HCL to Buy Notes, BigFix, and Other Software Products From IBM for $1.8 billion

International Business Machines Corp said on Thursday it will sell some of its software products business to Indian software services exporter HCL Technologies for $1.80 billion (roughly Rs. 12,700 crores).

The software products in scope represent a total addressable market of more than $50 billion (roughly Rs. 3.5 lakh crores), IBM said in a statement.

The company will divest seven of its products, including its secure device management product BigFix, marketing automation product Unica and workstream collaboration product Connections, as well as IBM Notes and Domino (formerly know as Lotus Notes and Domino).

"The products that we are acquiring are in large growing market areas like security, marketing and commerce which are strategic segments for HCL," said C Vijayakumar, Chief Executive Officer of HCL.

The software products in scope  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.

The transaction is expected to close by mid-2019.

IBM's software sales, which have slowed down in the past, also weighed on its latest quarterly revenue.

HCL's revenue from software services business, however, rose about 21 percent to Rs. 87.11 billion, leading the company to beat its second-quarter profit.

IBM is also in the process of buying US software company Red Hat for $34 billion, including debt.