DBT Bureau
Bengaluru, 26 April
IBM on Wednesday announced its plan to acquire HashiCorp for $6.4 billion in its bid to expand its cloud-based software products offering to clients. As demand for AI (artificial intelligence)-powered solutions rises globally, IBM is trying to strengthen its AI play in the coming quarters.
“Enterprise clients are wrestling with an unprecedented expansion in infrastructure and applications across public and private clouds, as well as on-prem environments. The global excitement surrounding generative AI has exacerbated these challenges and CIOs and developers are up against dramatic complexity in their tech strategies. HashiCorp has a proven track record of enabling clients to manage the complexity of today’s infrastructure and application sprawl. Combining IBM’s portfolio and expertise with HashiCorp’s capabilities and talent will create a comprehensive hybrid cloud platform designed for the AI era,” Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM said in a press release.
The acquisition of HashiCorp is likely to be completed by the end of 2024 and it will continue working as a division within IBM, the company said.
IBM has been betting big on cloud computing the drive growth in recent years. In 2018, IBM had acquired multi-cloud software company Red Hat for a whopping $34 billion, making it one of its costliest acquisitions. Similarly, it bought Apptio by paying $4.6 billion in cash, which further boosted its hybrid-cloud offerings. With HashiCorp now, IBM intends to capture a large share of the multi-cloud market that is fast evolving with an AI era.
IBM Q1 2024 earnings:
IBM posted a total revenue of $14.46 billion during January-March quarter, a rise of 3 per cent over the same period last year. Its software segment revenue stood at $5.9 billion, up 5.9 per cent in constant currency term. Similarly, its consulting revenue was at $5.2 billion, a rise of 1.7 per cent. Revenues from infrastructure segment was at $3.1 billion, a growth of 0.2 per cent year-on-year basis.
Like its peer Accenture, IBM also gave a modest revenue growth forecast for 2024. “The company continues to expect constant currency revenue growth consistent with its mid-single digit model,” IBM said in its earnings release.
Earlier, Accenture lowered its revenue forecast to 1-3 per cent for fiscal 2024 as compared to 2-5 per cent given earlier. Indian IT services major, Infosys has projected to grow its revenue by 1-3 per cent in FY25. (Infosys follows the April-March financial year cycle).
