<p>IBM is undeniably eager to get its cloud mission off the ground, which is why it just dropped some serious coin to pick up the cloud computing company SoftLayer today.</p><p>No one is sure what the price tag for SoftLayer will be when the deal is finalized sometime in the third quarter, but the Wall Street Journal cites sources that peg the buy somewhere in the $2 billion range. When the dust settles, SoftLayer will be part of a new cloud services division in IBM, combined with Big Blue's existing SmartCloud operations.</p><p>On the surface, this is very much a "those who can't do, buy" scenario. IBM will boost its own cloud roster by a reported 21,000 paying customers with the acquisition. Predictably, many observers are going to see this move as IBM's play against Amazon Web Services' dominant position in the public cloud computing sector.</p><p>But enough with the obvious insights. Here are a few additional ramifications to today's acquisition announcement you may not have come across elsewhere.</p><p><a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/06/04/why-ibm-paid-big-bucks-to-expand-in-the-cloud-with-softlayer?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb)">Keep reading...</a></p>