IBM completes its huge acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion

Back in October last year, IBM first announced its plan to acquire RedHat for $34 billion. After 9 months of the announcement, IBM today announced that it has closed the deal under which IBM acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash. IBM believes that RedHat acquisition will help it launch a next-generation hybrid multicloud platform based on open source technologies. This upcoming hybrid cloud platform will allow businesses to securely deploy, run and manage data and applications on-premises and on private and multiple public clouds. If executed as per the plan, IBM can become a strong player in the hybrid cloud market.

“Businesses are starting the next chapter of their digital reinventions, modernizing infrastructure and moving mission-critical workloads across private clouds and multiple clouds from multiple vendors,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and CEO. “They need open, flexible technology to manage these hybrid multicloud environments. And they need partners they can trust to manage and secure these systems. IBM and Red Hat are uniquely suited to meet these needs. As the leading hybrid cloud provider, we will help clients forge the technology foundations of their business for decades to come.”

RedHat already has a great working relationship with Microsoft and I hope this acquisition by IBM will not disturb the same. This acquisition also indicates that IBM will focus more on hybrid cloud market instead of competing with Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the public cloud market.

Source: IBM