While IBM continues to pick off the minnows of the US software industry – apparently without any competition from rivals who might have been expected to do a bit of buying on their own account even if only to stop IBM collecting a stake in every company doing MVS applications – bigger fish are frying. According to Computer Systems News, IBM is exploring some kind of tie-up with Andersen Consulting, the systems integration arm of accountancy firm Arthur Andersen & Co. The talks could lead to IBM making an investment in Andersen Consulting, but only if the merger between Arthur and Price Waterhouse leads to Andersen Consulting being spun off as a separate company: consultancy firms are partnerships, an arrangement that rather precludes outside investment – and also tends to leave commercial operations like Andersen Consulting strapped for capital. And the kind of money needed ain’t hay: $250m is the figure being talked about. Every company that has any systems skills, however rudimentary and tenuous, wants to get into large-scale systems integration these days, but the business demands a deal of capital to finance the first implementation, which explains both the possibility of Andersen Consulting being floated off, and the cosying up to IBM. IBM is particularly keen to add Andersen’s project management skills to its own integration skills, but Andersen is uneasy about surrendering its vendor-independence. Andersen is already playing by the key current IBM rules in that it plans to have Systems Application Architecture-compliant versions of its manufacturing and distribution software available by the second quarter of next year. The merger negotiations with Price Waterhouse & Co complicate matters because Price is at present IBM’s auditor, and an equity involvement by IBM in any part of its business would be precluded under US Securities & Exchange Commission rules, and the Commission has so far resisted all attempts by what were once the Big Eight accountancy firms to get the rules relaxed with regard to subsidiaries.