It is common for acquisitions to generally render many people jobless. However, the IBM – HCL deal was of a different kind. In December 2018, HCL announced that it would buy eight software products or IPs from IBM at $1.8 billion making it the single largest acquisition by an Indian IT firm. But what is interesting is that along with the products, HCL also took 2000 of IBM’s employees. The deal is expected to get sealed in June 2019 giving access to 5,500 clients globally.
The primary objective of this strategic and selective acquisition was to build competencies, while generating more revenue. Talents, such as customer experience architects and cloud architects were hired.
Earlier this week, IBM reportedly sacked 300 employees from its Indian services, most of whom were software professionals. The Company was also criticised for giving preference to young employees over senior ones in its hiring process, and also for systematically sacking older employees to replace them with younger ones despite their good performance. However, IBM has been denying all these allegations.
The products bought by HCL include Appscan, for secure application development; BigFix, for secure device management; Unica, for marketing automation; Commerce, for omni-channel eCommerce; Portal, for digital experience; Notes & Domino, for email and low-code rapid application development, and Connections, for workstream collaboration.
HCL outdid Wipro with a revenue of $8.63 billion in the last financial year. This indicates an increment of 10 per cent from the last fiscal year.
