Rumors and Gossip

Will Novell, Dell turn to open-source M&A to grow?

Novell was recently rumored to be shopping itself around for a buyer. The new rumors? That it's doing some shopping of its own. In this, Novell isn't alone, with Dell also looking to pick up companies that can expand its product lines, as both look to grow despite CIOs' decreasing willingness to spend. Open source may factor into both companies' M&A strategies.

As reported in Daily News & Analysis, Novell CFO Dana Russell has said the company is "interested in making acquisition in the high-growth businesses like identity security and compliance management software, data centre … Read more

Should Google make a move for Atlassian?

Google needs developers. Atlassian has them. Reading Oliver Marks' report on Atlassian's progress and embrace of OpenSocial makes me think Atlassian's developer tools could be a good fit for a Google acquisition.

Atlassian offers an array of developer-focused productivity infrastructure. The company has been exceptionally successful by focusing on customer service and customer-centric development. Jira, Confluence, FishEye, and other Atlassian products may not register with your grandfather, but they're often the collaborative tools of choice for developers.

Enter Google. Google's mission is to organize the world's information, but to do that well it increasingly caters to software developers, … Read more

Rumor has Oracle circling Red Hat...again

Every year, spring brings gives us two things: another rendition of the Open Source Business Conference and rumors of Oracle buying Red Hat, plus various other activities related to open-source consolidation.

In years past, OSBC has taken flight with rumors of Zend (false!), JBoss (true!), MySQL (true!), etc. on the block, with Oracle often the proposed buyer.

This year is no different, as Barron's has obliged by printing yet another rumor that Oracle is planning to invade Raleigh, N.C., to take Red Hat captive.

The source of the rumor is Katherine Egbert, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. … Read more

Microsoft enthusiasts atwitter at MVP summit

As it has in years past, Microsoft is meeting this week with some of its hardcore enthusiasts--the Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) that serve in many ways as unpaid ambassadors for the company's products.

This year, though, the gathering with tech enthusiasts is completely closed to reporters and is also covered by nondisclosure agreements (NDA). However, that hasn't stopped the chatter, particularly because of the heavy use of Twitter to discuss the event. (For the latest discussion, simply click on this link.)

There are dozens of postings every few minutes, ranging from talk about meals and the weather to … Read more

EMC reportedly buys SourceLabs, but for what purpose?

TechFlash is reporting that EMC has purchased SourceLabs for an undisclosed fee. The unanswered question in TechFlash's report is why EMC would buy SourceLabs, a provider of support tools for Linux and other open-source software.

It's not that SourceLabs isn't a good company. I have followed SourceLabs since its inception, meeting with founder and CEO Byron Sebastian back at OSCON (in 2003) before the company was founded in 2004, and spent some time in the SourceLabs office in 2004 getting a demo of its technology. It was cool back in 2004, and has improved since then.

In … Read more

The next big open-source acquisition imminent? (Update)

Word on the street is that another open-source company is on the verge of being acquired. No, he/she wasn't talking about Projity, which was acquired by Serena.

I'm not going to name the company because I don't want to mess up the deal, if any. But it's good to hear that open-source M&A is coming back in style. After the acquisitions of Zimbra, XenSource, and others we've gone into a quiet period of open-source M&A. Nice to see M&A dollars discovering value again.

Update: I talked with sources … Read more

Vignette on sale and OpenText may be buying

A person close to Vignette and OpenText management told me two interesting tidbits today:

Vignette has been going through a round of layoffs recently, packaging itself up for sale, and OpenText just retained Goldman Sachs to help it with some M&A work.

Will we be seeing "OpenVignette" soon? I suspect the answer is "Yes." OpenText needs strength outside its core records management business, and Vignette needs someone to shepherd it back to health (Its last quarter was less-than-stellar). With a roughly $300 million market capitalization, Vignette is dirt cheap.

The problem isn't the … Read more

Rumor: Red Hat and Oracle getting busy?

I've heard through the grapevine that Oracle and Red Hat are in the midst of...something. Some suggest acquisition. Others insist partnership. Still others speculate that absolutely nothing is going on at all.

Can anyone substantiate or repudiate the rumors? Ping me via email....

Rumor: Zend for sale, with IBM a likely buyer?

TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld notes that Zend's recent layoff of 25 percent of its R&D team could be a prelude to an acquisition. Schonfeld suggests Oracle and Microsoft as potential suitors, but I think Sean Michael Kerner's speculation (IBM) rings true.

Regardless, Zend would be a great prize. I'm not privy to the company's financial information but don't need to be to believe that Zend's position vis-a-vis PHP (the primary "P" in the LAMP stack) makes it a prime target. It's surprising that no one has picked it … Read more

Red Hat's (and Sun's) missed SUSE opportunity (Updated)

I posted a (substantiated) rumor last week about Red Hat getting first dibs on buying SUSE and ultimately passing on it. As it turns out, all sorts of people have come out of the woodwork to give me more information on Red Hat's near-miss on acquiring SUSE.

Here are a few gems, including a cameo role from Sun:

Red Hat actually looked at buying SUSE twice. The first time was two years before Novell ultimately acquired SUSE, when SUSE was teetering on bankruptcy, and the second was during the negotiations with Novell. The first time, at least one senior SUSE executive took an urgent flight to the US to try to sell the company to Red Hat, but the efforts were shelved when additional venture and industry funding was found in time to prevent a bankruptcy;… Read more