This is the twelfth year in a row that we've chosen to analyze the merger and acquisition movement in the worldwide storage industry, which has allowed us the proper perspective from which to gauge the evolution over time.

There are still fewer and fewer mergers and acquisitions - this has been the trend since 2006, but the average per-transaction amount has gone up.

This trend in storage needs to be seen in the context, however, that the figures result from a calculation of all storage acquisitions whose amounts were known divided by their number. In 2009, the average of $612.2 million for 17 transactions (compared to $216.7 million for 25 transactions in 2008) is heavily weighted by Oracle's acquisition of Sun – we have included this operation in 2009 even if the deal is not closed as of today - for $7.4 billion, while the largest acquisition of 2008 was “only” $2.8 billion (Foundry by Brocade). It’s then much more than the overall average since 1998 of $381.3 million.

Everybody also remembers the fight between EMC and NetApp to get Data Domain, finally in the hands of the number one worldwide storage company for 2.2 billion.

Ultimately, 2009 was one of the calmest years we've seen since twelve years, with 43 M&As, compared to 69 in 2008 or -37%, and a  record of 104 in 2006, the lowest former figure being 45 in 2002. The economic crisis explains why the storage companies prefer to keep their cash rather that to spend it for acquisitions last year.

Among the explanations for this slow-down, we could point to EMC, less prodigal in its purchases, with only 5 this year compared to 6 the previous year, 10 in 2006 and 17 in 2006 (we don't count acquisitions by subsidiaries RSA and VMware for activities outside the realm of storage). The regular buyers these last years (Adaptec, Bell Micro, IBM, Iron Mountain, Seagate or Symantec) keep their money in 2009.

More to the point, however, was that the number of real new technologies – but for cloud storage -, and thus new start-ups behind them, is going down. Which means there were fewer companies out there to buy.

Not surprising, however, was that like last year at 28%, the largest number of acquired companies were in the software. ‘External HDDs, subsystems and appliances’ category decreased from 18% to 16%, as well as consolidation in distribution from 15% to 14%.

                      KEY FINANCIAL FIGURES SINCE 1998

 * Only the deals where the amount was known
 (Source: StorageNewsletter)


LEADERS IN NUMBER OF ACQUISITIONS
      IN 2009                        SINCE 1994

 (Source: StorageNewsletter)


  BIGGEST ACQUISITIONS IN 2009

 (Source: StorageNewsletter)


      NUMBER OF ACQUISITIONS
          BY SECTORS IN 2009

 (Source: StorageNewsletter)


                         WHO BOUGHT WHOM IN 2009 (from A to L)
 (Source: StorageNewsletter)


                      WHO BOUGHT WHOM IN 2009 (from O to W)

   (Source: StorageNewsletter)