IBM has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cleversafe in a move that will help to strengthen its hybrid cloud capabilities.

Cleversafe holds more than 350 patents in object-based, on-premise storage which are designed to help scale to exabytes of storage.

Once the deal closes, Big Blue will integrate the Cleversafe portfolio into its cloud business unit. This will mean that that its customers will receive data flexibility and simplified management.

Object storage allows companies to storage and manage large amounts of data.

Cleversafe’s Dispersed Storage Network works to enhance on-premise storage options with large scale active archives and unstructured data content stores.

This will be integrated into SoftLayer and the SoftLayer Object Storage services platform, which gives clients a hybrid cloud deployment model.