10 biggest tech mergers and acquisitions of 2009

It may have been a tough year for IT business and for getting an IT job, but it was a pretty good year for the top 10 mergers and acquisitions. The biggest M&A deals of the year all surpassed the billion-dollar mark, and involved vendors in hardware, IT services, collaboration, storage, wireless infrastructure and other segments. The biggest spenders included Oracle, Cisco, Dell, HP, EMC and IBM.

Here are a few of them outlined in a Computerworld.com article this week:

• Oracle-Sun deal: $7.4 billion. The deal is still pending.
• Xerox-Affiliated Computer Services: $6.4 billion. Xerox believes ACS will help it penetrate new markets without huge amounts of overlap, saying that only about 20 percent of the companies' customers are common to both businesses.
• Dell-Perot Systems: $3.9 billion. Dell hopes Perot will help it become a leading services company.

You get the idea, but what does it mean for you? As an IT executive, it means plenty, and most of it is good news. It means, among other things, that these new companies will likely work harder to keep your business and cater to your needs even more. It is likely there will be better prices for their goods and services and a faster response to your needs.

Bigger is often better, and these mergers and acquisitions are just examples of the changing IT landscape. It means more competition for your business, too.

For more on IT mergers and acquisitions:
- see this Computerworld.com article [1]

Related Articles:
Cisco buys Tandberg for $3 billion [2]
Goodbye IBM, Hello Oracle [3] 
Oracle grabs BEA for $8.5 billion [4]