As part of a recent engagement, I was required to provide some details on IBM support & maintenance, when a pop-up appeared and informed me of the transition of that support to HCL.  What was really more helpful though, was the link below which provided a categorical list of all the products that HCL acquired from IBM:

IBM Link:

https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/AL1OBXBJ

169 pages!!  Who knew?! So for those people who are involved in contract renewals and have any of products listed in this mighty tome, take the time to find out who to engage with in HCL and treat them as you would a new vendor if you haven’t engaged with HCL before.

Please keep in mind also:  HCL has been on an aggressive acquisition spree, so it isn’t just IBM software whose licences you might have to transition your commercial dealings with.

IBM & HCL Top tips moving forward:

Do we still need the software?
What is the notification period we are required to react within to terminate the licence and associated support?
Can we co-term the new HCL acquisitions under an umbrella agreement to benefit from economies of scale?
Analyse and understand the impact of taking these titles from your IBM deal
Ensure your Service Management function is aware of these support changes for escalations

As has been previously covered in many blogs on this site, it pays to rationalise software wherever possible.  Creating and maintaining a Supported Software Catalogue (SSC) helps define the list of software required to run your organisation, and so if you can then prune the expansion of that list you stand a better chance of applying controls in a volume capacity.  The divestment mentioned above, acts as a fine reminder to take the pruning shears to your SSC