IBM has struck a $1.7 billion deal to acquire data-warehousing company Netezza.
Netezza, which is based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, provides integration services for hardware with software programs that store and analyse data.
The US IT giant has offered a price of $27 per share to Netezza, with its share price topping the bid amount by $1.27, indicating that investors are expecting another 3PAR like bidding war which had ensued between HP and Dell.
By acquiring Netezza, IBM will expand its presence in the lucrative 'analytics' market, a sector in which it predicts major growth prospects.
The company has been pushing aggressively into the analytics market by spending $12 billion on 23 analytics companies in the last four years.
Arvind Krishna, a general manager in IBM’s software group, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: “We announced one [acquisition] last week, and we announced one this week. We're going as fast as we can. We're posting double-digit growth in a market growing about 3 per cent to 4 per cent.”