Bright and early this morning, lab-technology innovator StarLIMS (LIMS) announced that it will be bought by pharmaceutical firm Abbott Laboratories (ABT) for roughly $123 million. This purchase price reflects a per-share price tag of $14 for LIMS, which closed Monday's trading session near the $10 region.

Needless to say, LIMS was the subject of heavy pre-market trading, which pushed the per-share price closer to the premium paid by ABT. According to the report, ABT will acquire all outstanding equity of LIMS, which currently has roughly $18 million cash in hand.

Founded in 1986, STARLIMS Technologies is a leading developer of software for laboratories. Now, the company has filed to go public.

Basically, the software improves the reliability of sampling processes, compliance and analysis. It's also a web-based system -- kind of like what Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) has.

The customer base includes more than 500 labs across 40 countries. Some of the customers include the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, California Department of Health Services, Jamaican Ministry of Health, Singapore Health Services Authority, U.S. Centers of Disease Control and U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crimes Center.

STARLIMS' target market is about $440 million and it is expected to grow to $700 million in 2010 (this is according to the research of Frost & Sullivan).

In 2006, revenues grew 21% to $19.7 million. The net income was $3.7 million.

The lead underwriters include Oppenheimer & Co. and JMP Securities. The proposed ticker symbol is LIMS.

You can find the IPO filing at the SEC website.

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Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.