IBM says that it has completed the acquisition of SoftLayer Technologies Inc., a privately held cloud computing infrastructure company based in Dallas, Texas, for an undisclosed sum. The initial acquisition agreement was announced on June 4th, and is the basis of IBM’s new cloud services division, which combines SoftLayer with IBM SmartCloud.
The new division, led by, will provide a broad range of choices to both IBM and SoftLayer clients, ISVs, and channel and technology partners. SoftLayer will enable IBM to marry the security, privacy and reliability of private clouds with the economy and speed of a public cloud.
"With SoftLayer in IBM’s portfolio, it will be easier and faster for organizations to adopt game-changing cloud services,” says James Comfort, IBM general manager and leader of the new division.
SoftLayer joins the more than a dozen strategic cloud acquisitions IBM has made since 2007 designed to accelerate its cloud initiatives. In a related announcement, IBM says that it has tapped Flow, Inc., to stream its real-time data analytics based on IBM SmartCloud and the SoftLayer technology platform. Flow provides solutions that are intended to stream all types of real-time data specifically designed to be accessed and viewed from mobile devices.
The combination of Flow and SoftLayer will help enterprises intelligently connect, process and route real-time data to and from any number of enterprise applications, analytics and mobile services, according to IBM. This means real-time information dashboards and mobile apps are deployed in minutes without any IT support.
For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit www.ibm.com/smartcloud.