5 Cloud Acquisitions in December You May Have Missed

Cloud-related acquisitions will more than likely increase in 2014 for a number of reasons, including consolidation of cloud-based backup services, data center expansion and mobile collaboration, according to acquisitions completed this past month.

Not sure if you missed any cloud-related in December? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our list of December acquisitions below.

Cisco Acquires Collaborate.com for Mobile, Cloud Market

Cisco Systems (CSCO) acquired Collaborate.com, a developer of a mobile collaboration application that provides unified document sharing, task management and team communication capabilities. Can we expect more Cisco acquisitions in the near future?

Unitrends Acquires PHD Virtual for Virtualized SMB Data Protection

Unitrends acquired virtual backup and disaster recovery solutions provider PHD Virtual Technologies to promote data protection for SMBs. Insight Venture Partners has primary investments in both Unitrends and PHD Virtual, as well a major stake in IT monitoring and management vendor Kaseya.

Evolve IP Acquires Paragrid, Expands to Midwest

Evolve IP acquired Paragrid to continue its push for nationwide expansion. Paragrid’s product set complements Evolve IP’s cloud-based product portfolio, the company said.

8×8 Acquires U.K.-based Voicenet Solutions

Cloud communications and collaboration solutions provider 8×8 Inc. (EGHT)  completed the acquisition of U.K.-based Voicenet Solutions, Inc. for $18.4 million.

Akamai Acquires DDoS Security Provider Prolexic for $370M

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AKAM) announced plans to purchase cloud-based cyber security provider Prolexic Technologies, Inc. for approximately $370 million. What was the purpose of the acquisition? Answer: to protect its offerings from cloud-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, Akamai said.

Will January 2014 bring more cloud-related acquisitions than Deccember 2013? We’ll pay close attention and report back.