Investopedia: IBM Follows SAP And Oracle Deeper Into The Cloud

There's a cottage industry in connecting the dots of prior mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions and figuring out who might be next. When SAP (NYSE:SAP) paid $3.5 billion for SuccessFactors and Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL) paid $1.9 billion for Taleo, it didn't take a leap of inspiration to connect the dots and posit that Kenexa (NYSE:KNXA) could be next to go or that IBM (NYSE:IBM) was the likeliest buyer on the board. With Kenexa's stock showing a lot of strength recently, Monday's announcement that IBM will acquire the company in a $1.3 billion all-cash deal is not really the most surprising announcement of recent weeks.

Please continue here:
http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2012/IBM-Follows-SAP-And-Oracle-Deeper-Into-The-Cloud-IBM-KNXA-SAP-ORCL0827.aspx