Red Hat officially has a new lord and master. IBM closed its $34 billion acquisition of the open-source software company today, placing it under its hybrid cloud division. This happens to be Big Blue’s biggest deal ever.
IBM is hoping the purchase improves its cloud business so it can better compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and other market leaders. According to CNBC, the company’s revenue has been down year over year for three consecutive quarters.
The acquisition of Red Hat, an open-source, enterprise software maker, marks the close of IBM’s largest deal ever. It’s one of the biggest in U.S. tech history. Excluding the AOL-Time Warner merger, it follows the $67 billion deal between Dell and EMC in 2016 and JDS Uniphase’s $41 billion acquisition of optical-component supplier SDL in 2000.