commerce for omnichannel eCommerce, Portal for digital experience, and represent a potential market of over $50 billion.

IBM and HCL have an ongoing IP Partnership for five of these products with CEO and President HCL Technologies, C Vijayakumar commenting that HCL is strategically acquiring products in large growing areas such as security, marketing and commerce.

“The large-scale deployments of these products provide us with a great opportunity to reach and serve thousands of global enterprises across a wide range of industries and markets,” he added.

Senior Vice President of Cognitive Solutions and Research of IBM, John Kelley said that IBM’s priority in the last four years was in the areas of AI, hybrid cloud, blockchain analytics, cyber security and supply chain. And industry-specific platforms such as health care, IOT and financial services.

“We believe the time is right to divest these select collaboration, marketing and commerce software assets, which are increasingly delivered as stand-alone products." said Kelley.

Further he added that the products are good strategic fit for HCL and well suited to drive innovation and growth for customers.