SoftLayer Acquisition Impetus for New IBM Cloud Services Division

**Editor’s Note: Please click


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for the biggest M&A during that time in the service provider-BSS/OSS spaces.**

IBM has a deal in place to buy SoftLayer Technologies, the world’s largest, privately held cloud-computing infrastructure provider. Big Blue expects the deal to speed business adoption of public and private cloud solutions.

IBM says it’s acquiring SoftLayer to make it easier and faster for clients around the world to incorporate cloud computing by marrying SoftLayers public cloud services with IBM’s SmartCloud portfolio.  SoftLayer accelerates IBMs ability to integrate public and private clouds for its clients, with flexibility that provides deployment options that enable a faster, broader transformation for small, medium and large businesses with a range of performance and security models.

With SoftLayer, IBM will accelerate the build-out of our public cloud infrastructure to give clients the broadest choice of cloud offerings to drive business innovation,” said Erich Clementi, SVP,  IBM Global Technology Services.

Dallas-based SoftLayer serves 21,000 customers with a global cloud-infrastructure platform that spans 13 data centers in the U.S., Asia and Europe. SoftLayer allows clients to buy enterprise-class cloud services on dedicated or shared servers, offering clients a choice of where to deploy their applications. IBM says these clients will benefit greatly as new enterprise-grade functionality from IBM emerges for SoftLayer customers, who will then have a unique opportunity to incorporate it as their business grows.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

IBM expects to reach $7 billion annually in cloud revenue by the end of 2015. It offers more than 100 SaaS solutions to help marketing, procurement, ecommerce, customer service, human resources, city management and other professionals make better decisions and better serve their customers.

IBM also today announced a new cloud-services division. Following the close of the SoftLayer acquisition, expected in the third quarter, this new division will combine SoftLayer with IBM SmartCloud into a global platform. The new division is expected to provide a broad range of choices to both companies’ clients, ISVs, channel partners and technology partners.