The deal is expected to close by mid-2019, subject to completion of applicable regulatory reviews.
HCL Technologies on Friday said it will acquire select IBM software products including Appscan and Notes & Domino, for $1.8 billion.

“The products that we are acquiring are in large growing market areas like security, marketing and commerce which are strategic segments for HCL. Many of these products are well regarded by clients and positioned in the top quadrant by industry analysts,” C. Vijayakumar, President & CEO, HCL Technologies said.

The two companies have entered into a “definitive agreement under which HCL will acquire select IBM software products for $1.8 billion,” HCL Technologies said in a statement.

The deal is expected to close by mid-2019, subject to completion of applicable regulatory reviews.

The Noida-based firm said that the software products in scope represent a total addressable market of more than $50 billion. These include Appscan for secure application development, BigFix for secure device management, Unica (on-premise) for marketing automation, Commerce (on-premise) for omni-channel eCommerce, Portal (on-premise) for digital experience, Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development, and Connections for workstream collaboration.

HCL and IBM have an ongoing IP Partnership for five of these products.

“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. I am confident that these products will see good growth trajectory,” Mr Vijayakumar said.

John Kelly, IBM senior vice president, Cognitive Solutions and Research said, “Over the last four years, we have been prioritising our investments to develop integrated capabilities in areas such as AI for business, hybrid cloud, cybersecurity, analytics, supply chain and blockchain as well as industry-specific platforms and solutions including healthcare, industrial IOT, and financial services. These are among the emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry.”

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

Courtesy by : The Hindu