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2004 Top Ten: Mergers & Acquisitions: Page 2 of 6

Was 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.