Shopping sites

Posted by on March 31, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly Fittingly for a laptop that’s marketed on its thin and sleek looks, Dell’s Adamo appears to be getting a thinner and sleeker Web location. The computer maker currently has all of the information on Adamo (think MacBook Air) loaded onto the somewhat clunky address of adamobydell.com. That is in the process of [...]

Will mobile payment startups pay off?

Posted by on March 30, 2009

In recent years, they have attracted a lot of interest from investors. However, the outlook for these companies has dimmed recently as adoption of the technology has slowed. Is that enough to bring out the buyers?

Back-of-the-envelope thinking on Red Hat-Oracle

Posted by on March 27, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly If Oracle was seriously planning a bid for Red Hat (and we have our doubts about such a pairing), then Larry Ellison had better be prepared to reach deeper into his pocket. Following Red Hat’s solid fiscal fourth-quarter report, shares of the Linux giant jumped 17% to $17.60 on Thursday. That added [...]

Bulging boutiques

Posted by on March 26, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly In our league tables report, we noted that some 143 firms advised on at least one technology transaction in 2008. That was down slightly from the 153 firms we tallied in 2007, even as the number of tech transactions dipped about 17% year over year. Obviously, some of that decline can be [...]

Oracle M&A: real and rumored

Posted by on March 25, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly Since 2005, Oracle has notched an average of about an acquisition per month each year. Generally speaking, the deals can be sorted into three main buckets: broad horizontal technology purchases, small technology tuck-ins and equally small purchases of companies selling applications for specific industries. Fittingly for a busy buyer, Oracle has one [...]

Cisco ‘papers’ purchase of Pure Digital

Posted by on March 24, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly When we wrote recently that Cisco Systems was an unpredictable acquirer, we only covered half of it. Who would have thought (prior to rumors and subsequent official word last Thursday) that Cisco really wanted to buy its way into the consumer electronics market? Much less that the company wanted to enter that [...]

IPO window opens a crack

Posted by on March 23, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly It’s been exactly a year since SolarWinds put in its paperwork to go public. In that time, capitalism has been beaten and bloodied. To underscore that, consider that the late-great Lehman Brothers was one of the original underwriters of the proposed offering. Obviously, that bank has been erased – both on prospectus [...]

Not ad(d)ing up

Posted by on March 20, 2009

Funding for the online advertising industry hit a brick wall this year. And valuations for once-promising startups are plummeting. But it’s not all gloom and doom in the sector. We identify one area that’s still getting a lot of attention.

Oracle’s stimulus package

Posted by on March 19, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly One way to read Oracle’s novel announcement on Wednesday that it will start paying a dividend is that after years of handing out money to shareholders of other companies in the form of acquisitions, it will dole out some to its own investors. Word that the software giant will pay a dividend [...]

A (Big) Blue-colored Sun?

Posted by on March 18, 2009

Contact: Brenon Daly Just two days after Cisco took the fight to its longtime allies in the server wars, IBM is now looking to buy some ammunition of its own. Big Blue is reportedly mulling a $6.5bn bid for Sun Microsystems, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal would be the largest tech transaction [...]

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