Dive Brief:
- Thursday, IBM announced its purchase of a video conferencing startup, Ustream Inc., for $130 million, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
- With the addition of Ustream, IBM hopes to increase its cloud offerings for businesses, helping to form a new cloud video unit.
- IBM thinks that cloud-based video services and software for customers is potentially worth $105 billion.
Dive Insight:
As more companies move to the cloud, cloud service providers have worked to diversify their offerings. Amid slumping stock, IBM has continued to move away from selling hardware, focusing more on cloud-based services, big data and mobile security, according to Reuters.
Along with Ustream's video conferencing capabilities, IBM will use its accusations of three startups to form its cloud video unit. The startups include Cleversafe, a video storage service; Aspera, developer of a large-file transfer tool; and video processing company Clearleap.
IBM said that it has more than 1,000 patents for visual analytics and indexing, which should assists with its cloud video efforts.
