Monday, 28 May 2012
Who'll buy BMC?
With the Facebook share launch turning into a bit of a fiasco, high tech company shares may not look like such a good deal at the moment. But taking the long view, is BMC Software ripe for picking?
As you know, BMC sells software that runs on mainframes. And, like everyone else, its moving into the cloud space. And it would be a pretty big organization for anyone to acquire. Bloomberg (the business and financial experts) reckon that it would be the eighth-largest US software acquisition on record. Bloomberg also suggest that the last similar-sized acquisition occurred before the 2008 crash.
If you were going to spend your money, perhaps a better choice would be to snap up a suffering Hewlett Packard, who this week layed off 27,000 people, and who’s profits slid 31 percent.
But for many investors, getting a foothold in the cloud space provides more opportunities going forward than buying into current technologies where sales are perhaps more stagnant.
So, who might be discussing a takeover of BMC? We can discount HP. But whatabout Dell? This year, Dell has acquired Make Technologies (a provider of application modernization software and services), Clerity Solutions (a provider of application modernization and legacy system re-hosting solutions and software), Wyse Technology (a leader in thin client computing devices and software), SonicWALL (a provider of network security, content security, Web and e-mail security, secure remote access, and business continuity solutions), and AppAssure (who do back-up software). Dell definitely appears to be moving into the enterprise software space – while still retaining its hardware base.
Cisco has also been acquisitive this year, getting its hands on Truviso (who supply scalable, real-time network data analysis and reporting software), ClearAccess (suppliers of TR-069-based software to service providers for the provisioning and management of residential and mobile devices), NDS Group (a provider of video software and content security solutions that enable service providers and media companies to securely deliver and monetize new video entertainment experiences), and Lightwire (who develop advanced optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications).
And then there’s always Oracle, who, this year, have acquired ClearTrial (a cloud-based clinical trial operations and analytics product) and Taleo (talent management software). They might feel that acquiring BMC protects them from rivals.
Or maybe someone will buy BMC and sell off the mainframe software that we’re familiar with and retain and develop the cloud stuff as a way of making money in the future.
SAP has only recently spent $4.3 billion on cloud computing firm Ariba. Perhaps they would like to get their hands on that part of BMC.
It will be interesting to see whether organizations are willing to risk such large sums of money that an acquisition of BMC Technologies would require in these straightened times. Or maybe asset stripping is the only way forward?
We’ll be keeping an eye on the news.
If you need anything written, contact Trevor Eddolls at iTech-Ed.
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