IBM Corp.’s closely watched acquisition of Red Hat Inc. moved a step closer to completion today after Red Hat shareholders voted to approve the deal.

The transaction is valued at $34 billion, making it the largest acquisition in the history of the software industry.

The sum represents a 63 percent premium to the last closing price of Red Hat’s stock prior to the announcement of the deal. It’s a reflection of just how important a role IBM envisions for the company in its growth plans.

IBM is struggling with falling revenues thanks to stagnated demand for its legacy product lines. The company has been aggressively investing in its cloud business over recent years as part of an effort to offset the declines, but growth remains elusive. It’s banking on the Red Hat acquisition to inject some much-needed energy into this business.

The deal buys IBM a lot of valuable technology assets. Chief among them is Red Hat’s eponymous Linux distribution, which is widely used by enterprises across both on-premises data centers and cloud environments. This interoperability will be a big asset for IBM as it works to address enterprises’ rapid adoption of hybrid cloud models that combine cloud with on-premise infrastructure.

Red Hat’s other products likewise cater to hybrid and multicloud environments. The company’s portfolio includes the popular Ansible platform for automating application management, as well as numerous development tools designed to help enterprises build cloud services.

Red Hat provides the core code behind its products under an open-source license and makes money by selling commercial versions, as well as related professional services. The company estimates that its technologies are used by a combined 8 million developers worldwide. This developer base is another big part of the reason why IBM shelled out $34 billion for the company.

Wall Street is evidently satisfied with the price. In today’s vote on the deal, Red Hat investors representing 141 million shares supported the acquisition, while only a group representing 181,848 shares opposed it.

“Together, IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to lead in hybrid cloud, addressing growing demand for companies to securely move their business applications to an open, multicloud environment,” Steve Robinson, IBM’s general manager for Red Hat Synergy, said in a prepared statement. “The approval by Red Hat shareholders for IBM to acquire Red Hat is an important step in the closing process for this acquisition, which we continue to expect will close in the second half of 2019.”

Photo: Red Hat