AT&T today said it had completed its divestiture of Sterling Commerce to IBM.

AT&T, which acquired Sterling Commerce in 2000, received approximately $1.4 billion in cash and expects to record a one-time pretax gain of approximately $800 million in the third quarter of 2010.

AT&T said the divestiture was consistent with its focus on developing and providing a full portfolio of networking-based solutions and services, including network- and cloud-based data storage and managed hosting, application and computing services, to its business customers.

"AT&T remains committed to its strategic alliance with IBM, AT&T's largest customer, to provide a unified set of telecommunications and computing services to multinational corporations across the globe," the telecom services  firm said in a statement.

The acquisition of Sterling would help IBM expand its ability to help its clients accelerate their interactions with customers, partners and suppliers through dynamic business networks using either on-premise or cloud delivery models.

Sterling Commerce provides software for cross-channel commerce and integration of customer, partner and supplier networks across a wide range of industries.