IBM Goes with Flow as It Closes SoftLayer Deal

IBM earlier this week said it has closed its acquisition of cloud provider SoftLayer. While IBM hasn't officially disclosed terms, numerous reports have pegged the deal at around $2 billion.

When Big Blue announced the agreement to acquire SoftLayer last month, the company said it would combine the large public cloud provider with its IBM SmartCloud global network, all of which would become part of the company's new cloud services division. IBM has tapped James Comfort to lead the new unit.

In addition to announcing the closing of the SoftLayer acquisition, IBM said it has partnered with a company called Flow Inc. to stream its real-time data analytics into the SmartCloud and SoftLayer cloud platforms. New York-based Flow helps large customers process and use real-time data. The service is designed to let users view information from their mobile devices.

Under the partnership announced with Flow, IBM will provide customers various solutions using the SoftLayer and IBM SmartCloud services. The solutions will enable information to be automatically routed to and from various enterprise apps and analytics services, IBM said. IBM said organizations will be able to create real-time dashboards and mobile apps without requiring IT support.

According to the companies, Flow switched from another undisclosed public cloud provider because it felt the SoftLayer and IBM SmartCloud infrastructure would offer performance improvements and higher levels of flexibility for streaming data in real-time.

"SoftLayer immediately delivered us dramatic performance improvements," said Flow CEO Eric Alterman in a prepared statement. "In addition, with IBM's SmartCloud, we are able to apply improved analytics to the data we stream."

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/11/2013 at 12:49 PM