Earlier today, Adobe Systems announced that it has agreed to purchase Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock in a move to increase its presence in the design and digital document market. Adobe said the deal would help it increase its share in the market of the production of handheld media content.

Macromedia, best known for its web production suite including Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and Freehand, seems to be a good match for Adobe, and we here at GeekCoffee are surprised it didn't happen earlier.

Joint Press Release From Adobe and Macromedia:

"Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adobe's and Macromedia's closing prices on Friday April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock."

"The combination of Adobe and Macromedia strengthens our mission of helping people and organizations communicate better. Through the combination of our powerful development, authoring and collaboration tools - and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash - we have the opportunity to drive an industry-defining technology platform that delivers compelling, rich content and applications across a wide range of devices and operating systems."

"By combining the passion and creativity of two leading-edge companies, we will continue driving innovations that are changing the ways people everywhere are experiencing and interacting with information."

Microsoft has announced that it purchased a VoIP startup called Telco in order to increase the capabilities of MSN Messenger. According to the company, the voice messaging features should be integrated in MSN Messenger before the end of this year. Teleo's technology will allow the software to integrate click-to-call services such as a local search for a restaurant, and a direct link to call the business.

"We've been making a lot of investments in voice, but as we looked at continuing...we had that build or buy discussion," said Brooke Richardson, lead product manager for MSN's communication services division. "We decided that if we wanted to do things rapidly, Teleo was a good fit."

Neither company elaborated on the financial details of the deal.

Cisco announced the purchase today of privately-held Nemo Systems, based in Los Altos, California. Nemo Systems is a developer of technology in the network memory space, which will allow Cisco to offer higher performance on their core switching platforms and services.

The purchase agreement has Cisco paying up to $12.5 million in cash for Nemo Systems. As usual, the acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals, and is expected to be in stone by the end of the first quarter of Cisco's 2006 fiscal year which ends October 29th, 2005.

Once incorporated into Cisco's products, the technology will allow customers to scale network systems and line card bandwidth while reducing the overall cost of high-performance networking systems.

Upon close of the transaction, Nemo will become part of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group (DSSTG) reporting to vice president and general manager Tom Edsall.

Following through on its CEO's pledge to make more purchases in core technology areas, HP said it has inked an agreement to acquire blade server pioneer RLX Technologies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the deal is expected to close within a month.

RLX makes Control Tower, a software suite used to manage blade servers running the Linux operating system.

Control Tower monitors and alerts IT administrators to changes in the computing environment, managing any system changes from one console. The suite provisions and automates computing tasks based on policies set by administrators.

HP plans to add this software to its BladeSystem portfolio, beefing up the Palo Alto, Calif., company's arsenal of server, storage and enterprise management software. HP aims to offer customers unified infrastructure management across systems based on Linux, Unix and Windows.

Rick Becker, vice president and general manager of HP BladeSystem, said in a statement the purchase hinges on customers' needs for better system management at a time when Linux is expanding from traditional servers to blade server environments.

Blades are modular servers that require fewer cables, as well as less power and space, making them attractive for enterprises with fewer resources.

These characteristics also make them more convenient for utility computing environments, where customers press a few buttons to procure more computing resources, paying as they go.

RLX is the third management software buy HP has made recently.

Last month, it announced intentions to purchase IT management specialist Peregrine Systems for $425 million in cash, as well as storage management company AppIQ for an undisclosed sum.

"Following our recently announced acquisitions of AppIQ and Peregrine Systems, RLX represents another step in HP's expanding enterprise management capabilities to help enterprise and small and medium business customers simplify their IT environments and cut costs," Becker said.

The buys also point to CEO Mark Hurd's aggressive acquisition strategy to Plug holes in its defense against rivals, such as systems vendors IBM, Sun Microsystems and Dell, as well as management software makers, such as Computer Associates and BMC.

The company, headquartered in Spring, Texas, and harboring 36 employees and some 200 customers worldwide, has been in a tough position since exiting the market for blade server hardware last winter.

Competing with IBM and HP, which own more than 80 percent of the blade server market, proved too difficult. RLX, one of the first of a handful of vendors to the blade server market years ago, gave up on hardware to focus on differentiating with software.

RLX's value proposition is that it will treat all devices in a data center as if they are the same, which is a departure from the strategies of most hardware and software vendors.

AMD and ATI have closed the deal that has been in the rumor mill for weeks now in a transaction that is said to be worth $5.4 billion. AMD's purchase of the graphics leader was announced this morning by AMD CEO Hector Ruiz and ATI CEO Dave Orton.

The deal is subject to ATI shareholder approval and other regulatory approvals, but no problem with the approvals are foreseen. The two companies have compiled a total revenue of $7.3 billion in the past 4 quarters with a workforce of around 15,000 employees.