July 15, 2014 | IBM is gaining cloud ground with its SoftLayer product, Big Blue says, reporting 6,000 new customers in the last year. IBM purchased SoftLayer in June 2013, and has acquired three more companies to add their technologies to SoftLayer, including Aspera (see, Acquired by IBM, Aspera Pushes On To Science DMZ). The company has also invested $1.2 billion in building out data centers, planning for 40 global centers by 2015. Computerworld