5 Companies Microsoft Should Buy

iRobot's stock has hit hard times, but it remains years ahead of anyone in the market for low-cost robots for consumers -- a market it created single-handedly with the Roomba vacuum. Buying iRobot would help Microsoft cement its software as the standard, and give it a huge head start in consumer robots -- a market about to take off.

2. Cerner(CERN Quote)
Market value: $4.2 billion
Price-to-sales value: 3.0
Price-to-book value: 4.4

In February, Microsoft acquired Medstory, a start-up with a smart search engine tailored for health and medicine. That followed last year's purchase or Azyxxi, whose software can aggregate patient data from far-flung sources.

Both deals are small but intriguing pieces of a strategy that seems to echo some of the health care themes of the Gates Foundation. Yet if Microsoft wants to fast-forward to a coherent, robust presence in the health care information industry, it could buy out a company like Cerner.

Of course, Microsoft is more interested in offering health care information to consumers while Cerner's software is marketed to the medical profession. But what if Microsoft let patients see all the information their care providers have on them? It could tear down a wall of secrecy that leaves many patients powerless in today's dysfunctional health care system.

3. Salesforce.com(CRM Quote)
Market value: $4.9 billion
Price-to-book value: 17.7
Price-to-sales: 10.0

Microsoft's CRM Live, unveiled last year, strayed onto Salesforce.com's turf. But under the guidance of CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce is veering into a collision course with Microsoft in one of the hottest areas of enterprise software: online collaboration.