Will Earthlink acquire AOL’s ISP business?

Posted by on July 31, 2008

In April we speculated that AOL might be close to shedding its legacy ISP access business. We pegged the most likely acquirer as Earthlink. In an earnings conference call this week, Earthlink CEO Rolla Huff echoed that sentiment, stating that he was bullish about combining its business with the AOL division.

‘Cuil-ing’ off Google

Posted by on July 30, 2008

The launch of search startup Cuil has the world ablaze this week. Can the hyped search engine dethrone Google as the leader in search?

Netezza’s bogeyman

Posted by on July 29, 2008

When Microsoft gets into a new market, the impact on the existing vendors tends to be in line with the software giant’s gargantuan size. After all, fears among startups over getting ‘Netscape-d’ have often been realized. That’s particularly true in the days before the convicted monopolist started putting on a softer face on its business. [...]

Sophos bags an elephant

Posted by on July 28, 2008

In a twist on a private-public transaction, Sophos laid out on Monday a bold $340m plan to pick up Utimaco, an encryption vendor that trades on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Rather than rolling into the public company, Sophos plans to take Utimaco off the market. It plans to fund the acquisition by drawing on three [...]

A scratch-and-dent sale for Vignette?

Posted by on July 25, 2008

With its shares currently bumping their lowest level in three years, Vignette has done little to help itself. In its second-quarter report Thursday, the dismaying decline in sales of its software continued. In the first half of 2008, Vignette has recorded just $20m in license sales, down from $30m in the first half of 2007. [...]

Paid for potential

Posted by on July 24, 2008

Expanding its operations into US markets, UK media giant Guardian News & Media – publisher of The Observer and The Guardian – picked up B2B blog network ContentNext Media earlier this month. Founded in 2002, ContentNext is the creation of ex-Silicon Alley Reporter managing editor and business journalist Rafat Ali. Its ad-supported online network includes [...]

Cisco plugs in the machine

Posted by on July 24, 2008

Of course, immediately after we write how Cisco has been notably absent from the M&A market, the company inks a deal. In this case, the networking giant has reached for home networking management vendor Pure Networks to bolster its Linksys business. The price tage: $120m. My colleague Steve Steinke has the details. Still, the deal is [...]

Transatlantic cold front in M&A

Posted by on July 23, 2008

In terms of North American tech companies shopping in Europe, the past year has been a case of overlooking deals rather than being over there looking for deals. Eastbound M&A (or North American acquirers of EU-based companies) totaled just $12.5bn from July 2007 through June 2008. That’s down two-thirds from the $45.2bn worth of deals [...]

Cisco’s M&A machine unplugged

Posted by on July 22, 2008

While Brocade Communications has used its $3bn purchase of Foundry Networks to turn up the pressure on Cisco Systems, we would quickly add that Cisco itself has hardly used M&A at all this year. Typically one of the busiest corporate acquirers, Cisco has averaged about a deal per month in recent years. However, so far [...]

Star-crossed companies?

Posted by on July 21, 2008

Having already made a pair of profitable on-demand investments, venture firm StarVest Partners has decided to take a larger bite in its most recent software-as-a-service (SaaS) deal. The New York City-based firm recently led the majority acquisition of Iron Solutions, which provides online information about used farm and industrial machinery. (Want to buy a John [...]

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