IBM's Acquisition List: Four Potential Candidates

Noting that IBM has snapped up four Massachusetts companies in the past three months, the Boston Globe speculates on the identities of the next four takeover candidates. After all, an IBM exec says in the article that his company is always on the hunt.From the Globe article:

Over the summer, IBM's Massachusetts acquisitions have included Unica Corp. for $480 million and a proposed takeover of Netezza for $1.7 billion. The Netezza deal hasn't closed yet and since the company's in the hot area of optimized systems for data analytics and warehousing, it's possible that another suitor might jump in with a higher bid, as we saw recently with the battle between Hewlett-Packard and Dell for 3Par.

In the case of Netezza, I think Oracle might jump in with a counteroffer to IBM's because of Oracle's established interest in Netezza's area of specialty and also because of the intensifying competition between IBM and Oracle. I go into some detail on that in Global CIO: Will Larry Ellison Launch Bidding War With IBM For Netezza?.

Looking ahead, the article names these four regional tech firms as potential takeover candidates for IBM: Endeca, Progress Software, Marathon, and Sanbolic.

Asked by the Globe for a hint on which company might be next, IBM's Loria gave a great response: "The answer to that question would buy me a long time off from work."

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