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According to a CNBC article this afternoon, social media juggernaut Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is making arrangements to move the WhatsApp messaging service off of cloud servers hosted by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and onto its own bank of data centers instead.

However, the effects of this decision will likely be minimal forboth companies, and negligible forFB stock and IBM stock as well, even though those effects will be in direct opposition to one another.

Earlier today, some other news outlets reported thatWhatsApp is one of IBMsfive largest cloud service customers and described the messaging service as the poster child for the IBM cloud.

However, an IBM representative told me this afternoonthat WhatsApp is not actually one of the companys top five clients. She said:

Contrary to what some of the stories are saying, WhatsApp is not a top 5 cloud client at IBM not even close. We have many multi-million and even some billion dollar cloud clients, including US Army, Wal-mart, BMW, American Airlines, Lufthansa, Emirates, Workday, Chubb, AT&T, Wanda, Etihad, Maersk and many more.

So, losing the WhatsApp account could have a negative impact on IBMs bottom line, but considering thatlist of other cloud clients its likely to be almost insignificant, at least from a financial perspective.

Facebook, on the other hand, stands to gain a bit from this decision. Apparently, Facebook was spending nearly $2 million per month on the IBM cloud, according to an unnamed source for CNBC.

That means once the transition to FBs own cloud servers is complete, the company could realize as much as $24 million per year in savings (not considering, of course, the potential costs associated with maintaining the WhatsApp data on Facebook-owned servers).

While the real reason for moving WhatsApp off of IBMs cloud and onto its own servers has not been disclosed actually, the legitimacy of this entire plan has yet to be confirmed by either company there are myriad possibilities.

I can think of two simple reasons that would justify FB managements decision to pull WhatsApp from IBM: cost and control.

Even though Facebook is the worlds largest, most popular social media titan with a market cap of $440 billion, keeping expenses in check is still a top priority. If the use of the IBM cloud has been costing FB tens of millions of dollars per year, and if the ability exists to shift WhatsApp to in-house servers, then the decision is a no-brainer.

No corporation, even gigantic ones like Facebook, will continue to spend that much money when they can just as easily do the job in-house.

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Facebook Inc (FB) to Pull WhatsApp Off IBM Cloud Servers ... - Investorplace.com