The Software-Initiative Deutschland (SID) predicts massive acquisitions for the year 2008 among major enterprises in the IT sector, in particular by software giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. The reasons for this are said to be rapidly increased turnover and fierce competition.
SID expects about 15 acquisitions by IBM in 2008 after twelve in 2007. In the field of IT application and automization techniques, for instance, IBM was under pressure to act after Hewlett Packard (HP) made a successful move by buying Opsware last year. The takeover of Opsware cost HP about 1.5 billion US dollars. The SID experts forecast that IBM will soon follow suit in this respect. It is possible, according to SID, that there are also German companies among the acquisition candidates while in the recent past the focal point had been on US companies. There were several signs which show that the interest in German companies is rising again. 