IBM announced that it has completed the acquisition of SoftLayer Technologies Inc., a privately held cloud computing infrastructure company based in Dallas, Texas. On June 4, IBM announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SoftLayer. Financial terms were not disclosed.
SoftLayer joins IBM’s new cloud services division, which combines SoftLayer with IBM SmartCloud into a global platform. The new division, led by General Manager James Comfort, will provide a broad range of choices to both IBM and SoftLayer clients, ISVs, and channel and technology partners.
“Cloud computing provides a profound and transformative change in business and government,” said Comfort at IBM. "With SoftLayer in IBM’s portfolio, it will be easier and faster for organizations to adopt game-changing cloud services.”
SoftLayer will enable IBM to deliver an industry first: marrying the security, privacy and reliability of private clouds with the economy and speed of a public cloud. SoftLayer offers a breakthrough capability that provides a cloud "on ramp" for born-on-the-web companies, government and the Fortune 500.
SoftLayer joins the more than a dozen strategic cloud acquisitions IBM has made since 2007 designed to accelerate its cloud initiatives. IBM cloud revenue grew by 80 percent in 2012. Already one of the world’s leading cloud providers, IBM expects to reach $7 billion annually in cloud revenue by the end of 2015. IBM 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 is committed to driving open cloud standards.
Flow Corporation Streams Data for Mobile Devices with IBM SmartCloud and SoftLayer
Today, IBM also announced that Flow, Inc., will stream its real-time data analytics based on IBM SmartCloud and the SoftLayer technology platform.
Flow, a New York City-based company with Fortune 500 partnerships, transforms the way companies process, publish and consume real-time information. It streams all types of data specifically designed to be accessed and viewed from mobile devices.
IBM will provide clients with integrated solutions based on Flow, the high performance SoftLayer technology and IBM SmartCloud. This streamed, integrated real-time data will enable clients to send and receive data from any mobile device that is integrated with enterprise data, thereby enabling the collaboration essential to a Social Business.
The combination of Flow and SoftLayer high performance software will provide IBM clients with the unique ability to intelligently connect, process and route real-time data to and from any number of enterprise applications, analytics and mobile services. This means real-time information dashboards and mobile apps are deployed in minutes without any IT support.
Flow switched from another public cloud provider based on cloud latency, a measure of speed and performance. SoftLayer’s cloud hosting environment enabled immediate performance gains and flexibility for real-time stream processing of data.
“We were delighted to learn that IBM’s acquisition of SoftLayer has been finalized,” said Eric Alterman, CEO at Flow. “Real-time performance is at the heart of our value proposition and SoftLayer immediately delivered us dramatic performance improvements. In addition, with IBM’s SmartCloud, we are able to apply improved analytics to the data we stream.”
Flow delivers very specific streams of business information – both structured and unstructured – such as sales leads, sales enablement, customer interactions, product training, marketing data and HR information. By making it more accessible and actionable, Flow allows employees, customers and partners to simply tune-in to the precise information they need when they need it.
“IBM and Flow share a common belief in the importance of bringing a range of real-time capabilities to every cloud deployment,” said Mac Devine, Chief Technology Officer for the new IBM cloud services division.
