One way to tell if something is going to get bigger is to see how large companies are willing to invest in it.  These companies don’t care about fads; they are in for the long haul return on investment.  IBM and Salesforce.com are together are increasing their cloud infrastructure by 4.5 billion dollars.

Salesforce is buying Exactarget for a 2.5 billion dollar price tag.  The move is thought to allow the company to have a deeper reach into ad revenue on social media sites.  One study cited claims that by 2017, marketing departments will spend more on technology than CIOs.

IBM on the other hand, is buying Softlayer.  Softlayer specializes in building in-house cloud servers.  This acquisition will help IBM shore up the gap in its current cloud service line-up.  Don’t think it’s worth it?  Well, IBM think it’s worth 2 billion dollars.

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