2004 Top Ten: Mergers & Acquisitions

What started out as a ho-hum year for storage networking M&A's ended with a bang.

For awhile, it appeared the rampant consolidation of 2003 would have little carryover to 2004. Then, just in the past week, two major deals hit with snowstorm speed: Symantec Corp.'s (Nasdaq: SYMC) blockbuster buy of Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) and EMC Corp.'s (NYSE: EMC) grab of System Management Arts Inc. (Smarts).

Sandwiched between those two on our Top 10 list for 2004: the closing of Cisco Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: CSCO) drawn-out purchase of Andiamo Systems Inc. The remainder of the list represents a smattering worthy of a holiday fruitcake.

Herewith, the Byte and Switch Top 10 M&A's of 2004:

No. 10: Veritas Nabs EjasentWas it round one of the Veritas-EMC software acquisition bout? Could be: Veritas picked up application-management startup Ejasent Inc. for $59 million. The early January deal added to the Veritas cache of "utility computing" technologies.

No. 9: Cisco Acts on Actona

Cisco's $82 million purchase of Actona Technologies Inc. gave a boost to the nascent market for wide-area file services (WAFS), which aim to speed the transfer of stored data over wide-area networks. The Actona offering now bears the Cisco name (see Cisco Wades Into WAFS). Now it's wait-and-see time for Cisco's next move into storage (see Cisco NAS Options Mulled).

No. 8: Adaptec's $100M Snap Decision

Normally, an acquisition marks the end of the road for startups. With Snap Appliance, you never know. The company was first bought by Quantum Corp. (NYSE: DSS), and then spun out again. Then this summer, Adaptec bought the low-end NAS king. With Microsoft-based NAS products coming on strong this year, it remains to be seen whether Adaptec will make a "snap" of staying among the leaders.No. 7: Iron Mountain Gets Connected

When Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM) gobbled Connected Corp. for $117 million in October, the document storage giant heralded the deal as a cornerstone in its strategy to move into the digital realm. Since then, the company has decided to discontinue Connected's email archiving product, leaving just the PC-backup portion of the acquired business.

No. 6: AMCC Buys More Storage

Telecom-chip supplier Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) (Nasdaq: AMCC) boosted its presence in the storage market by gobbling up 3ware Inc. The addition of 3ware's SATA controller followed AMCC's late-2003 acquisition of HBA startup JNI Corp. in an effort to boost flagging sales.

No. 5: Finisar Acquires Infineon Fiber Optics BizSAN-testing equipment maker Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR) made a splash with its $263 million bid for Infineon Technologies AG's (NYSE/Frankfurt: IFX) fiber-optics business, a deal whose value was revised downward by about 18 percent six months later. This topped off Finisar's other 2004 acquisitions of Honeywell International Inc.'s (NYSE: HON) VCSEL unit and Data Transit Corp. (see Finisar Buys Honeywell VCSEL Biz and Finisar Buys Again).

No. 4: No Brainer: Veritas Buys KVS

Way back in August, when it was the predator rather than prey, Veritas scooped up email archiving leader KVS Inc. for $225 million. This plugged a big hole in the Veritas product line at the time, signifying the coming-of-age for archiving and compliance vendors.

No. 3: EMC Gets Smarts

EMC's shored up its software portfolio with this week's $260 million purchase of Smarts, a maker of network correlation software. EMC plans to apply these tools to storage environments. While it pales in comparison to the $3 billion-plus spending spree for Documentum, Legato, and VMWare, the Smarts deal does fuel a reinvigorated race with Veritas.No. 2: Cisco Buys Andiamo Finally

After more than three years, Cisco officially brought SAN switching partner Andiamo into fold in February. The deal was worth $750 million in stock and completed the "spin in" of the startup that developed Cisco's MDS 9000 series.

No. 1: Symantec & Veritas: It's a Deal

Far and away the biggest merger of the year in storage networking exceeding even Oracle Corp.'s (Nasdaq: ORCL) $10 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) – the value of the Symantec/Veritas all-stock transaction tipped the scales at $13.5 billion. The unlikely marriage took many observers by surprise, but the two companies view their minimal product overlap in terms of "synergies." In the process, they also bulked themselves up against big rivals, including EMC.

Among the acquisitions that didn't make the cut for our Top 10:

— The Editors, Byte and Switch