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Posts Tagged ‘Oracle’

Software Vendors: Tech M&A Activity Poised for Rebound

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on February 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some good news from CIO update.

“After what can only be described as a desolate merger and acquisition landscape throughout most of 2009, a new study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts an upswing in both the volume and value of deals this year. And mergers and acquisitions in the high-tech sector will be leading the charge.

According to the US technology M&A insights 2010 study, total closed deals in 2009 fell 53 percent and were valued at just under $36 billion, way down from 2008 when companies completed purchases valued at $77 billion. However, a nice little surge in technology deals in the latter portion of 2009 appears to have given the market some momentum with 85 percent of the value of the $36 billion in mergers and acquisitions last year coming in the final six months.

“Driven by the surge of technology deals completed in the latter half of 2009, PwC expects deal activity to continue apace in 2010, albeit still below the levels seen in 2006-07,” the report said.

Anyone lamenting the moribund state of the technology M&A market can’t blame Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL). The software giant continues to continues to make purchase after purchase in its ambitious quest to unseat SAP (NYSE: SAP) as the world’s largest business application maker and take on rivals IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and HP (NYSE: HPQ) as it looks to become the world’s leading systems provider. Oracle has already made a pair of acquisitions early in 2010 after closing its blockbuster purchase of Sun Microsystems.

IBM also loosened its purse strings in effort to keep pace with Oracle and other cloud-computing providers. It’s a trend that PWC expect will continue throughout 2010. “There is much enthusiasm that the IPO market will make a big comeback in 2010,” the report’s authors wrote. “Add to this the potential return of private equity investors to the negotiating table and the result is improving exit multiples and more satisfied sellers.”

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Oracle-Sun Merger Foes Head East

Posted in boic, tagged , , , on January 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good article from PC World.

“With the European Commission seen as virtually certain to approve Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems in just a week, those campaigning to prevent the deal encompassing Sun’s MySQL database unit have shifted their efforts to regulators in Russia and China.

MySQL founder Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius said in a statement Monday that the Commission, Europe’s top competition regulator, showed weakness when it struck a deal with Oracle last month that paved the way for an unconditional approval of the acquisition of Sun. Widenius left MySQL in 2009 and might have been part of a group of possible bidders for the unit should it have been ruled an impediment to the merger.

“The European Commission showed courage and competence during most of the investigation but looked very weak in the end,” he said in the statement, adding that China and Russia “are powerful, self-confident and open-source-friendly countries and they have every right to do a better job on this than the E.U.”

Oracle still has not obtained clearance from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). FAS said last week that it has extended the deadline for its ongoing probe of the deal.

Widenius’ helpmysql.org campaign has over 600 supporters in China and more than 800 in Russia. Widenius said it will now work closely with its local supporters to support the work of the competition authorities in those two countries and will step up its efforts to collect signatures from local MySQL users. Worldwide, the campaign has gathered 30,000 signatures of support since its launch on December 28.

Barring any last minute surprises, the European Commission is set to rule in favor of the deal on January 27. It said as much last month, after Oracle made pledges enforceable only through private lawsuits, not by the Commission, to protect MySQL as an independent open source database competitor to Oracle’s core database product for a minimum five years.”

Read the complete article here.

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Clash of the technology titans

Posted in boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from Fortune´s Brainstorm Tech Blog.

“The biggest computing and networking companies in the world are getting bigger – and former partners are now fierce rivals. Is tech’s new strife good for customers?

The largest technology companies in the world are at war.

Sure, the executives who run Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and others appear to play nice: Cisco touts the “regular dialogue” between its CEO, John Chambers, and IBM’s chief executive, Sam Palmisano. Ann Livermore, an HP executive vice president, spoke at Oracle’s annual customer event in October and extolled the virtues of their partnership. And because large customers buy software, gear, and services from all the tech giants, their staffs must work together to get computers and networks up and running.

Don’t be fooled by the handshakes and air kisses. Increasingly these titans are invading one another’s territories in a bid to grab as much of the $1.5 trillion in projected 2010 worldwide corporate tech spending as they possibly can — and it’s going to get bloody.

Customers have cut their tech purchases, and when they do loosen their purse strings, they are buying software and services that help them run their systems more cheaply. To boost sales and profits in this low-growth environment, technology companies are bulking up by buying companies in entirely new businesses.

The endgame? Each aims to steal business from rivals by promising customers one-stop shopping for most, if not all, of their computing and networking needs.

Battling for each other’s turf

Corporate software maker Oracle (ORCL), under pressure from competitors that rent software and deliver it over the Internet rather than installing it on-site, is pushing into computer hardware with its planned $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (JAVA). When the deal closes (it still faces regulatory hurdles), Oracle will find itself battling partners IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL), and HP (HPQ), all of which also sell servers.

HP, whose legacy personal computer and printer businesses aren’t growing the way they used to, spent $13.9 billion in 2008 to acquire EDS, a specialist in managing and integrating corporate systems. That happens to be IBM’s biggest business. HP also has announced plans to buy 3Com (COMS), a maker of networking gear. (Take that, Cisco!)

Cisco (CSCO), in turn, has announced its own plans to enter the server market. (Take that, HP!) Dell is picking up Perot Systems for $4 billion to take on HP and IBM in services. IBM, meanwhile, has been quietly bulking up in software, hardware, and services: In the past six years it has spent $20 billion on 90 companies.

“It’s the industrialization of IT,” says Pacific Crest Research’s Brent Bracelin. “In the new world that will come about in the next three to five years, you’ll buy the entire stack. Will you buy it from IBM, from Cisco? From HP? That’s what the battle is all about.”

Fighting to dominate a new world order

Tech mergers in the name of world domination aren’t new. (Remember Compaq’s purchase of DEC, or HP’s acquisition of Compaq?) But this wave is also being driven by a coming change in technology. “We’re at an inflection point,” says Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels.

He describes a new generation of technology — call it smart computing — in which servers, computers, and networks come together to form a platform on which new applications are built. These new applications aren’t installed on machines in the workplace; instead they live in data centers and are delivered to users’ phones, laptops, and other devices via the Internet.”

Read the full article here.

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M&A: Hot Spots in 2010

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, BusinessWeek, Distressed IP, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Sun Microsystems, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting read from BusinessWeek.

For the mergers-and-acquisitions market, there is no doubt 2009 is ending better than it began. The year is winding up with a “sigh of relief,” says Morton Pierce, chairman of the M&A practice at law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf.

In the past month the M&A market has built up some momentum. According to Bloomberg, deals in North America were valued at $115.6 billion in November, the most since September 2008. Compare that with late 2008 and early 2009, when dealmaking either wasn’t happening at all or was centered in areas where deals absolutely needed to happen, such as failing financial institutions that needed buyers at any price. Deal volume in November was five times February’s volume of $22.5 billion.

Investors looking ahead to 2010 are wondering if this uptick in M&A can continue and where it will occur. Acquirers almost always buy at a premium, so traders can profit from correctly betting which industries will attract the most bidding activity.

Small Tech Deals

In 2009, Internet stocks, the investment and financial services industries, software, and oil and gas production were among the most active, according to Bloomberg data. Expect more dealmaking among technology stocks, say M&A experts. Oracle Corp. (ORCL) is battling European regulators to finish its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

Such acquisitions, and especially much smaller deals, are a way of life for tech firms, says Daniel Mitz, a partner at law firm Jones Day who specializes in tech deals. “A lot of the innovation comes from smaller companies,” Mitz says. Dealmaking in tech slowed but didn’t stop during the downturn. There could be significant pent-up demand, Mitz says. “This is an industry that is ripe for M&A.”

One driver of a rebound for M&A in tech will be the strong financial positions of many tech firms, says Nadia Damouni, editor of dealReporter Americas, which tracks the M&A market. Another “cash rich” sector is health care, she says, but here the prospects for an M&A rebound are harder to read. The reason: Uncertainty surrounding the federal overhaul of the U.S.health-care system proposed by President Barack Obama and under discussion in Congress. “They’re at the whim of health-care reform,” Damouni says of the many insurers and health-care services companies that could be M&A targets at some point.

In health care, the key ingredient for dealmaking is “stability,” says Bob Filek, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Transaction Services. If health-care reform passes—or even if it doesn’t—acquirers will want some certainty about what federal policy will mean for health care before making bids. Filek envisions “a couple of scenarios where [the result could be] a lot of M&A activity.”

Read the full article here.

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HP acquires 3Com

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, BusinessWeek, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Java, Market research, Strategy, Sun Microsystems, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Oracle, Dell, Xerox and now HP – the high tech world as we knew it is changing fast. Companies that previously stood their ground and was seen as pillars of innovation are know swallowed into mega-companies that will challenge the marketplace with new services, products and offerings. Here is some selected tidbits from BusinessWeek in regards to the deal.

“Through its acquisition of networking gear maker 3Com, Hewlett-Packard will accelerate competition with Cisco Systems (CSCO), especially in China, practically overnight. Then comes the hard part. To make the most of the $2.7 billion deal, HP also needs to revitalize 3Com’s faded brand and persuade Western companies to take a chance on its products, designed largely in Asia.

Analysts were quick to see the logic in the planned acquisition, announced on Nov. 11. HP (HPQ) is attacking Cisco’s dominance of the market for gear that connects computers just as Cisco moves more aggressively into the market for computer systems, where HP is strong. Cisco on Nov. 3 struck a partnership with storage company EMC (EMC) and software company VMware (VMW) aimed atsupplying bundles of computers, storage, networking, and software.”

The article continues…

“HP’s bigger challenge in making the deal a success will be removing the tarnish that remains on the 3Com ‘s brand in the U.S. and Europe as a result of years of mismanagement. While 3Com’s data-center networking gear has about 35% of the Chinese market, it’s practically absent from the largest companies in the U.S. and Europe, analysts say.”

Read the full article here.

Other good resources for this topic include: Barrons, WSJ, 24/7 Wall St., Mashable & Techcrunch.

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