IBM agreed to purchase SoftLayer Technologies this week, in order to strengthen their position in the cloud computing market. It is rumored the company paid close to $2 billion for SoftLayer. IBM says it will focus on “business services that leverage the cloud model” as opposed to just focusing on processing and storage.
The cloud is becoming a big focus of tech giants – along with IBM, Microsoft, EMC, HP and Oracle are all pursuing cloud strategies. As a growing market, it was only a matter of time before IBM made this move as the tech giant has earmarked the cloud market as a key growth market.