International Business Machines closed its roughly $34 billion acquisition of open-source software company Red Hat, the company said, a deal for the 108-year-old tech giant that will help define Chief Executive Ginni Rometty’s legacy.
With Red Hat, the most expensive deal in IBM’s history, the company hopes to gain on competitors in cloud computing, where users store information remotely instead of on their own machines.
IBM was an early proponent of the cloud more than a decade ago but fell behind asAmazon.com and Microsoft gobbled up the majority of the now-booming market.
IBM’s counterpunch has been to court companies that want to use the cloud but keep their most sensitive data locked down on internal computers, a model dubbed the “hybrid cloud.”
“I view this as a defining moment in IBM’s cloud journey,” Ms. Rometty said. “This puts us in position in hybrid cloud.”
Full Content: Wall Street Journal
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