Deals

Ribbit announced that it had been purchased by British Telecom on Tuesday for $105 million in cash. As deals go, that might not seem like a lot, but given the fact that it's all cash and given the relatively slow market for "liquidity events" these days, it's worth pondering. Peeling the onion and t...

The two largest electronic prescription networks have decided to merge. By joining together their two platforms, RxHub and SureScripts maintain that both doctors and patients will benefit. Having one integrated system gives doctors more information about patients' health insurance plans as well as r...

Oracle has reached an agreement to buy Skywire, a firm that makes software for the insurance business, as the database and applications giant continues to build out its menu of industry-specific tools. The purchase of Skywire marks the second consecutive acquisition in the insurance space for the vo...

Amdocs and IBM have entered into an original equipment manufacturer agreement in which Amdocs will embed the IBM DB2 Data Server and the IBM Optim Data Growth application in its CRM product line. It is the first OEM agreement IBM has inked involving Optim, Steve Tallant, senior manager of product li...

They may be still waiting for the first signs of the much advertised recession in the Bay Area. Everything I see here, especially this week, points to growth and all that goes with it. Multiple people have come up to me, phoned or e-mailed seeking introductions or support as they confess to having i...

Salesforce.com and Google have announced the rollout of Salesforce for Google Apps, a product that combines Google's budding suite of productivity applications with the ubiquitous on-demand customer relationship management application. The two are already collaborators on Salesforce Group Edition fe...

Oracle has gone to the debt markets to fund its $8.5 billion purchase of BEA Systems. The company has priced an offering in three series of investment-grade notes for a total of $5 billion. It is selling $1.25 billion of 4.95 percent notes due 2013; $2.5 billion of 5.75 percent notes due 2018; and $...

PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and a host of others succumbed to the pull of its tractor beam. Could Salesforce.com be next on Oracle's list? Though this rumor has been around for several years as idle speculation, in the last several months it's taken on new life. The tenor of the gossip has change...

SugarCRM will be building out its global footprint and investing in its engineering bench now that it has completed its latest round of funding. The open source customer relationship management provider just secured a $20 million package, led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing its total funding ...

ATG is building out its personalization feature set with the $10 million acquisition of best-of-breed vendor CleverSet. It is the first acquisition the company has made since its $48.3 million eStara deal in 2006. CleverSet is an automated personalization engine delivered in Software as a Service mo...

Three months after BEA Systems rejected its first unsolicited offer of $6.7 billion, Oracle announced that it will be acquiring the middleware and business process management vendor after all -- for $8.5 billion, or $19.38 per share. That's a 14 percent premium over its first bid and a 24 percent pr...

Genesys is expanding its feature set with the cash acquisition of Informiam, a customer service performance management software provider. The new addition will enhance the company's reporting and analytic capabilities. Financial terms of the acquisition of the privately held company were not release...

SAP may be putting on the block its third-party support and maintenance subsidiary, TomorrowNow, the company reported. SAP acquired the company, which services Oracle subsidiaries PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, a few years ago as part of a larger drive to build out an independent stream of support and ...

Another best-of-breed business intelligence vendor has been snapped up: This time, it is Cognos, which IBM has agreed to acquire for $5 billion in cash, or roughly $58 per share. The move was widely anticipated, given the recent acquisitions made by IBM's rivals in this space. Earlier this year, SAP...

Hoping to turn up the heat on BEA's board of directors, Oracle on Tuesday set a deadline for the company to accept its $6.7 billion buyout offer. In a letter to BEA's board, Oracle said its current offer of $17 per share in cash would expire at 5 p.m. on Oct. 28. Oracle said the board has rejected i...