The most notable tech acquisitions of 2017, so far

Collaboration software company Jive has been acquired by ESW Capital - an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm specialising in enterprise software companies - for $462 million (£358 million). 

Jive will now become part of the Aurea family of technology companies, with the plan being to integrate it into Aurea's customer experience (CX) management platform.

Aurea CEO Scott Brighton said of the purchase: “Jive, in combination with Aurea, enables us to bring customer experience and employee and customer engagement together."

The sort of software Jive makes - known as Enterprise 2.0 - has become ubiquitous now, and is being increasingly dominated by the likes of Microsoft and new players like Slack. Which makes the acquisition at this price arguably the best possible outcome for the company.

Read next: Nine of the best enterprise collaboration software tools | Slack, Workplace, Microsoft Teams and more

January 2017 saw Hewlett Packard Enterprise buy hyperconverged infrastructure provider SimpliVity for $650 million (£520 million). The deal - that is expected to close in the second quarter - will boost HPE's hyperconverged portfolio.

The vendor has already announced new products following the acquisition. HPE will combine SimpliVity Omni Stack software with its DL380 servers, which will be available during the second half of 2017.

In January 2017, Cisco acquired application analytics firm AppDynamics for $3.7 billion (£2.9 billion).

San Francisco-based AppDynamics provides software that monitors the performance of most applications, flagging issues and areas that need particular attention.

The deal came just before AppDynamic's IPO and closed in March 2017.

In March 2017, HPE agreed to buy hybrid storage provider Nimble Storage for $1.09 billion (£1.5 billion) cash, in an attempt to expand its growing storage business.

HPE CEO Meg Whitman has been focusing on networking, storage and technology services as part of a major restructuring of the business.

CA Technologies has agreed to acquire security testing firm Veracode for $614 million (£490 million). The deal is said to broaden CA's devops portfolio, and expand its development and testing offering for enterprises and app developers, with the acquisition expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2017.

Veracode provides a software-as-a-service platform that helps developers improve the security of their applications.

March 2017 marked the completion of Apple's acquisition of iPad and iPhone automation tool Workflow, according to TechCrunch.

Workflow allows users to create a list of functions or commands that will automate certain tasks within an application. Created by a small team comprising of Ari Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, Ayaka Nonaka and Nick Frey, along with the purchase of Workflow, Apple will also be hiring its creators.

In March 2017, Google confirmed its acquisition of Kaggle, an online community of data scientists and host of data science and machine learning competitions, for an undisclosed sum.

In early March, Google and Kaggle joined forces to host a $100,000 competition around machine learning and the classification of YouTube videos.

And while the details of this acquisition of vague, it's believed that Google bought Kaggle to improve its AI and machine learning capabilities, by taking advantage of Kaggle's active community of 600,000 data scientists.

US chipmaker Intel agreed to purchase Israel-based driverless car firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion (£12.5 million).

Mobileye currently holds contracts with 27 car makers, and according to the BBC. It also controls two-thirds of the software for automatic emergency braking and semi-autonomous cruise control systems on the market.

In partnership with BMW, Intel and Mobileye are working to produce a working fleet of 40 driverless of BMW 7 Series cars on roads by the end of 2017.

In February 2016, Yahoo revealed that it was looking for "strategic alternatives" for its core business, and by July Yahoo had agreed to sell the company’s core internet operations to Verizon for $4.8 billion (£3.6 billion).

This acquisition spilled over into 2017, with news of Yahoo's recent (and multiple) data breaches causing Yahoo to reduce its price. This means Verizon will buy the firm for $350 million (£281 million) less than originally agreed.

So while the deal is still yet to formally close, with a new price agreed by both parties, 2017 should see the finalised acquisition happen soon.

Chinese-American web services provider Baidu acquired digital assistant startup Raven Tech for an undisclosed amount in February.

Raven Tech produces a Mandarin-speaking AI-powered assistant, dubbed the Chinese answer to the Amazon Echo.

Confirming the purchase of the startup’s tech, product and staff (around 60 employees), this acquisition highlights Baidu's increasing push into artificial intelligence.

The deal comes after Baidu recently hired AI expert Qi Lu as its COO and Group President, Lu was had previously worked on Microsoft's AI efforts.

Interestingly, Raven Tech is an alumnus of the Microsoft Venture Accelerator, having previously raised $18 million of series A funding from Y Combinator and other investment firms including Zhen Fund, Matrix Partners China and DCM Ventures.

In February 2017, SoftBank agreed to buy asset management firm Fortress Investment Group for $3.3 billion (£2.6 billion) cash.

Fortress Investment Group has invested in a whole host of tech firms including Lyft, Xapo and Jawbone.

The news of this deal came as part of an ongoing chapter in SoftBank's recent history, with SoftBank's COO Nikesh Arora wanting to focus more on a larger investment strategy, investing heavily in other tech firms.