Era of big acquisitions largely over, Forrester says | InfoWorld | News | 2008-01-30 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service

Era of big acquisitions largely over, Forrester says | InfoWorld | News | 2008-01-30 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service: "IBM will be the most aggressive with acquisitions and may go after packaged applications, a field it has largely avoided to date, according to the report.

'The most likely scenario involves smaller acquisitions of key ISVs building on Websphere. But if IBM makes a move for packaged apps to compete with Oracle, top apps targets could include IBM partners like Infor, IFS, Lawson, or even SAP. Industry-specific targets could include Amdocs, Deltek, and Primavera Systems,' the authors state.

Wang said he was comfortable making this prediction despite IBM's insistence that it has no designs on packaged applications. 'Last year, they spent the whole year saying they were never going to buy a BI vendor,' Wang said, referring to IBM's deal to buy Cognos."