IBM is reportedly in advanced discussions to acquire data infrastructure specialist Confluent in a deal valued at around $11 billion, marking one of the company’s most significant moves yet to expand its real-time data and AI capabilities.
Confluent provides a cloud-native, open-source streaming platform used to process data such as financial transactions and web interactions, forming a real-time “central nervous system” for enterprise applications. The potential acquisition would continue IBM’s strategic shift toward higher-value software and data services, following its $6.4 billion purchase of HashiCorp earlier this year.
Confluent’s revenue growths are illustrating strong momentum in enabling enterprises to unlock operational intelligence at scale. There had been recent reports Confluent was exploring a sale and scrutiny around IBM following reports of softer cloud software growth. These reports may have increased the company’s urgency for moves that deepen the company’s position in AI-driven data infrastructure.
The strategic rationale is clear: Enterprises are accelerating investments in real-time data pipelines to power generative AI, automated decisioning, and low-latency digital services. Acquiring Confluent would give IBM a deeper foothold in this fast-expanding market, complementing its watsonx platform and integrated HashiCorp automation capabilities. It also would allow IBM to compete with cloud providers and data-engineering platforms offering event-streaming and real-time integration capabilities. This includes ERP vendors and customers trying to get more real-time insights for their daily operators.
IBM Designated Critical ICT Provider Under DORA
In a separate development, IBM has been designated a critical ICT third-party provider under the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), placing the company under direct supervision from the European Supervisory Authorities. DORA aims to ensure banks, insurers, investment firms, and their key technology partners can withstand and recover from cyber incidents and operational failures.
IBM is a critical provider, which means it must meet stringent resilience, reporting, and oversight requirements that directly impact its cloud, infrastructure, and managed services portfolios. IBM says it will collaborate closely with regulators to meet compliance standards and help clients do the same, leveraging its cybersecurity, risk, and regulatory expertise.
For European financial institutions reliant on IBM, the designation provides added assurance that core technology services will meet uniform, regulator-defined thresholds for operational stability.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
ERP users will benefit from improved real-time insights. For technology leaders, deeper real-time data streaming capabilities translate into faster anomaly detection, improved forecasting, and automation gains within ERP-connected workflows. Several adopters of streaming architectures report reductions in batch-processing delays of over 40% within the first year.
The potential acquisition would provide greater regulatory clarity. With IBM now under direct DORA supervision, ERP and IT operations leaders in regulated industries gain a clearer compliance path when integrating IBM-managed services. Financial institutions that previously struggled with multi-provider risk alignment are already using DORA-driven frameworks to shorten audit cycles and streamline vendor-risk documentation.
The acquisition emphasizes new evaluation priorities for ERP vendors and integrators. ERP professionals should now benchmark data-streaming providers on operability, latency guarantees, resilience posture and integration maturity with cloud ERP suites. Companies that successfully embedded streaming architectures now illustrate how operational ERP use cases become more feasible when streaming data and resilience controls mature together.
