With corporate spending slowing, big tech outfits seek the smaller prey. Oracle's and Sun's deals highlight the consolidation waveThe signs should be pretty familiar by now. Looming recession. Slowing corporate tech spending. It has all the makings of a merger and acquisition boom. And already the big corporate tech vendors are getting bigger—and the smaller ones are getting gobbled up.
On Jan. 16, two new deals underscored the growing merger mania. Corporate software giant Oracle (ORCL) agreed to snap up BEA Systems (BEAS) for $8.5 billion, an acquisition that struggling BEA spurned just a few months earlier. And Sun Microsystems (JAVA) agreed to pay $1 billion for MySQL, a Swedish firm that makes open-source database software used by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO), among others.
Strategic plays
Read More
