Cisco Buys Meraki

Cost: $1.2 billion

Cisco, the hardware giant made a number of acquisitions this year and the biggest, most notable one was Meraki, a networking company that specializes in cloud-based management of wired and wireless infrastructures. The move to acquire Meraki will benefit the consumer as Cisco will be able to combine its cloud management capabilities together with its Smart Wi-Fi routers.

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VMware Buys Nicira

Cost: $1.2 Billion

VMware, the software company known for its visualization technology paid $1.2 billion for Nicira, a networking startup focuses on making software that provides virtualization of networks. VMware has reportedly beat Cisco for the acquisition of this startup, which had earlier poached top executives from Cisco and Juniper networks.

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IBM Buys Kenexa

Cost: $1.3 billion

IBM, always a frontrunner in acquisitions, continued its flow this year. The biggest one in the row was Kenexa, a cloud based software maker, which Big Blue acquired for $1.3 billion. IBM wants to strengthen its human resource management and social business offerings with this acquisition using the talents from the startup which specialized in recruiting and talent management applications. With this acquisition, the company strengthens its presence in cloud based software market where the titans like Oracle and SAP also focus.