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2004 Top Ten: Mergers & Acquisitions: Page 5 of 6

No. 2: Cisco Buys Andiamo Finally

After more than three years, Cisco officially brought SAN switching partner Andiamo into fold in February. The deal was worth $750 million in stock and completed the "spin in" of the startup that developed Cisco's MDS 9000 series.

No. 1: Symantec & Veritas: It's a Deal

Far and away the biggest merger of the year in storage networking exceeding even Oracle Corp.'s (Nasdaq: ORCL) $10 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) – the value of the Symantec/Veritas all-stock transaction tipped the scales at $13.5 billion. The unlikely marriage took many observers by surprise, but the two companies view their minimal product overlap in terms of "synergies." In the process, they also bulked themselves up against big rivals, including EMC.

Among the acquisitions that didn't make the cut for our Top 10: