IBM grabs Netezza

IBM is acquiring Netezza for $1.7B USD. This can be an interesting play in massive OLAP and BI. both of which resist calling themselves HPC, but most definitely are. M&A; is continuing to heat up folks. The big guys are buying the little guys. [update] … and of course there is weirdness … according to a lawsuit, Netezza allegedly reverse engineered someone else’s product … incorrectly at that … and sold it to its customers. Having had designs of ours pilfered by less than ethical companies … I am quit sympathetic to the injured party. We’ve drastically altered out reseller and partner agreements to deal with this. But less ethical companies will do these things. Its a solution to the prisoners dilemma ( which isn’t an unreasonable model for reseller / vendor relationships) but not the profit maximizing one. You make more money by cooperating than stealing. There is more incentive to work with honest partners. Unfortunately, ethics and honesty are fungible concepts for some companies and people.