Source: ET Bureau
HCL Tech, India’s third-largest IT services provider in terms of revenue, said it is making “significant” investments in creating innovation labs and other growth areas for IP-led businesses.
HCL Technologies plans to take on board nearly 2,000 IBM employees as part of its $1.8-billion deal to acquire some of the latter’s software assets, as the Noida-based tech services exporter adopts a strategy to shore up its IP-led business faster than traditional software services.
The deal — which includes marketing automation projects and Notes, which is an email application of the global tech giant — is expected to be completed by June. The acquisition of the products is also expected to get HCL Tech access to over 5,500 clients globally.
“Mode 3, which is the products and platforms segment, has their own salesforce. (With IBM products), we have inherited somewhere around 1,500-2,000 people,” Apparao VV, chief human resources officer, HCL Tech, told ET in an interview.
The products 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.
The company’s emerging technology and IP-led businesses, which are categorised as Mode 2 and 3, garner slightly higher than 28% revenue.
Mode 1 is the traditional services business that includes offerings such as application development, infrastructure maintenance, business process outsourcing and engineering services.
HCL Tech, India’s third-largest IT services provider in terms of revenue, said it is making “significant” investments in creating innovation labs and other growth areas for IP-led businesses.
The company said in December it would pick up eight IBM IP-based products, which promises a total addressable market of more than $50 billion. HCL Tech has said the products acquisition would help it reach “thousands of global enterprises”.
The company’s primary focus is on building competencies and not just adding revenues through acquisitions, Apparao said. “We have hired a number of people who are customer experience architects, cloud architects — that kind of profiles. Our acquisitions are selective, to build capability and not (only) to buy revenue,” he said.
While the company has dedicated sales teams for the products under its Mode 3 segment, it is readying another team of experts to sell the IP-led products as a solution to businesses across geographies.
