Telco, Infrastructure Deals Drove 2010 Tech M&A Bounceback: Study

That's according to new research from IDC, which said the total valuation of all those deals was over $200 billion, and that Google, Facebook, HP and Cisco were among the most acquisitive companies.

The "vast majority" of the deals, IDC noted, were application-related, with 586 for enterprise applications and 421 for Internet applications. The infrastructure segment was also hot, with 219 deals spurred by increasing interest in security and storage companies, including such notable grabs as Intel's $7.78 billion acquistion of McAfee and SAP's $5.8 billion pickup of Sybase.

Among other "megadeals," were CenturyLink's monster acquisition of Qwest, and America Movil's grab for Telemex. M&A activity among telecom service providers was frequent throughout the year, and indeed, seven of the year's 10 megadeals involved service provider acquisitions, IDC said. That dominance may yet continue in 2011; one of the biggest announced deals of 2011 so far, AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, is also in that space.

Google led the list of the most acquisitive IT companies, IDC noted, with 27 acquisitions. AOL and Facebook made nine deals a piece, and among the top IT vendors, Cisco was an active acquirer, along with Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Oracle and VMware. Many of those companies made deals that ended up among 2010's most significant IT acquisitions.

"The renewed confidence accompanying the recovery in IT spending helped to make 2010 a turnaround year for technology M&A activity," said Dan Yachin, research director, emerging technologies at IDC, in the report.

IDC predicted that 2011 would be another active M&A year and that converged infrastructure, mobile content, service creation and enablement, data analytics and pervasive computing would all be focus areas.