International Business Machines (IBM) will acquire European startup Nordcloud, the latest in a series of acquisitions for the 109-year old firm preparing a mega spin-off to focus on cloud computing.
The world’s first big computing firm has set its sights on the so-called hybrid cloud, where it sees a $1 trillion market opportunity as more companies use a combination of their own datacenters and leased computing resources to manage and process data.
IBM did not disclose on Monday how much it paid for the Finland-based firm.
Since taking office in April, IBM chief executive officer Arvind Krishna has acquired at least five startups from the hybrid cloud space. Krishna was the principal architect behind IBM’s $34 billion Red Hat deal last year.
IBM President Jim Whitehurst, in an interview with Reuters on Monday, said the company was unlikely to do a major acquisition in the cloud sector in near future.
“I don’t see some big $10 billion acquisition that we need to do,” Whitehurst said.
