Silicon Valley banker Frank Quattrone says enterprise technology is going retro. In the late 1980s specialists -- Microsoft in software, Cisco in networking equipment -- dominated business computing. But in recent years many of those specialty companies have lost market value or stalled, and the industry is going back to a vertically integrated model. "There's no surprise why Oracle and IBM are the only two of the legacy companies on this list that have added market cap since 2007," he says. "It's because they both have embraced and put forth this vertical strategy. The old mini-computer mainframe model is coming back." So how can narrowly focused companies broaden their portfolio? Surely Quattrone, whose boutique advisory firm, Qatalyst Partners, has recently helped sell PopCap to Electronic Arts for $1.35 billion and National Semiconductor to Texas Instruments for $6.5 billion, would be happy to help.
--S.M.
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