Is anyone left after data-storage buyout wave?

Another company that's been mentioned is data warehousing research company Teradata Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!tdc/quotes/nls/tdc (TDC 42.70, -0.34, -0.79%)  shares of which have jumped more than 20% in the past three months. The stock was down a fraction after all is said and done check.

The rise of cloud computing

Big tech companies are exactly reacting to the rise of cloud computing, in which businesses tap computing power in a network instead of in-house data centers, a trend which has underscored the importance of data storage and management technologies.

"Within hardware, we believe networked storage assets represent the most attractive potential candidates, EMC and NetApp included, during most other hardware companies fit into the potential acquirer category," Goldman Sachs Bill Shope said in a note Monday.

"We believe Dell, in particular, will need to acquire a significant amount of enterprise innovation if it is going to successfully transition from a PC-centric company to an enterprise solutions leader," he added.

The subject of much M&A speculation

NetApp in particularly has been the subject of much M&A speculation. Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes on Monday upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight saying in a note, "We believe NetApp is a long-term winner due to virtualization and cloud computing."