For the past nine years I've kept a list of storage companies that have either folded or been acquired. I've never known what to do with the list; I just keep updating it as companies either disappear, merge or are snapped up by another vendor. A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone who said it would be interesting to chronicle these companies and do something with the list. So here it is - a list for what happened in storage in 2008 ...

January started off with the most acquisitions of the year – Dell acquired The Networked Storage Company, IBM snapped up XIV, NetApp bought Onaro and Microsoft bought FAST. Other deals include Rocketsoft acquiring Arkivio, Dell buying MessageOne and Teracloud purchasing Estorian and renaming itself Estorian.

The acquisition of Israeli-based XIV topped the news and brought IBM into cloud computing. NetApp realized the benefit of change management – its SANScreen data center automation software extends NetApp’s reach into storage-area networking. Dell’s acquisition of MessageOne reminds us of just how important e-mail messaging protection and failover can be.

February saw just one acquisition when Sun bought Linux Networx, one of the independent Linux-based server and storage providers.

March passed without any acquisitions and no companies folded.

In April HP acquired e-discovery vendor Tower Software; EMC bought not only Conchango, but also online backup services startup Mozy, FilesX, Iomega and backup reporting company WysDM.

May was quiet except for two acquisitions: Iron Mountain bought DocuVault, a vendor of records management and data destruction; and, PHNS bought AmeriVault.

June saw Symantec buying Swapdrive and Adaptec offloading its SnapServer business to Overland Storage.

In July, Agami folded and DoubleTake acquired emBoot.

August was a quiet month, except for Adaptec acquiring Aristos Logic.

In September EMC acquired the intellectual assets of Yotta Yotta. October rolled around and finished with HP acquiring Lefthand Networks. And, December saw Barracuda buying BitLeap.

And, to finish the year, on Dec. 17 Foundry shareholders approved Brocade’s acquisition of Foundry Networks, on Dec. 19 Brocade completed the acquisition.

If anyone wants the complete list going back to 2000, e-mail me. I’ll clean it up and send it to you. Also, if there are any acquisitions, disappearances or marked downturns in business I missed, let me know. I’ll add them to the list.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.