The top 15 mergers and acquisition deals in the network industry for 2008 were worth nearly $65 billion, and companies involved ran the gamut from those specializing in IT services to network routers to wireless and security. Carriers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless and CenturyTel were among the biggest spenders. Given the practically nonexistent tech IPO market, buyouts proved to be a popular exit strategy for many this year. 

We've consolidated 60-plus tech M&A deals (and counting) from this year in our ongoing slideshow. Note that in many deals, the vendors don't publicly say how much they're forking over for their prize acquisitions, but here, we'll recap the top 15 based on publicly disclosed transaction values:

1. Verizon Wireless-Alltel: $28.1 billion (includes $22.2 billion in debt)

Apparently tired of being the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, Verizon Wireless is vaulting past AT&T via this buyout of the nation's fifth-largest wireless carrier. After adding Alltel's 13 million customers to its ranks, Verizon will have the most subscribers in the United States, with around 80 million. AT&T, which has mostly held the lead for total wireless subscribers since merging with Cingular in 2004, had an estimated 71 million subscribers at the time the deal was announced in June. As is frequently the case with big carrier deals, the Department of Justice requested that Verizon shed some assets in the name of fair competition. The Federal Trade Commission gave its blessing to the deal in December.

2. HP-EDS: $13.9 billion

HP boasted in May when it announced the deal that it would double the company's services revenue and put it into the No. 2 spot in the IT business services market behind IBM. More recently, HP detailed massive job cuts – 24,600 of them – and outlined its integration plans, including transferring HP services into EDS. Some worry that HP might keep its product and services businesses too close to one anther for customers' comfort. According to the company's latest financial announcement, "HP Services (HPS) revenue increased 99% to $8.6 billion, led by $3.9 billion revenue resulting from the EDS acquisition." Apart from that buy, HPS revenue grew by 10% in 2008 over the previous year. 

3. Oracle-BEA: $8.5 billion

BEA stared down Oracle and got a better deal in January than the original $6.7 billion offer from a few months earlier. Some said at the outset that IBM might also be a winner from this deal by exploiting fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding the middleware vendor's integration into Oracle. In July, Oracle spelled out its BEA product strategy: All BEA products will continue under existing support timelines, with "no forced migration at all," Oracle CEO Charles Phillips said at the time. 

But moving forward, the combined company's middleware and infrastructure catalog will be broken into three categories: strategic; "continue and converge" and "maintenance," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle also specified that BEA WebLogic Server will be Oracle's lead apps server, even though Oracle will continue to work on its own.

4. CenturyTel-Embarq: $5.8 billion

CenturyTel, a local exchange carrier and ISP that is based in Louisiana and that operates in 25 states, says merging with Embarq will give it a combined total of 8 million access lines, 2 million broadband subscribers and roughly 400,000 video subscribers. Additionally, the newly merged company would expand its reach to a total of 33 states, CenturyTel says. Not familiar with Embarq? You might know its ex-CEO: the ubiquitous Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. 

5. Brocade-Foundry: $2.6 billion

Were still waiting for the i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed on this deal, initially announced in July. The value of the deal was downgraded from $3 billion to $2.6 billion in October, Brocade secured a loan in October to make the deal, and in November Foundry let pass a deadline by which it could have looked for better offers. The combination of Brocade and Foundry is seen as a direct effort to combat Cisco with a broader data center product collection, exploiting Brocade's strength in storage networking and Foundry's powerful routers.

6. Microsoft-Fast Search and Transfer (FAST): $1.2 billion

Microsoft, suggesting that enterprise search has hit a tipping point, announced plans in January to gobble up this Norwegian company. Microsoft's efforts to play catch-up with Google also included a mid-summer buyout of search engine company Powerset for an undisclosed sum. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the FAST deal hasn't been entirely smooth, as the Oslo-based outfit was charged with accounting fraud in November by Norwegian police.