Understandable, as IBM has always targeted the enterprise solutions market. Having control over (I think still?) the most popular enterprise linux installation is a nice add to their business.

It opens greater flexibility for their servers, as they have 'ownership' of the distro now. Possible bid for a speed benchmark as a selling point? Some of the giants out there are going to be hard to beat for that though...

I don't know that they are doing this specifically for the cloud market.