IBM has been on a spending spree this year, snatching up companies that offer a wide array of technologies.
Who: Blade Network Technologies, provider of blade server and top-of-rack switches and virtualization software
Amount: $400 million
Why: The two companies were already partners, but as CTO Edge’s Dan Berthiaume explains:
As a result of the purchase, Blade's switches will be brought closer to IBM systems and then pass information to the core networking layer, which IBM hopes will optimize systems performance.