IBM Corp (IBM.N) said on Sunday it had agreed to acquire U.S. software company Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) for $34 billion, including debt, as it seeks to diversify its technology hardware and consulting business into higher-margin products and services.
It underscores IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty’s efforts to expand the company’s subscription-based software offerings, as it faces slowing software sales and waning demand for mainframe servers.
“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer … IBM will become the world’s No. 1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses,” Rometty said in a statement.
IBM wants to secure its position in the cloud, and this acquisition should help them accomplish that.
This will probably mean increased funding and focused development for Redhat, which is good imo.
Awww yeah! Red Hat will be the forefront Linux distro now. Having all the coolest latest and experimental features. And they will have this huge budget to do things.
It will be interesting to see what happens. The main think I want to know is if red hat will get more money to spend from this or if nothing changes, or if they will be absorbed. The latter would be a bad move imo.
My big concerns are CoreOS and OpenShift/Origin. As long as they remain as well supported as they are currently, I’m all for this move. Hopefully RH can start hitting release timelines for those projects
