Management industry insiders are buzzing about the potential of a big buyout that could unseat one of the top four management software makers - BMC, CA, HP and IBM - and land other familiar technology names at the top of the list.

For instance, rumors have been swirling about over EMC or Oracle looking at BMC or CA as a potential acquisition targets to beef up their management software stacks. Others say Symantec, which has been systematically building out its management portfolio with buys such as ON Technology and more recently Altiris, could be looking to make a larger management play in 2008. And Microsoft continues to pose a threat to the incumbent market leaders with its ubiquitous operating system and new hypervisor technologies.

But what have the leading vendors been doing to stay on top of the latest features and technology demands for management software. For the most part, BMC, HP and IBM have been acquiring technology, while CA rebuilds internally and works to sustain solid relations with customers. The latter company has been updating slews of products and providing customers with integrated software bundles.

Last time I looked at a few noteworthy BMC acquisitions in 2007 and provided a brief comment on CA business activities, as this set of newsletters is focusing on acquisition activity. In this newsletter, I drill down into a few buys HP and IBM made last year to better hold onto their positions against old and new competitors in 2008. And for the purposes of the newsletter, I focused on management related HP and IBM buys -- considering the companies' product sets expand far beyond this specific software and their penchant for purchasing companies far exceeds the space I have to detail their buys here.

HP

HP in February announced it had set its sights on Bristol Technology. The company's TransactionVision software would be put to use in HP's Business Availability Center software, the company said at the time. The integration of the Bristol technology, HP said, would enable HP customers using its business service and application management software to monitor business transactions from request to fulfillment. The software also gave HP the opportunity to extend its management software to the mainframe.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.