IBM to buy Red Hat in largest software acquisition deal

Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM, at right, and James M. Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, left, announced, Sunday, October 28, 2018, Armonk NY, that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion. This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. [Photo: AP]

IBM has announced the largest takeover ever in the software world, purchasing open-source firm Red Hat for 34-billion US dollars.

In announcing the deal, IBM says the purchase of Red Hat will make it the world's largest hybrid cloud providor.

Red Hat is an open-source software provider best known for distributing Linux software.

Linux is most often used to power computer servers for large-scale operations, such as corporate data centers.

The 34-billion US dollar deal, set to be finalized sometime in the 2nd half of next year, dwarfs the previously largest record software purchase made when Microsoft bought LinkedIn for just over 26-billion US dollars 2-years ago.