Best Buy has announced it will acquire troubled online music store Napster for $121 million. The deal includes $67 million of cash on Napster's balance sheet and values the Los Angeles-based Internet music store at roughly twice its Sept. 12 closing stock price. "It's an interesting move and looks d...
IBM has sharply increased its commitment to cloud computing by slotting $400 million for new data centers in North Carolina and Tokyo. The bulk of the investment, $360 million, is earmarked for a center in Research Triangle Park, between Durham and Raleigh. A new $40 million data center planned for ...
Microsoft is offering some of its most popular acquisitions via cloud computing with the rollout of Microsoft Online Services. Like many vendors adopting this delivery mode, Microsoft is seeking to exploit companies' eagerness to downsize their internal IT and computing infrastructures to the greate...
Merrill Lynch has predicted that the cloud computing market could reach $160 billion by 2011. By any measure, in any industry, that's a huge number -- it's astronomical for one that can only be described as "nascent." To be sure, the potential for cloud computing is immense. Still, Merrill Lynch may...
Software maker BMC will buy data center automation firm BladeLogic in a move that could help it fend off incursions into its core market from rivals such as EMC and IBM. BMC will use BladeLogic's products to round its own business service management software portfolio. When combined, the platform wi...
Looking to boost confidence among both investors and customers, online brokerage E*Trade Financial said Wednesday it had received a $2.55 billion investment from a private equity firm. After disclosing it had seen significant erosion of some assets due to the subprime mortgage meltdown and after an ...
Software as a Service pioneer Salesforce.com exceeded analyst expectations for its second quarter, registering net income of $3.74 million -- a 3 cent per share increase -- and revenue of $176.6 million. The Street had been expecting it to bring in just $174 million in sales. Total revenue for the q...
Oracle extended a run of strong financial performance with a blockbuster fourth quarter, outpacing estimates for growth and profit as CEO Larry Ellison's strategy of aggressively buying up applications vendors continues to pay off. Oracle earned $1.6 billion in the quarter that ended on May 31, comp...
Openwave Systems, a top provider of software solutions used in the communications industry, has rejected an offer to be bought out and taken private, bucking a recent trend that has seen scores of companies swallowed up by private equity firms. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company's board voted to...
Tapping deeper into one of the fastest-growing segments of the memory chip market, Intel has joined with STMicroelectronics and a private equity firm to establish a new flash memory company. The two chipmakers entered into the agreement to combine existing assets of businesses that last year generat...
Good - It's entertaining and makes sporting events more interesting.
Bad - It increases the risk of gambling addiction and financial loss.
Neutral - The benefits and drawbacks are equally significant.
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