IBM Buys Cloud Computing Firm SoftLayer in Deal Said to Be Worth $2 Billion
June 4, 2013
Grazed from New York Times. Author: Steve Lohr.
I.B.M. announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to buy SoftLayer Technologies, a cloud computing company, in an effort to strengthen I.B.M.’s position in the fast-growing market for computing sold to businesses as a service delivered over the Internet. The purchase price was not disclosed. But it was about $2 billion, according to a person told of the negotiations, who has asked not to be named because he had not been authorized to speak publicly about the terms.
SoftLayer, a private company based in Dallas, has a network of 13 data centers in the United States, Singapore and Amsterdam, and revenue of about $400 million a year. GI Partners, a private equity fund based in Menlo Park, Calif., is the majority owner of SoftLayer. The acquisition is the largest made under the leadership of Virginia M. Rometty, who became chief executive in January 2012. The move, analysts say, also gives I.B.M. a broader presence in the business of cloud computing services…
I.B.M.’s first moves in the cloud market date back to 2007. But its early emphasis, analysts say, had mainly been on so-called private clouds, in which the computing is delivered to users as service over the Internet but from data centers owned by I.B.M.’s corporate customers…