Lenovo buys part of IBM server business for $2.3 billion

The server businesses should be relatively easy to integrate because they have little overlap outside China, said Hortensius. He said potential customers range from offices to server farms for mobile devices.

"This becomes a deal we can quickly gain advantage from, rather than dealing with integration issues," he said. "There is a lot of scale, capability and know-how that we can bring to bear to work with the team from IBM. All of them are experts in their field."

The two companies also plan to enter into a strategic relationship. It will include a reseller agreement for IBM's Storwize disk storage systems, tape storage systems and certain cloud, file system, platform computing and system software products.

The acquisition announced Thursday covers IBM's System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations, Lenovo said.

It said about $2 billion of the purchase price will be paid in cash, the rest in Lenovo stock.

IBM will retain its System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances.

In its latest financial report, Lenovo said profit rose 36 percent from a year earlier to $220 million in the three months ended Sept. 30. Sales rose 13 percent to $9.8 billion.

The results highlighted the shift to mobile: Lenovo said quarterly sales of smartphones and tablets soared 106 percent over a year earlier while those of traditional desktop PCs fell 3 percent.