Oracle, Citrix, IBM: Tech Winners & Losers

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Oracle's (ORCL) shares dipped 0.88% to $30.50 after the software maker announced the acquisition of Xsigo Systems, a privately-held network virtualization technology provider.

Xsigo was launched in 2004 and is backed by Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures. The San Jose, California-based counts British Telecom, eBay (EBAY) and Verizon (VZ) amongst its customers.

"The proliferation of virtualized servers in the last few years has made the virtualization of the supporting network connections essential," said John Fowler, Oracle's Executive Vice President of Systems in a statement released Monday. "With Xsigo, customers can reduce the complexity and simplify management of their clouds by delivering compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically reallocated on-demand."

The Xsigo deal impacted shares of virtualization technology providers Citrix (CTRX) and VMware (VMW), which were down on Monday. Shares of Citrix fell over 7% to $72.23 and VMware, 2.9% to $92.92.

Shares of Citrix have also been weighed down by analysts' responses to its second-quarter results last week. Nomura, for example, reiterated its 'neutral' rating on the stock, citing a slowdown in license revenue growth. Credit Suisse also maintained its 'neutral' rating while Morgan Stanley, which has an 'overweight' rating on Citrix, lowered its price target from $95 to $90. JG Capital downgraded the company to 'underweight' with a $63 price target.

Citrix's stock has tumbled 15.42% in the last three months, but is up 19.25% from the beginning of the year.

In other news, Citrix announced plans to move North Carolina offices of subsidiary ShareFile to an "ultra-modern" 130,000 square-foot office space in the warehouse district of downtown Raleigh, North Carolina by 2013. ShareFile is expected to more than double in size over the next five years, according to a statement released Monday.

IBM (IBM) shares edged down 0.04% to $196.31 on Monday on news that the software giant will provide business process and information technology services to the third-largest cement manufacturer in the world, CEMEX, over the next ten years. The service contract is worth just over $1 billion to IBM, according to a report released Monday.

"Through this agreement, we reinforce our commitment to transform CEMEX into an increasingly flexible, agile, and competitive global company. Moreover, this agreement with IBM will enable CEMEX to focus on its core businesses of cement, ready-mix concrete, and aggregates; improve its financial position; and respond more quickly to changing market needs," said CEMEX CEO Lorenzo H. Zambrano in the statement. The agreement is expected to generate savings of close to $1 billion for CEMEX.

--Written by Nathalie Pierrepont in New York.

>To submit a news tip, send an email to: [e-mail].

Check out our new tech blog, Tech Trends. Follow TheStreet Tech on your wireless devices.

>Contact by Email.

Follow @nrpierrepont