I started my Friday with a shocking notice, BigFix is acquired by HCL!
I’m not sure about the impact of this on our community and on the future development of the tool.
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Not a huge shock, if you consider IBM and HCL have been under an agreement for over a year in which HCL performed the development and support for Bigfix and Rational products.
IBM may need some cash after it’s Red Hat purchase.
If I can quit counting PVU and RVU, maybe it’s A Christmas Miracle!
Seriously tho…I wonder what happens to all the rest of the IBM PVU / RVU licensing if the Bigfix-based ILMT is no longer freely available hmmm.
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The impact will be a much better support model (like the good old days when BigFix was BigFix in Emeryville, CA…for those of us that remember). I’m all for it! 
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Interesting Friday morning read. With the community and IBM out of the picture, I can’t see this as a bad thing. 
What are the chances of HCL rebranding BigFix to another name?
The same chances as a snowball in hell.
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Let’s wait and see. 
Not like it hasn’t been done before…
Bigfix
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
IBM Endpoint Manager
IBM Bigfix
Bigfix
In the end it doesn’t really matter, it’s a great product by any name.
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So now I can go to my Linux guys who are hanging onto Satellite (because they don’t want to use an IBM product) and say, welp, now what?
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Well…
If they’re using Redhat, they are already using an IBM product!! 
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It will be less IBM to use Bigfix than to use RHEL/Satellite.
Will this mean that v10 will bring more colors than blue/grey to the console?
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I can’t imagine this would impact console colors 
What colors do you want to see?
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Sorry. Lame dad joke.
Although…
Any chance at seeing Aerosmith at the HCL Bigfix conference? 
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What about the 3 months is was IBM Unified Endpoint Manager before being re-branded back to BigFix?
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Awesome sauce! Actually got goose bumps when I first heard the news…
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Does anyone know if the agreement is with HCL America, Inc. or HCL Technologies Ltd.? This could affect the ability for US Federal agencies and DoD to continue using BigFix (a huge portion of the BigFix customer base) without having to first fully re-certify not only the product, but now also the new owning entity.
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I am also interested to learn how this effects US Federal contracts, both cleared and uncleared. Has IBM put out any official guidance?
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Yeah I have not had good luck with IBM support in the past, so a change would be nice.
I would not count on better support. This really depends on where the support comes from. I have dealt with similar companies to HCL and support is horrendous! I also support Symantec Endpoint Protection which has almost all offshore support and I have yet to have a ticket resolved by them. Most of the time I close it because I am so frustrated that I cannot deal with them anymore.
IMHO, this will be the downfall of BigFix.