As you have read this week about the financial details of Facebook’s IPO filing, you have no doubt stopped to think about—or daydream about—what your own company might be worth.  While going public might be a distant or inappropriate goal for your own venture, Facebook’s IPO serves as a timely reminder that you should be calibrating your business and growth strategies to make your company attractive to investors or strategic partners.  After all, for most startup entrepreneurs, the eventual reward comes in the form of a merger or acquisition, rather than an IPO.

The good news is that the vast majority of technology CFOs (75 percent) expect M&A activity in the sector to rise in 2012, according to the fifth annual BDO Technology Outlook Survey, released this month by BDO USA, LLP, where I am a partner and national director of the Technology and Life Sciences Practice.  However, a word of warning: I’ve seen many deals derailed—with significant delays or value erosion—because of the management team’s undisciplined approach to presenting financial information.

Therefore, whether your own organization is in the market to acquire another business for strategic growth purposes, or you are working to position your company as an attractive acquisition target, there are two issues that are crucial to generating or maintaining shareholder value: Having an acute awareness of the motivating factors behind an M&A transaction, and providing an orderly financial snapshot that will answer the mostly likely questions from potential partners.

Motivating Factors Spurring M&A Transactions

In our survey, respondents predicted that the top three motivations behind M&A deals in 2012 will be revenue growth, enhanced market share, and the acquisition of new technology and intellectual property. In other words, a significant majority of CFOs believe that M&A transactions will mostly be offensive in nature. A company waging an offensive strategy isn’t necessarily engaged in hostile takeovers; rather, it means the focus is more on growth than cost-cutting. Therefore, companies are looking for acquisition targets that will fill in holes in product or technology portfolios, and are not necessarily angling to take a competitor’s product out of the market.

Financial Rigor

Understanding the motivations of other parties in a deal can put you in a more powerful position, either as an acquirer or a target. Equally important is meeting the due diligence requirements of an acquirer in an efficient and confident manner. By ensuring that reliable and accurate financial and operational information is available, companies can avoid roadblocks to the M&A process—roadblocks that can significantly erode shareholder value, if not derail the entire process.  For example, although the survey indicates a positive outlook for the industry this year, respondents foresee overall revenue increases of just 2.6 percent – significantly lower than the forecasted growth in last year’s survey (10.4 percent).  If you are experiencing a lower revenue forecast this year, be prepared to address how you intend to get your company back on track.

Beyond M&A Transactions

Even if M&As are not currently a part of your growth strategy, accessing capital remains a top of mind issue for technology companies. The good news is that—according to our survey—over three-quarters (76 percent) of respondents say they feel better about the ability to access capital in 2012. The hurdles to arranging debt financing remain high, but businesses with strong fundamentals and fiscal discipline are once again able to obtain credit. In fact, the majority of respondents who plan to raise additional capital this year intend to use debt financing. The key to making debt work for your company is to manage the process proactively, and avoid being forced into reactive mode.

Whether your business is planning to undertake a strategic transaction or simply needs to access capital through financing, careful planning is critical. A blend of fiscal responsibility, corporate discipline and the willingness to take measured risk are the keys to powering growth.

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[Updated 12:20 pm] Here are a couple of notable Boston-area deals in digital advertising and marketing, each with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi European flair. Plus one more local company worth watching…

—Neolane, a social marketing tech company based in Paris with North American headquarters in Newton, MA, has closed a $27 million financing round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s previous investors also participated in the round. Neolane, which has 240 employees globally—just under 50 in New England—says it will use the money to expand its operations, particularly in North America. Neolane says it competes with IBM/Unica, Aprimo, and SAS.

—DataXu, the Boston-based digital advertising and marketing startup, has acquired U.K.- and Germany-based Mexad, a top European “demand-side platform” provider (meaning it gives advertisers tools to optimize when and where they place ads). Terms of the deal weren’t given. DataXu makes a software platform for advertisers who want real-time information and insights on consumer behavior across Web, mobile, and video channels. I spoke with CEO Mike Baker last year about DataXu’s recent growth and strategy in the ad-tech sector.

—ClickSquared, a Boston marketing software startup, has closed $9 million in equity financing led by Staley Capital, with existing investors also participating. The company, which started in 1999, does e-mail marketing and delivery, customer analytics, and campaign management, among other things. [This deal was added to the roundup after the first two were published---Eds.]

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Some business software news this morning. LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), the Woburn, MA-based remote access and customer support tech company, said it has acquired Kansas-based Bold Software for $16.5 million, including retention-based bonuses over time.

Bold makes software for live-chat systems and click-to-call customer service. The move is intended to strengthen and expand LogMeIn’s offerings in customer care and engagement. The company says it will continue selling Bold’s main product line as a stand-alone offering as well as integrate it with LogMeIn’s remote support software.

LogMeIn started in 2003 and is led by CEO Michael Simon, who spoke last fall about LogMeIn’s rise from being a “lifestyle business” to becoming a mid-size public company (a freemium business model was key). The company went public in 2009.

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‘Tis the season for end-of-year acquisitions to be announced, now that everyone’s back at work. Hopkinton, MA-based VelQuest, a maker of pharmaceutical and medical device-related software, has been acquired by San Diego-based Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL), the scientific R&D software firm, for $35 million in cash.

VelQuest started in 1999 and is led by CEO and co-founder Ken Rapp. Its investors include GE and MedEquity Capital. The company makes software that helps life sciences organizations manage lab test procedures efficiently and in compliance with FDA regulations. “All key members” of the VelQuest management team are staying on post-acquisition, according to the press release.

Accelrys makes a wide range of modeling, simulation, lab management, workflow, and data management software. The VelQuest acquisition adds another piece to the corporate strategy that Accelrys CEO Max Carnecchia outlined last year. He said the company aspires to help its customers manage the entire process of scientific development by offering a range of software products that can harness the innovation, experiments, modeling and simulation, and other work being done in labs on a global basis, both within their own organizations and within their collaborators.

The company says it has more than 1,300 customers across pharma, biotech, energy, chemicals, aerospace, and other industries.

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Some big acquisition news before the holidays here. Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), the Web delivery and networking giant, said today it is acquiring a competitor, Sunnyvale, CA-based Cotendo, for $268 million in cash. The deal, which has been rumored for the past month, is expected to close in the first half of 2012.

Akamai has been positioning itself as a provider of a secure software platform for businesses to reach customers via Web, mobile, and cloud. Cotendo competes with Akamai in the realm of accelerating Web and mobile applications. The California-based company started in 2008 and has about 100 employees, more than half of them based in Israel.

About a year ago, Akamai and MIT filed a lawsuit against Cotendo alleging patent infringement. Presumably that case is resolved now.

This is a relatively rare case of a Boston tech company acquiring a Silicon Valley company. Most of the other big deals this year have gone the other way (such as Oracle-Endeca, Google-ITA, eBay-Where, and HP-Vertica).

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News flash: Another Massachusetts software company is joining Big Blue. Armonk, NY-based IBM (NYSE: IBM) said today it is acquiring Emptoris, a Burlington, MA-based maker of supply and contract management software. Terms of the deal weren’t given, but it is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. This will be the 20th acquisition IBM has made of a company based in (or with major operations in) Massachusetts since 2003, out of a total of 70-plus acquisitions since then.

Emptoris has 725 employees worldwide, and IBM says the company will be integrated into its software group. A Big Blue spokesman declined to comment on whether Emptoris will move into IBM’s Mass Lab in Littleton, MA, since the acquisition hasn’t closed yet. Prior to this deal, Emptoris was majority-owned by Marlin Equity Partners. The software firm is led by CEO Patrick Quirk.

The deal is being spun as part of IBM’s “smarter commerce” initiative, which seeks to help businesses adapt to shifting customer buying patterns. Emptoris’s software includes cloud-based analytics tools that are specialized for procurement and supply chain operations.

IBM’s recent Massachusetts acquisitions include Netezza in business analytics and data warehousing, Q1 Labs in software security, and Unica in marketing and e-commerce software.

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Some interesting news from the business software world today. Bedford, MA-based Progress Software has acquired decision management firm Corticon of Redwood City, CA. Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but the companies said Corticon’s business rules engine will be integrated into Progress’s responsive process management software package. Mark Allen, the founder and CEO of Corticon, is joining Progress along with his team.

The deal makes sense, given Progress Software’s focus on helping its corporate customers be more operationally responsive—that is, able to handle logistical problems on the fly, such as emergency transportation routes for an airline or travel agent, billing and services issues for a telecom firm, and changes in the financial market for a bank.

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) is one of the largest software companies in Massachusetts. The firm just announced this week it has appointed Jay Bhatt as its new chief executive. Bhatt, a veteran of Autodesk and Buzzsaw.com, succeeds former CEO Richard Reidy, who stepped down this past summer.

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Pixtronix, an Andover, MA-based maker of low-power displays, has been acquired by San Diego tech giant Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), according to Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog. Terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed, but the report cites a price range of $175-200 million, based on sources close to the deal. A source of mine confirmed the deal but couldn’t provide any details on the record.

Pixtronix started in 2005 and has raised a little more than $50 million in venture funding from Atlas Venture, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and other investors. The company reportedly has 45 employees, and they’ll stay in Andover. Pixtronix is led by CEO Anthony Zona.

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A Boston cleantech-software startup is making some noise today in a burgeoning market. Retroficiency announced it has raised $3.32 million in new financing led by Point Judith Capital. As part of the deal, the startup has acquired the energy efficiency division of Nexamp, a North Andover, MA-based solar power producer that is also backed by Point Judith.

Retroficiency appears to be growing, with several new hires also being announced today, including Hugh Gaasch, Paul Gagne, and Richard Huntley at the vice president level, and Karim Bibawi (from Nexamp) as chief operating officer.

The company started in 2009 and provides software as a service that helps real estate firms, energy service companies, and commercial property owners gauge the energy-cost impact of upgrading things like lighting systems and insulation. This is an alternative to site visits and energy audits, which can be expensive and slow. Retroficiency previously raised an $800,000 seed round from energy management firm World Energy (NASDAQ: XWES) and angel investors.

Retroficiency CEO and co-founder Bennett Fisher told me back in March that the market for commercial building retrofits was growing, and that this year and next would be important for the startup to gain traction with big customers.

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The Federal Communications Commission gave AT&T and T-Mobile USA a little kick on the way out the door today, releasing its staff report on the companies’ proposed $39 billion merger. AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom pulled their merger application last week (on Thanksgiving!), choosing instead to focus their regulatory fight where it really matters—the antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department.

The companies didn’t want the FCC report to be made public, but they lost that battle, so we now have some extremely detailed reading to dive into. You can check it out for yourself over at the FCC site. The document is chock full of technical detail and legal analysis, but it really boils down to a broad rejection of the claims made by the two companies to support their deal.

The upshot is on pages six and seven, where the staff report tears apart the justifications for the buyout. There are three basic areas of concern—first and most broadly, the report says the effects on competition would be too severe, with a higher likelihood of coordination among the remaining players and questions about the markets for handsets along with roaming, wholesale, and other wireless services.

The report also slaps aside the economic and engineering models that AT&T and Deutsche Telekom used to claim that the buyout would drive down wireless industry prices and network costs. And finally, the report says any savings from the combined operations of the two carriers could result in poorer customer service rather than lower prices, and wouldn’t drive any increase in jobs.

Of course, lots of the really interesting information is redacted—but I did find one fun spot where someone messed up and forgot to white out some things that are marked confidential. It’s in the footnotes on page 12, where the commission is discussing T-Mobile’s strength as an independent competitor.

“Indeed an email exchange argues that ‘T-Mobile’s 4G network is much faster than AT&T’s network,’” the unredacted material says, citing December 2010 email between Paul Weisbecker of AT&T and Kelsey Joyce of T-Mobile. Here’s a screenshot of that passage, in case it gets pulled later:

As you can see, a second area that appears to be unintentionally published immediately follows that, saying that T-Mobile’s network expansion “puts T-Mobile ahead of its competitors in terms of network speeds.” That citation points to Network Business Quarterly, an industry report by the analysts at Technology Business Research, so I’m not sure why it would have been designated for redaction in the first place.

The report’s discussions of small, regional wireless carriers has some new weight amid the New York Times report that AT&T’s hope now is to carve off chunks of T-Mobile  to prop up a new No. 4.

The discussion on pages 33-38 of the FCC report lays out just how tiny these small wireless providers are in relation to the big guns—if measured by revenue, the three largest of those also-rans only makes up about 6.5 percent of the national wireless market combined, compared to T-Mobile’s 11 percent.

“To provide service comparable to a nationwide provider, and thus be able to compete effectively and prevent competitive harm, a regional provider would most importantly need to obtain a nationwide spectrum footprint and the resources to build it out,” the report says. “In only one of the top ten markets to Leap, MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular, the largest regional firms, have half as much spectrum combined as T-Mobile’s spectrum holdings.”

That’s a pretty big gap to make up with pieces from a dismembered T-Mobile. If AT&T can get a deal in place with the feds to make a new fourth-place carrier, this report would provide plenty of ammo for evaluating whether the deal passes the smell test.

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While most of us were sleeping off the effects off too much turkey and pumpkin pie, AT&T and federal regulators were engaging in a very public spat over Ma Bell’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA. But now that things have simmered down a bit, it actually looks like the prospects for this deal haven’t changed a whole lot.

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom’s announcement that they were pulling their application from the FCC—expertly issued on Thanksgiving—was a counterpunch to the FCC chairman’s decision to send the case to an administrative law judge for a hearing. As The Associated Press succinctly explained, “that’s what the FCC does when it opposes a merger.”

But the real focus for this deal is the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit blocking the merger (you can check out the latest filings in the case at this DOJ site). As I wrote when the lawsuit was filed back in August, the DOJ’s civil suit essentially “yanks the merger away from regulators at the Federal Communications Comission and puts the whole thing in the court system.”

It’s kind of like that moment in a TV cop drama when the hardened detectives arrive at a crime scene and send the beat cop out to work crowd control. Yes, they’re separate agencies. And yes, the FCC would have to bless any deal that might be worked out. But the DOJ’s lawsuit is the main event.

So, while it has been fun to see the FCC and AT&T quibble over arcane procedural details—the FCC saying it will consider the withdrawal, and AT&T threatening to sue if the application isn’t dropped—the DOJ lawsuit has always been the place where this deal would really be killed or allowed to stand.

What could happen in that process is still anybody’s guess. A failure would definitely cost AT&T, though—the company said it would charge a breakup fee of $4 billion to this quarter’s earnings, a precaution that some analysts are saying is probably required by accounting principles at this point, given the lingering uncertainty.

Reading through all of the coverage of AT&T and T-Mo’s wild weekend is a very informative primer on the current state of the wireless industry, where big, traditional carriers are trying to consolidate scale and spectrum while cable companies and even software players like Google hint at greater involvement.

Among the mounds of excellent reporting out there, I recommend this overview by The New York Times and a breakdown of several industry analysts’ takes at The Wall Street Journal. Greg Lamm at TechFlash also gets great regional reaction from the CEO of a Portland, OR-based small carrier.

But it’s also remarkable to see how closely all of those possible ideas are tracking to this piece from GigaOm’s Ryan Kim, who rounded up the possible next steps for T-Mobile if the deal fails. Kim wrote his piece back on Aug. 31, the day the DOJ lawsuit was filed. The fact that we’re still talking about the same kinds of outcomes gives you a good idea of how little has changed in the big picture.

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Some interesting news in cleantech today. Worcester, MA-based World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES) said it has acquired GSE Consulting, an energy management and procurement firm based in Dallas, TX, for $8.6 million plus a potential earn-out. World Energy said it will bring on more than 20 GSE employees across three offices in Texas.

The move appears to strengthen World Energy’s presence in Texas, which is the nation’s largest deregulated electricity market. And the acquisition is World Energy’s third in the last seven weeks, following pickups of Northeast Energy Solutions in energy efficiency and the energy procurement business of Co-eXprise.

World Energy, led by CEO Richard Domaleski, specializes in energy management services, such as the demand response market, in which utilities pay factories, stores, and cities to curtail their energy use during peak demand times.

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Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CBST) had its eye on Adolor (NASDAQ: ADLR) long before it announced it would acquire the Exton, PA-based company on Monday. But it wasn’t until drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) pulled out of a co-promotion deal with Adolor in June that Cubist could finally pounce.

Glaxo and Adolor were partnered on a drug called alvimopan (Entereg), which was launched in 2008 to accelerate healing after bowel surgery. Glaxo’s developers had hoped the product would be approved for chronic use, but it ran into safety issues and was cleared only for short-term use. “What was intended to be an outpatient product became an inpatient product,” says Michael Bonney, CEO of Cubist. The hospital market might seem too small for a Big Pharma player, he says, but it looked just right to Cubist. “Inpatient is the piece that’s always been interesting to us,” Bonney says. “That’s our world.”

Cubist investors have yet to be convinced, though. Cubist will acquire Adolor for $190 million in cash, or $4.25 a share, plus milestones that are achieved with one of Adolor’s experimental drugs, ADL5945 to treat chronic opioid-induced constipation. The total value of the deal is $415 million. After the acquisition was announced, Adolor’s shares shot up from $1.92 to $4.67 on roughly seven times its previous trading volume. Cubist shareholders, on the other hand, pushed the acquirer’s stock down about 2 percent to $39. But Bonney isn’t worried. “As people start processing this, I think you’ll see more enthusiasm from our shareholders,” he says.

The company currently markets two antibiotics: daptomycin (Cubicin) and fidaxomicin (Dificid), which it co-promotes with Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OPTR). Cubist’s salesforce calls mostly on hospitals and long-term care facilities—a “sweet spot,” Bonney says, that he believes will make for an ideal fit with Adolor. Cubist met with Xconomy in New York on Tuesday after ringing the opening bell on NASDAQ to celebrate its 15 years as a publicly traded company.

Cubist’s most immediate opportunity from the Adolor deal is alvimopan, a drug that Bonney believes has been underperforming against its potential. Adolor sold $25 million worth of the drug in 2010. “They increased their salesforce from 20 to 50″ after regaining the rights from Glaxo, Bonney says. “But we have 200 salespeople. Given our broader footprint, we think we can add additional hospitals to the customer list,” in addition to expanding the drug’s use in facilities that are already buying alvimopan, he predicts. “Something like 83 percent of [bowel surgeries] are being done in the hospitals we’re in every day.”

Bonney predicts Cubist will push annual sales of alvimopan to $100 million—a figure that some Wall Street analysts confirm. “We believe [Cubist] is more than capable of accelerating the sales trajectory of [alvimopan] given … Next Page »

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The West Coast roll-up of Boston-area tech companies continues.

On the heels of Oracle’s acquisition of Endeca this week, networking and communications giant Cisco Systems said today it plans to acquire Boxborough, MA-based BNI Video for $99 million in cash and retention-based incentives. Cisco is one of the startup’s investors. The deal is expected to be complete by the end of this year, at which time BNI’s employees will join Cisco’s service provider video technology group.

BNI Video started in early 2009, originally known as Beaumaris Networks, to develop technology for video service providers. About a year ago, my colleague Erin reported on the company’s software, which is aimed at helping cable companies compete better with Internet video providers.

The startup’s cloud-based software manages how cable content is organized on the back end so that consumers can search and browse their programs across various Internet-connected devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The company is led by CEO Conrad Clemson.

BNI raised nearly $17 million in venture capital over two rounds, from Charles River Ventures, Comcast Interactive Capital, Cisco, TIme Warner Cable, and Castile Ventures. So this looks like a pretty healthy return for the startup’s investors. BNI had 50 employees as of a year ago.

San Jose, CA-based Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) says it plans to use BNI’s technology to advance its own Videoscape TV platform, which lets service providers deliver video to Internet-connected devices. Cisco recently acquired ExtendMedia and Inlet Technologies in the video sector, and also previously bought Starent Networks and LineSider Technologies in Massachusetts.

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Big news out of Boston and the Bay Area today. Oracle, the Silicon Valley database and business software giant, said it has agreed to acquire Endeca Technologies, the Cambridge, MA-based enterprise search and e-commerce tech company. Terms have not been announced, but the deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

Endeca started in 1999, led by Steve Papa and Peter Bell, and has been an icon of the Boston-area tech scene for the past decade. Its investors have included Bessemer Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, Ampersand Ventures, Intel Capital, DN Capital, and SAP Ventures. As of early last year, the company had raised about $75 million in venture capital. No word yet on any restructuring or employee moves.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Endeca would get scooped up by a West Coast giant, given that many Silicon Valley firms have been interested in the company for years. But it’s yet another Boston-built tech company that’s giving up local control (see ATG, Novell, ITA, Quattro, Where, Vertica…), if not heading West outright.

Redwood Shores, CA-based Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), for its part, says that together with Endeca it plans to “create a comprehensive technology platform to process, store, manage, search and analyze structured and unstructured information together enabling businesses to make stronger and more profitable decisions.” The press release singles out Endeca’s InFront Web commerce and Latitude software products as being especially important to integrate with Oracle’s existing packages.

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Worcester, MA-based World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES) said today it has acquired Northeast Energy Solutions, an energy efficiency firm based in Cromwell, CT. The purchase price is about $4.75 million in cash, stock, a promissory note, and potential earn-outs.

This is the second acquisition in as many months for World Energy, which has been moving strongly into the energy efficiency market. In September, the company bought the energy procurement business of Co-eXprise, an enterprise software firm. Back in March, World Energy said it had invested in a seed financing round for Retroficiency, a Boston-based energy-efficiency software startup.

World Energy specializes in energy management services, such as the demand response market, in which utilities pay factories, stores, and municipalities to curtail their energy use during peak demand times. The company is led by CEO Richard Domaleski.

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Lots of action in computer security, especially around New England.

On the same day IBM said it’s acquiring Q1 Labs of Waltham, MA, the security firm McAfee, a recent subsidiary of Santa Clara, CA-based Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), said it has agreed to buy NitroSecurity of Portsmouth, NH. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

NitroSecurity specializes in what’s called security information and event management. Basically, its software helps organizations protect their network infrastructure and IT environments against increasing levels of cyber threats and intrusions—and Nitro claims to do it fast, in minutes rather than hours.

The company started in 1999 and is led by CEO Ken Levine. A year ago, NitroSecurity announced a $6 million Series B financing round from Brookline Venture Partners, First Analysis, and NewSpring Ventures. The firm also said then that it had acquired the security business of LogMatrix, a Marlborough, MA-based company focused on IT and network management. No word yet on whether NitroSecurity’s staff, which totals about 100, will be moving west or staying put.

Nitro’s software encompasses “network security devices, firewalls, operating system and application logs, vulnerability assessment scans, identity and access management systems and privacy systems,” says Levine in a statement. “It will complement the extensive McAfee security portfolio and help to meet the demanding compliance and protection needs of our joint customers.”

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N-n-n-n-n, n-, n-, n-, n-n-n-n-n-nineteen. Anyone remember that song from the golden age of music and movies?

In any case, IBM has made its 19th acquisition of a Massachusetts software company since 2003. Today Big Blue (NYSE: IBM) announced it is acquiring Waltham, MA-based Q1 Labs, a 10-year-old security software firm that helps businesses see what’s going on in their networks, data centers, and applications. Terms of the deal weren’t given, but it is expected to close this quarter.

Q1 Labs is led by CEO Brendan Hannigan, who will head up IBM’s newly-formed Security Systems Division. The new division will include Q1 and 10 or so other security-related acquisitions IBM has made in the past decade (such as Watchfire, Big Fix, Ounce Labs, Internet Security Systems, and Guardium), as well as IBM’s own research and development in computer security. It’s all part of a broader effort by technology companies to combat sophisticated cyber attacks that increasingly threaten big companies and crucial infrastructure.

Q1 Labs has roughly 150-200 employees, from what I can tell. IBM isn’t saying yet whether those employees will stay in Waltham or move to the IBM Mass Lab in Littleton and Westford. Q1 says it has more than 1,700 customers, including healthcare providers, retail firms, energy and utility companies, financial institutions, government agencies, and wireless service providers.

IBM’s last Massachusetts acquisition was Netezza, a “big data” analytics firm that was snapped up for $1.7 billion a little over a year ago. Former Netezza CEO Jim Baum stayed on at IBM for a year to work on the company transition before leaving the firm last month.

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Here a merger, there a merger, everywhere a merger merger… Some small, medium, and large acquisition news today around New England.

—Localocracy, a Boston-based online town common and community platform, has been acquired by the Huffington Post Media Group and will join the AOL (NYSE: AOL) content unit. The news was first reported by All Things D, which said the deal price was less than $1 million. Localocracy is a finalist in the MassChallenge startup accelerator program.

—Zettapoint, a database management firm based in Concord, MA, and Israel, has been acquired by Hopkinton, MA-based data storage giant EMC (NYSE: EMC) for an undisclosed sum. Israel-based news site Globes, which first reported the deal, puts the price at around $10 million and says Zettapoint’s 15 employees will join EMC Israel. (EMC has an R&D center in Beersheva.) Xconomy reported on EMC’s broader acquisition strategy and plans for growth last fall.

—Atrium Medical, a Hudson, NH-based maker of medical devices for cardiology and radiology, said today it is being acquired by Swedish giant Getinge Group (STO: GETIB) for $680 million. Atrium says it will operate as an independent business unit of Maquet Cardiovascular, a Getinge subsidiary, and will be led by current Atrium president Trevor Carlton. The deal is expected to close later this quarter. Atrium was founded in 1981 and has made a name for itself in healthcare device areas such as catheters, artificial heart components, and soft tissue repair.

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Former Netezza chief executive Jim Baum has left IBM, Xconomy has learned. Baum was the CEO of Marlborough, MA-based Netezza since early 2009 and oversaw the “big data” analytics company’s $1.7 billion acquisition by IBM almost exactly a year ago.

Baum was not reachable for comment, but a spokesperson for IBM (NYSE: IBM) confirmed that he left the company a few weeks ago. Netezza’s website no longer lists Baum on its executive team page. The top people listed there are senior vice presidents Prat Moghe, Ray Tacoma, and Tricia Cotter, chief technology officer John Metzger, and chief scientist David Flaxman.

I’ve heard that Moghe is now leading Netezza (he came to the company through its purchase of Tizor in 2009), and that Arvind Krishna, the IBM general manager who sponsored the Netezza acquisition, will be spending more time with the subsidiary.

I’m also told that Baum’s next venture is “non-competitive” with Netezza and IBM, but beyond that details are sketchy.

In an extensive interview in March of this year, Baum talked with me about his formative experiences at tech icons Parametric Technology (NASDAQ: PMTC) and Endeca before joining Netezza in 2006 as president and chief operating officer. He also talked about why Netezza sold to IBM, the future of big data analytics, and the competitive dynamics between IBM, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle in that field.

As for the company integration process with Big Blue, Baum said at the time, “IBM is a pro at this. It starts with a business plan. When they acquire a company, they have a well defined, well understood set of measurable business objectives. They expect to create a return on this investment.” He added, “IBM is very focused on wanting to retain and motivate great people, and add great people to their company.”

So no word yet on Baum’s next stop, or whether he is departing for strategic reasons or merely cashing out on the acquisition. But it sounds like IBM didn’t do enough to retain his services for more than a year, in any case.

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