Cisco is acquisition king of the noughties. Race for the teens already underway.

January 12, 2010 by Mark T Littlewood

Congratulations Cisco Systems. According to the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureNews, these are the 10 most acquisitive technology companies over the past decade. (Number of acquisitions in parentheses).

  1. Cisco Systems – 48
  2. IBM – 35
  3. Microsoft – 30
  4. EMC Corporation – 25
  5. Oracle Corporation – 23
  6. Broadcom – 18
  7. Symantec – 18
  8. HP (Hewlett-Packard) – 18
  9. Google – 17
  10. Sun Microsystems – 16

Cisco have also been spending a lot of money. Their deals include Arrowpoint Communications, ($5.7 billion, 2000), Scientific Atlanta ($6.9 billion, 2003) and WebEx ($3.2 billion) as well as Starent Networks ($2.9 billion, 2009) and Tandberg (reported $3 billion) in 2009. While this is enough in 2009 to make Cisco one of the primary acquirers by value in 2009, these are the only two deals they completed in 2009.

Bear in mind that these numbers are for a decade. The picture is different for 2009 where some less traditionally ‘tech’ businesses come in like Abbott Laboratories and Amazon.com:

  1. Oracle – 5
  2. EMC Corporation – 4
  3. Thomson Reuters – 3
  4. Google – 3
  5. IBM – 3
  6. CA – 2
  7. Barracuda Networks – 2
  8. NCR – 2
  9. Cisco Systems – 2
  10. Texas Instruments – 2
  11. Amazon.com – 2
  12. Abbott Laboratories – 2
  13. BakBone Software – 2
  14. Nuance Communications – 2
  15. Versata Enterprises – 2
  16. Sparxent – 2
  17. Informatica – 2
  18. Boku – 2
  19. Intuit – 2
  20. McAfee – 2
  21. Medtronic – 2

The public information released by Dow Jones does not give information about the specific deals or the values associated with them which makes seeing what has been missed tedious but there are a couple of implications for entrepreneurs.

  • In reality, it is not very common to get bought by a large technology company. Over the course of the first decade of the millenium, over 258 companies were purchased by the 10 most active technology acquirers. That is an average of 26 per year globally. That is not very many acquisitions given there are probably 10,000 startups per year that are basing their exit strategy on an acquisition.
  • To be part of the acquired group, you need to have customers, technology or something less tangible that an acquirer REALLY, REALLY, wants.

The List in 10 years from now

It is possible that 2009 shows the start of another trend and it would be fascinating to consider what this list looks like in 10 years time which would be really useful information to have right now.

I would expect to see Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Salesforce figuring as they move into more mature phases of their existences and drive into new markets. These would come, possibly at the expense of Sun (duh), Oracle (will probably need to make fewer bigger acquisitions as it reinvents itself), Symantec (future of cloud computing may have significant implications for the business) and HP.

Of course, like all predictions, others may have a view. Would love to know your thoughts on the Top Ten Tech Acquirers 2020. A bottle of champagne to the most accurate prediction!