Investopedia: IBM Spends $2 Billion To Improve Its Offense ... And Defense

There aren't any full-time two-way players in football anymore (players that can play both offense and defense), but the concept still works in business. IBM's (NYSE:IBM) purchase of SoftLayer seems to be just that sort of situation – an acquisition that will allow the company to grow its cloud business (offense), while also offsetting some of the potential risks that public clouds represent to its mature hardware business (defense). While it's a logical deal (and at a seemingly fair price), IBM is already pretty well-regarded by the Street in terms of stock valuation.

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