Will market conditions trigger tech takeovers?

C/Net is reportings that tech companies are taking measures to ward off takeovers, what with many of them having cash assets far above current market caps. This is something I’ve been wondering about lately, thinking that consolidations in the ebusiness space hasn’t gone as far as one might expect. Ariba is one high-flier that might be ripe now with a market cap just over $2 billion, compared to over $32B back last summer. They have great market position, good technology, and a book value of about $13/share. If Oracle’s stock was doing a little better, they would be a good match; Oracle is moving strongly into ebusiness but doesn’t have position in the B2B marketplace niche.