Wall Street expects infinite growth from all companies, otherwise the CEO's will be fired. You can grow if you can grow your user base, your usage per user, pri

Wall Street expects infinite growth from all companies, otherwise the CEO's will be fired. You can grow if you can grow your user base, your usage per user, prices or any combination of this OR you can grow if you expand your portfolio of things you sell. To expand the portfolio the easiest way for a mammoth turtle like IBM (and many others) is to purchase companies that have products. It has nothing to do with IBM or Red Hat, it is all driven by Wall Street expectations.