Deals done! 10 major global acquisitions in 2015

1. Dell buys EMC

Plenty of questions remained at the time of writing. What will Dell sell? What will become of the EMC-Cisco relationship? Will there be widespread cost-cutting? What future is there for VMware in a combined EMC-Dell? A rumoured US$9 billion tax bill may also complicate the transaction.

Read more: Dell to buy EMC for A$91 billion

2. HP snaps up Aruba

Chief executive Meg Whitman pointed to the US$2.7 billion Aruba buyout as one of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s standout acquisitions, along with 3Com. Which company it snaps up next remains to be seen.

Read more: Hewlett-Packard to buy Aruba Networks for US$2.7 billion

3. Western Digital to buy SanDisk

Known by consumers for its external hard drives, Western Digital hopes to transform itself into a global storage company with “deep expertise” in non-volatile memory. If the buyout completes, WD hopes to double its addressable market, and gain access to solid state storage at a lower cost. This will include products covering “consumer to data centre”.

Expect plenty of change at WD. The company also plans to integrate parts of WD with its HGST storage business, which it bought in 2012 giving it a foothold in enterprise storage.

Read more: Western Digital to pay $19 billion for SanDisk

4. Solarwinds finds buyers

Silver Lake’s investments make an interesting read. The firm owns about 25 percent of Dell, along with stakes in Alibaba Group, Avaya and Go Daddy. Thomas Bravo has Riverbed Technologies in its portfolio.

In Australia, Solarwinds is distributed by Nextgen Distribution, Ingram Micro and M.Tech. CRN first reported Solarwinds setting up its Australian office in early 2014.

Read more: Nextgen Distribution adds SolarWinds to portfolio

5. Trend Micro buys TippingPoint

The intended buyout is another example of security vendors jostling to show that they are more than “traditional” antivirus vendors. In announcing the deal, Trend Micro said threats were bypassing “traditional” security.

Trend Micro now wants to be seen as an enterprise security vendor across endpoints, network, data centre and cloud. This will include a Network Defence business unit with more than 3,500 enterprise customers. Expect to hear more from Trend Micro in the enterprise.

Read more: Trend Micro to buy HP TippingPoint for $300m

6. Cisco buys OpenDNS

Cisco is also investing in software in other ways, like this US$635 million acquisition of cloud security provider OpenDNS. Cisco’s reasoning for the purchase was that as networks become more decentralised, the OpenDNS technology will add visibility and threat intelligence. It regards OpenDNS as complimentary to its own security technology, and easy to deploy.

One of the first product integrations resulting from the deal is between Cisco AMP Threat Grid and OpenDNS, adding malware blocking to Cisco’s threat intelligence.

Read more: Cisco shells out $635m for cloud security specialist OpenDNS

7. Intel to acquire Altera

This includes integration of Intel’s Xeon processors with Altera’s field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, resulting in a product Intel says will be “highly customisable”.

Altera products are found in the automotive, broadcast, computer and storage, consumer, industrial, medical, military, test and measurement and wireless industries. The company was founded in 1983 and based in California.

The deal values Altera at approximately US$16.7 billion dollars.

Read more: Intel to buy IoT chip maker Altera

8. EMC buys Virtustream

The Virtustream name has since become even more important, with EMC and VMware combining their cloud offerings under the brand. This will include an infrastructure-as-a-service platform where customers can move “all their applications”. A “complete spectrum” of managed services for on-premises infrastructure will also be offered.

Virtustream will offer VMware vCloud Air, VCE Cloud Managed Services, Virtustream's infrastructure-as-a-Service, and EMC's Storage Managed Services and Object Storage Services offerings.

The new business, of which Virtustream is a part, will be half owned by EMC and half by VMware.

Read more: EMC pays $1.2b for IaaS provider Virtustream

9. Nokia targets Alcatel Lucent

Should the deal complete, Nokia says it will be able to pursue development of 5G, IP and software-defined networking, cloud technology, analytics as well as sensors and imaging technology. The two companies also deal in fixed and mobile broadband, IP routing, core networks and cloud applications and services.

Nokia plans to restructure its networks business into four groups: mobile networks, fixed networks, applications and analytics and IP/optical networks. Nokia Technologies would operate as a separate group for licensing and incubation of new technology.

The deal was awaiting shareholder approval and other steps at the time of writing.

Read more: Nokia and Alcatel to merge in $22 billion deal

10. Lexmark to buy Kofax

While the likes of Ricoh and Canon have been investing in everything from cloud to IT businesses, Lexmark’s big outlay for 2015 was this US$1billion acquisition of Kofax. Kofax offers software for high-volume capture and processing of documents. Lexmark’s enterprise software business is expected to reach revenue of approximately US$700 million after the deal.

The Kofax transaction comes two years after Lexmark sold its inkjet technology.

Read more: US$1 billion acquisition pumps up Lexmark software arm