Bank of Thailand Launches World's First Government Savings Bond on IBM Blockchain Technology

Bangkok, Thailand – 30 September 2020: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Blockchain Community Initiative (BCI) jointly announced that its electronic letter of guarantee (eLG) platform and network has successfully advanced and is now extending the scope and reach of its services and network to businesses of all sizes. The advanced capabilities on the BCI blockchain platform include equipping its network with true hybrid cloud and multi-vendor capabilities, disaster recovery and multi-region high availability. Commercial banks in Thailand manually issue guarantee letters worth billions of dollars to businesses annually as part of their guarantee process in case a buyer defaults. The negotiation between buyer, seller and bank can take up to nine days and the risk of forgery of paper documents could leave the seller without recourse.  Through Thailand Blockchain Community Initiative, now known as BCI (Thailand) Co., Ltd., 22 banks and 15 companies have joined the blockchain-based platform to support payment obligations, for enterprise auctions and other domestic trading procedures. The platform went live in late 2019 and currently handles an approximate value of US$ 300,000,000 in guarantee letters. It has proven to reduce letter of guarantee issuance time to less than a day. Some member companies report seeing a 200% reduction in transaction costs. eLG is designed to reduce the potential for errors and risk of fraud for all parties involved. “The blockchain platform is significant to BCI as it is aligned to our roadmap of using a hybrid deployment model to grow to overseas markets in the future. The Letter of Guarantee is just the first service offering from BCI. More products will be added in the near future. The platform also sets a strong foundation for BCI to scale and expand our services offerings on top of bringing speed and efficiency to more companies,” said Silawat Santivisat, Chairman of The Board, BCI (Thailand) Co., Ltd. “Blockchain is the key enabler for multi-industry connectivity platforms.  Blockchain allows businesses to rethink processes and inefficiencies, and with the right partners and technology platforms providing scalability, security and multi-cloud capabilities, these networks can grow efficiently across environments and regions.” “The major upgrade from Hyperledger Fabric v1.1 to Hyperledger Fabric v1.4 LTS posed huge business and technical challenges, with months of preparation and tremendous effort from all 15 participating entities working closely together on improving the business processes, security, governance, compliance and technical resources. The IBM team’s strong commitment and outstanding support to BCI made this upgrade to global best practices a great success with zero downtime,” said Siriwat Keatcharoensin, President of BCI (Thailand) Co., Ltd. “With IBM Blockchain as the technology foundation, and with the innovation milestone we achieved today, we are ready to welcome new members to our eLG platform and collectively bring maximum efficiency to business transactions in Thailand.” “IBM is proud to support BCI and its growing consortium in bringing the use of blockchain technology on the highly-secured IBM Cloud environment to address one of Thailand’s key pain points in executing financial transactions,” said  Patama Chantaruck as Vice President for Indochina Expansion and Managing Director of IBM Thailand. “First developed by members of the Thai banking community with IBM Garage for Cloud in 2016, the platform has incorporated best practices in bringing both bank and non-bank ecosystem players together quickly and effectively.” Large, medium or small companies in Thailand can easily start using BCI’s eLG services. Clients have the option to access the BCI portal through different models, including private on-premise access, via the cloud, or via a cloud broker. For more details, please go to https://en.bci.network/products. Media contactParanee Reymondon IBM Thailand Co., Ltd.Tel: +66 2 273 4164Email: paranee@th.ibm.com

The IBM Ecosystem Unit of HCL will help clients leverage IBM Cloud capabilities to transform mission-critical workloads Noida, India and Sunnyvale, CA — October 1, 2020 — HCL Technologies (HCL), today announced a new collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to help clients accelerate their digital transformation by migrating enterprise mission-critical workloads to the IBM public cloud. The IBM Ecosystem Unit (IEU) at HCL will assist clients, including those enterprises in regulated industries such as financial services, telecommunications, life sciences & healthcare and energy & utilities, to develop digital and cloud-native solutions that will help advance their cloud journeys. These solutions will be built on the IBM public cloud using IBM Cloud Paks, containerized software running on Red Hat OpenShift, and Watson-powered advanced data and analytics. HCL’s IEU will offer a wide spectrum of services and solutions, leveraging IBM Cloud, data & analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities and security to foster innovation for enterprises. Clients can participate in design workshops and remotely access the best technology from the company’s Cloud Native Labs located in the United States (Dallas), United Kingdom (London) and India (NCR), which fully support IBM Cloud and Red Hat environments for proof of concepts and solution building. “In line with HCL’s vision and strategy, this new chapter in our relationship with IBM is an affirmation of our strategy in responding to a changing world. Leveraging the IBM public cloud will enable HCL to work with enterprises in regulated industries such as financial services.” said Kalyan Kumar, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, IT Services, HCL Technologies. “Currently our DRYiCETM portfolio runs on IBM public cloud. This collaboration will be extended to HCL’s product portfolio, which includes the development of new SaaS offerings on IBM Cloud.” "We see increased demand for companies in many industries with sensitive data, such as financial services and telco, to migrate their critical workloads and applications to the cloud," said Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain and Ecosystems, IBM. "I see the flexibility and security of IBM's hybrid cloud platform built with Red Hat OpenShift at the core, combined with HCL's expertise in technology services, as a clear differentiator. Together, we can help clients maximize value and accelerate their digital transformation to any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud." HCL is part of IBM’s hybrid cloud ecosystem, an initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors that will help clients modernize workloads with Red Hat OpenShift for any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud is one of the industry’s most secure and open public clouds for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade strength and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud workloads for enterprise workloads. About HCL Technologies HCL Technologies (HCL) empowers global enterprises with technology for the next decade today. HCL’s Mode 1-2-3 strategy through its deep-domain industry expertise, customer-centricity and entrepreneurial culture of ideapreneurship™ enables businesses transform into next-gen enterprises. HCL offers its services and products through three business units - IT and Business Services (ITBS), Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) and Products & Platforms (P&P). ITBS enables global enterprises to transform their businesses through offerings in areas of Applications, Infrastructure, Digital Process Operations and next generational digital transformation solutions. ERS offers engineering services and solutions in all aspects of product development and platform engineering while under P&P, HCL provides modernized software products to global clients for their technology and industry specific requirements. Through its cutting-edge co-innovation labs, global delivery capabilities and broad global network, HCL delivers holistic services in various industry verticals, categorized under Financial Services, Manufacturing, Technology & Services, Telecom & Media, Retail & CPG, Life Sciences & Healthcare and Public Services. As a leading global technology company, HCL takes pride in its diversity, social responsibility, sustainability and education initiatives. As of 12 months ended June 30, 2020, HCL has a consolidated revenue of US $ 9.93 billion and its 150,287 ideapreneurs operate out of 49 countries. For more information, visit https://www.hcltech.com/ Forward–looking Statements Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the statements containing the words 'planned', 'expects', 'believes’,’ strategy', 'opportunity', 'anticipates', 'hopes' or other similar words. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding impact of pending regulatory proceedings, fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services, business process outsourcing and consulting services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, customer acceptances of our services, products and fee structures, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, our ability to integrate acquired assets in a cost-effective and timely manner, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-timeframe contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, the success of our brand development efforts, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies /entities in which we have made strategic investments, withdrawal of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property, other risks, uncertainties and general economic conditions affecting our industry. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made herein will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that the objective and plans of the Company will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made herein are based on information presently available to the Management of the Company and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company. For further details, please contact: Lowell EschenIBM Media Relations+1 303 913 2569Lowell.Eschen@ibm.com HCL Technologies Anne Coyle, USAnne.coyle@hcl.com Elka Ghudial, EuropeElka.ghudial@hcl.com Devneeta Pahuja, India and APACDevneeta.p@hcl.com