In the most significant 2018 tech acquisition of 2018, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) — one of Open Invention Network’s (OIN) original five founders and investors — acquired Red Hat to become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider.
IBM’s history demonstrates its drive for innovation. It created the world’s first computerized punch cards, developed the first heart and lung machine, introduced the predecessor to Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a self-learning program, invented speech recognition software powering Siri, Alexa and Watson, launched the first computer-driven airline reservation system as the precursor of e-Commerce, built the technologies which allowed the first astronauts to land on the moon, revolutionized credit card transactions with magnetic swipe strips, transformed retail with the UPC bar code and developed LASIK surgery technology.
From its work with Linux, Apache and Eclipse to its efforts across all layers of the cloud stack, application development, blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing and Machine Learning (ML), IBM’s open source involvement dates back to supporting Linux in the late 1990s. Today, IBM participates in more than 1,000 open source projects and its WebSphere Application Server is more than 70% open source.