Top 10 technology acquisitions

Intel did its best to shake us all out of our summer lull on Thursday with the shock news that it was acquiring security firm McAfee. So here in the V3.co.uk offices, we've had a think back over other mergers and purchases that caused a stir in their time.

Our top 10 list isn't about which deals were the most expensive or controversial, but these are the ones that we think had the biggest impact on the technology landscape.

10. EMC VMware
Back in 2003, storage vendor EMC dug deep into its pockets and found a whole $635m (£409m) to purchase a five year-old company called VMware, operating in a little known area of technology dubbed virtualisation.

And what a deal that turned out to be. Thanks to the rapid uptake of virtualisation among corporates, especially at the server level, coupled with the more recent drive to be eco-friendly, VMware is now worth around $33bn (£21bn).

But things haven't always gone smoothly with the pairing. In 2007, EMC sold off 10 per cent of VMware shares. A year later former VMware chief executive Diane Greene was unceremoniously fired and replaced with ex-Microsoft veteran Paul Maritz, who was working for EMC at the time. At the same time, EMC lowered its 2008 revenue forecast for its virtualisation division.

The Maritz appointment has transpired as a good move. During its most recent financial quarter, VMware took a healthy $674m (£434m), a 48 per cent increase year on year.

9. Intel McAfee
This could go down in history as one of the worst acquisitions in living memory, or the most astute. Intel's $7.7bn (£4.9bn) cash purchase of McAfee, which is all but done and dusted, has bemused many commentators, with some fearing that the chip giant will manage the security firm as badly as it has other software vendors acquired in the past such as LANdesk.

On announcing the deal, Intel chief Paul Otellini stressed that "security will be more effective when enabled in hardware". He added that the acquisition opens up huge opportunities for the firm to co-sell McAfee's security products as well as deeply integrating them into its own.

But the jury is well and truly out on whether it can manage this. Intel talks a great deal about the need to secure the huge number of internet connected devices coming online every day, but neither McAfee nor Intel have an illustrious track record in mobile computing.

With new products expected from the two as early as the beginning of next year thanks to a previous partnership deal, we won't have to wait long to find out.