Author: Steve Lohr / Source: New York Times
IBM is making a big move to bring more software developers under its wing by acquiring Red Hat, the largest distributor of the popular open-source operating system Linux, for $34 billion.
The purchase, announced on Sunday afternoon, is the latest competitive step among large business-software companies seeking an edge in the fast-growing market for cloud computing.
In June, Microsoft acquired GitHub, a major code-sharing platform for software developers, for $7.5 billion.
With the deal for Red Hat, IBM is trying to position itself as a kind of corporate “Switzerland” in cloud computing — a trusted partner of businesses that are moving to the cloud, but are leery of becoming dependent on one major cloud supplier.
In the cloud model, software developers write applications that run on remote data centers. The advantage can be lower costs and faster development of new business software.
IBM is a champion of a hybrid approach to cloud computing. That means some crucial data and applications run on cloud technology inside a company’s data centers, while other computing tasks run on the clouds of tech companies.
The major third-party cloud platforms are Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Businesses complain that these cloud suppliers include proprietary technology that makes it difficult to switch from one cloud to another.
The IBM cloud strategy is to supply both hardware and software for companies to build their own private clouds, and it also has a third-party public cloud offering.
IBM, analysts say, cannot really compete broadly with so-called hyperscale cloud companies — Amazon,…
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