IBM and HCL Technologies today announced a definitive agreement under which HCL will acquire select IBM software products for $1.8 billion.

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

The software products in scope represent a total addressable market of more than $50 billion and 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 deal will allow IBM to further slim down its legacy businesses as it focuses on cloud computing.

HCL said the acquisition will give it scale in areas such as retail, financial services and transportation.