IBM properly gravitated away from making an attempt to be a pure cloud infrastructure vendor years in the past, recognizing that it might by no means compete with the large three: Amazon, Microsoft and Google. It has since moved on to serving to IT departments handle complicated hybrid environments, utilizing its monetary clout to amass a portfolio of high-profile corporations.

It started with the $34 billion Crimson Hat acquisition in 2018, continued with the Apptio acquisition final 12 months and it stored it occurring Wednesday when the corporate introduced that it will be buying cloud administration vendor HashiCorp for $6.4 billion.

With HashiCorp, Large Blue will get a set of cloud lifecycle administration and safety instruments, and an organization that’s rising significantly quicker than any of IBM’s different companies — though the income is small by IBM requirements: $155 million final quarter, up 15% over the prior 12 months. That also makes it a wholesome and rising enterprise for IBM so as to add to its rising steady of hybrid cloud instruments.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna actually sees the worth of this piece to his firm’s hybrid technique, and he even threw in an AI reference for good measure. “HashiCorp has a confirmed monitor report of enabling purchasers to handle the complexity of in the present day’s infrastructure and software sprawl. Combining IBM’s portfolio and experience with HashiCorp’s capabilities and expertise will create a complete hybrid cloud platform designed for the AI period,” he stated in an announcement.

HashiCorp made headlines final 12 months when it modified the license on its open supply Terraform software to be extra pleasant to the corporate. The group that helped construct Terraform wasn’t comfortable and responded by launching a brand new open supply different known as OpenTofu. HashiCorp lately accused the brand new group of misusing Terraform’s open supply code when it created the OpenTofu fork. Now that the corporate is a part of IBM, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see in the event that they proceed to pursue this line of pondering.

It’s price noting that Crimson Hat additionally made headlines final 12 months when it modified its open supply licensing phrases, additionally inflicting consternation within the open supply group. Maybe these corporations will match effectively collectively, each from a software program perspective and their shifting views on open supply.

Simply this week, the corporate launched a brand new platform idea with the discharge of the Infrastructure Cloud, an idea that ought to match properly inside IBM’s hybrid cloud product catalog. Whereas they didn’t add a lot when it comes to performance, it did unify the choices below a single umbrella, making it simpler for gross sales and advertising to current to prospects.

If IBM treats HashiCorp in the same solution to Crimson Hat, the corporate would keep its independence contained in the IBM household of merchandise. AVOA, a analysis agency run by former CIO Tim Crawford, says the corporate can be smart to maintain it impartial.

“My reservation can be if IBM strikes away from Hashicorp’s impartial stance in working with a number of cloud suppliers and focuses on IBM Cloud. I believe that will not be the case as IBM has lately proven how they’re extra open with different cloud suppliers,” Crawford wrote in a latest weblog put up.

HashiCorp was based in 2012 and raised nearly $350 million earlier than going public in 2021.