ARMONK, New York: IBM is buying cloud computing company SoftLayer Technologies Inc. to expand its online software business.

Financial terms were not disclosed Tuesday.

SoftLayer is a privately held company based in Dallas with 13 data centers in the US, Asia and Europe.

Software stored and accessed on the Internet is increasingly popular with businesses because it lets workers in from any Internet-connected device. IBM Corp., based in Armonk, N.Y., anticipates hitting $7 billion annually in cloud revenue by the end of 2015.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter.