Will 2010 be a year of acquisitions?

January 8, 2010  |  Tech Worth Talking About  |  1 Comments

It’s only the first week of 2010 and the technology acquisition space is H-O-T. What an exciting week.  With the second day of CES off and rolling plus a slew of exciting technology acquisitions announced this week, it’s why I love this business.

Amongst the most exciting are:

Cisco acquired network security start up Rohati Systems

BMC acquired Phurnace Software (the third acquisition in six months)

Oracle acquired Silver Creek Systems

Seesmic acquired social media syndication site Ping.fm

Dot Hill acquired Cloverleaf and rumored to take on 3PAR

And in more rumors, VMware could acquire Zimbra. (Random, I know.)

Mashable today debunked the myth that AOL was going to be an acquisition and Google sweetened their offer for local On2 Technologies acquisition pending vote in February.

This is an exciting time for technology companies, to rise out of a recession and demonstrate a strong M&A strategy right out of the gates.  If we look deeper into these deals, you’ll see what areas of technology are rising in importance.  For example, managing apps better in cloud and virtual environments made Phurnace look attractive to BMC.  BMC was itself already rumored to be a 2010 possible M&A target. Dot Hill’s acquisition of Cloverleaf and rumor to take 3PAR next points to the need for storage infrastructure in virtualized environments.

In the world of social media, nothing is getting more complicated for users than managing multiple social networks.  And as big brand names begin to embrace social media more and more, it will be particularly important to be as productive as possible. Seesmic, which makes access apps for Facebook and Twitter will now have a syndication tool on its side.

I think we’ll see more social media and IT management acquisitions happen in 2010 – it’s like that saying, “when you can’t build, buy.”

Google coming to Clifton Park?

January 7, 2010  |  Tech Worth Talking About  |  1 Comments

Amendments where announced today to the pending Google – On2 Technologies acquisition:

According to Dow Jones, “Thursday that it has amended it takeover agreement with On2 Technologies Inc. (ONT). Under the revised deal, On2 shareholders will receive 0.0010 of a share of Google Class A common stock for each share of On2 common stock, as previously announced, plus 15 cents a share in cash. Google said the revision was made to reflect the significant rise in Google’s stock price since the merger was announced in August. Google said that the revised price is its final offer. On2 closed Wednesday at 59 cents.”

After a failed shareholder vote in December, where stockholders of On2 felt they weren’t being paid enough for the video platform software Google so desperately needs, new discussions and more offers ensued. Google’s offer brings the original $106 million to $132 million.

The acquisition is important to Google’s online video distribution strategy and keeping things “Googlized” meaning low cost and wide open, as consumers increasingly view media over cell phones and remote boxes.

More to come on the finalizing of this deal in February.  For more details, visit On2.com, the homepage has an excellent amount of shareholder information convincing the shareholders to be open to a second look.