As Dell and HP slug it out to capture 3PAR, Cisco may be adopting a quieter acquisition style and attempting - according to TechCrunch anyway - to acquire Skype. Citing someone he refers to only as "one of our more reliable sources," the Silicon Valley-based site's senior editor Michael Arrington claims Cisco has already made an offer before Skype has time to complete its recently announced IPO.
It is five years now since eBay famously acquired Skype for $1.9 billion.

Such an acquisition by Cisco, if it were confirmed, would mark a new scale for the current round of M&A activity, which has seen Intel acquiring McAfee, HP acquiring Palm and 3Com, EMC acquiring Data Domain, and so on.

Not to mention Oracle's acquisition of Sun, or Dell's of Perot Systems.

Speculation is rife that Google and Microsoft are both now in search of a major quarry. And certainly IBM is hoovering up companies, having recently bought Cast Iron, Sterling Commerce, BigFix and then, even more recently, Unica.