The Movers And Shakers

Going private, consolidation, breaking into new markets with new services – there are all kinds of reasons for companies to acquire other firms. In 2017, we were expecting lots of M&A activity and, so far, we've seen several big deals signaling new products, services and capabilities coming to the market for solution providers.

There was incredible M&A momentum heading into the year. According to the 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase, tech companies announced $500 billion worth of transactions in 2016, ranking that year as the second-highest annual total since 2000.

The big surprise so far is Dell EMC – they're not on this list. In fact, Dell EMC has sold off five separate businesses since Dell and EMC announced their history-making merger in 2015. But while Dell hasn't yet made a big buy this year, Accenture was also left off this list for a different reason: It has too many deals to sum up in just a few dozen words.

Who's left? All the big names you'd expect and a few you wouldn't: Cisco, HPE, Windstream and even Xerox make up this list of the 10 biggest M&A deals announced so far in 2017.

(For more on the "coolest" of 2017, check out "CRN's Tech Midyear In Review.")