Deals
IBM Pursues Amazon Into Cloud With $33 Billion Red Hat Deal
- Legacy technology company lags behind in lucrative new market
- CEO Rometty has been trying for 6 years to modernize IBM
This article is for subscribers only.
IBM’s $33 billion purchase of Red Hat Inc. -- the world’s second-largest technology deal ever -- is aimed at catapulting the company into the ranks of the top cloud software competitors.
The cash deal, IBM’s largest, boosts the company’s credentials overnight in the fast-growing and lucrative cloud market -- and gives it much-needed potential for real revenue growth. The 107-year-old computer-services giant, once synonymous with mainframe computing, has been slow to adopt cloud-related technologies and has had to play catch-up to market leaders Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in offering computing and other software and services over the internet.