IBM Corp’s networking supremo, Ellen Hancock, said a few weeks back that the company would be buying some networking companies, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it has thrusting newcomer Kalpana Inc, which was still raising venture capital last year. The paper reckons it’s negotiating to pay about $150m for Kalpana, Sunnyvale maker of Ethernet switches, which is said to be profitable on under $50m annual sales. IBM has been interested in Kalpana for some time, and last year sent engineers to the firm to help it apply its switching skills to Token Ring (CI No 2,482). Kalpana also has sales pacts with Hewlett-Packard Co and SynOptics Communications Inc.
