OStatic

GigaOm has an interesting post up today on how technology mergers and acquisitions are back in favor. At the end of last year, I predicted that 2009 would be filled with many open source-related mergers and acquisitions. So far, the pace has been slower than I expected, although there have been some blockbuster-sized acquisitions, including Oracle's $7.4 billion play for Sun Microsystems, and VMware's $420 million acquisition of SpringSource. Are we about to see open source-related acquisitions pick up significantly, and do we want to see that happen? Who is ripe for the picking?

One of the big topics to be discussed at the upcoming Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), ?March 24th and 25th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, will be the future of open source. In preparation, OStatic is running a series of guest posts on this theme, featuring thought leaders from top open source projects. Last week, we checked in with Dries Buytaert, founder of the Drupal content management system, and co-founder of Acquia. This week, Martin Schneider, director of product marketing for SugarCRM, weighs in on the open cloud, and how SaaS, open source and dynamic platforms are converging. Here are his thoughts.