A number of parties have submitted bids to acquire Quest Software, which announced in March that it was going private via a US$2 billion stock buyback in partnership with equity firm Insight Venture Partners.

Weekly news wrap-up, including appointments, partnerships, solution integrations, and expansions

Dell's formation of a new software group, which was announced Thursday, could be the forerunner to a string of acquisitions by the vendor, with some observers predicting a focus on systems management and cloud services provisioning.

Steve Jobs' death raised question about directions in technology this week while worries about the economy continue to put downward pressure on tech stocks, but for much of the industry it's been business as usual, especially for mergers and acquisitions.

Mainframe is still important in driving business applications and services, and is a critical platform for the evolving hybrid datacentre, according to business survey management company, BMC Software.

BMC has purchased Coradiant, maker of software for improving end-user experience and tracking Web application performance, the company said Thursday. Terms were not disclosed.

Exploiting recent hardware enhancements that IBM added into its System z mainframe servers, enterprise software provider BMC has updated its line of performance tuning products to help customers get more from the latest version of the DB2 database.

With most tech bellwethers having reported financial results, the earnings season is coming to a close, but BMC, NetSuite, AOL and IAC results this week offered insights into aspects of business IT and the Internet sector.