Big Blue is gobbling up all of New England’s IT companies—or at least that’s the impression you’d get from this week’s deals news.
—IBM (NYSE: [[ticker:IBM]]) announced it will acquire Waltham, MA-based OpenPages for an undisclosed sum. The Waltham firm, whose backers include Goldman Sachs, Globespan Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Mesirow Financial, Sigma Partners, and North Hill Ventures, makes software for managing corporate risk and compliance activities and will become part of IBM’s Business Analytics software portfolio.
—The OpenPages deal marked IBM’s 17th acquisition of a company based in Massachusetts, or with significant Massachusetts operations, since 2003. Greg gathered the details on all 17 deals, and took a look closer look at strategy behind them.
—No sooner had he done that than IBM announced an 18th Massachusetts acquisition, plunking down a whopping $1.7 billion in cash to pick up Netezza (NYSE: [[ticker:NZ]]). Marlborough, MA-based Netezza, which raised more than $100 million in its 2007 IPO, makes hardware and software that allows large corporations to combine their storage, server, and database functions in one system. IBM’s acquisition of the firm fits with Big Blue’s recent strategy of expanding its offerings in business analytics.
—Lantos Technologies, an imaging company spun out of MIT, raised $1.6 million in a Series A round of funding. Catalyst Health Ventures led the round, and
