I was sure it was going to happen, but my previous predictions of a surge in technology buyouts for the second half of 2008 came way earlier than expected. But i’m not talking about any of these little web2.0 technology snap ups with money Google found down the back of their software, this is old-school big software company consolidation

For those that don’t digest the tech news on ZDNet or get a regular dose of Digging you might have missed these two big stories:

Sun Microsystems buys MySQL. A cool 1 billion dollars.

Oracle buys BEA Systems. A whopping 8.5 billion dollars.

For a little background, that’s “Major software and hardware company who invented Java (Sun) buys the most popular Open Source database server out there. (MySQL)” and “The most popular commercial database server company (Oracle) buys darling of the financial services Java and website software company (BEA)”

This is the way the big technology companies are going to play it this year. With an economic downturn, especially in the US market, and increased competition from technology startups, there will be mergers and acquisitions all over the place as companies look to diversify.

So it’s time for me to stick my neck out and give some predictions.

Apple buys Adobe

All that iPod cash floating around, Apple are bound to pick up someone and why not Adobe. By buying the major creative software vendor for their hardware Apple get to complete the set and declare victory in the creative marketplace.

Oracle buys Redhat

It makes sense for Oracle to diversify into the Linux market and with two major choices on offer, either Novell or Redhat, it’s an easy punt to see Oracle buying Redhat. This has the added benefit of Oracle picking up JBoss to throw on to the pile of Java servers it has picked up over the years.

EMC buys Novell

Because someone has to..

Microsoft buys Symantec

Slightly riskier play this but Symantec are all about security on the net and Microsoft would love to have this market sown up to counterbalance their own perceived flaws. Alternative buyers.. Google.

Google buys Akamai

Akamai are not really a software company but are at the cutting edge of streaming media, they are ripe for buyout but it’s gonna be expensive. Google are just one of a number of companies who may go for them. Alternative buyers.. CISCO or Amazon.

Let the sales commence like the boxing day in Selfridges.

Tags: bea, merges, mysql, oracle, sun, technology