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This week, it was announced that Envestnet, a wealth management technology firm, has acquired Upside, a provider of services for registered investment advisors. With their combined skill set and knowledge about managing wealth, the companies can make a bigger splash in the investment advisor market.

"A lot of the functionality that makes the Uber app so reliable, affordable and seamless is based on mapping technologies," Uber said in a statement. "With the acquisition of deCarta, we will continue to fine-tune our products and services that rely on maps - for example UberPOOL, the way we compute ETAs, and others - and make the Uber experience even better for our users."

For many companies, making an acquisition represents an opportunity to grow and expand their business. Whether it's to obtain new or complementary technologies, or to gain assets in the form of valuable talent, acquisitions can be used to give a business a competitive edge in the market and sometimes even eliminate competitors in the process.

Personnel and departmental consolidation are a given in any merger. Naturally, integrating the moving parts of two or more operations requires some compromise, strategy and lateral thinking. However, in the last ten years, technology has further complicated the hurdles companies must clear to bridge a successful merger.

Because web applications are a new frontier in business strategy, absorbing one system into another, migrating data across platforms and training staff has less precedent than, say, adjusting a company's real estate portfolio. More and more, cloud-based technologies are changing the way employees interface with one another, as well as the work they do.

A hot market in technology mergers is video ad services, which act as intermediaries between advertisers and publishers. With Yahoo's latest purchase of BrightRoll, one such company, the deal puts a price tag on the rising value of startups that help content hosts capitalize on ad revenue. Just the same, the services provide an easy interface for advertisers to deliver their ads to broad audiences across platforms.

With the acquisition of Tumblr, however, Yahoo might have a window to bigger and better prospects in the coming years. Google alum Mayer was seen as a game-changing choice when she was hired, and has made steady progress for Yahoo with an aggressive series of acquisitions. Tumblr is, in many ways, the jewel in the Yahoo crown with by far the greatest visibility of all its properties.

Datalink Corporation announced in an official press release Monday that it would acquire Bear Data Solutions, Inc. The release stated that the technology acquisition "will quadruple Datalink's West Coast revenue base to more than $200 million - up from its projected $145 million this quarter - and expand its Cisco expertise into strategically important new areas," in addition to attracting "1,000 new midmarket and enterprise customers."

"Key members of our team are joining the company and will be working hard to integrate our technology to make the ads you see on Facebook every day better and more relevant to you," The Find said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this means we will be taking our search engine offline in the next few weeks."

Few industries have been more transformed by technology than travel. Gone are the days when travel agents in physical offices meet with customers to arrange business and leisure trips. All the details, from booking flights to finding a place to crash, can now be worked out online by the consumer. In addition to driving prices down through cost comparison tools and online discounts, lodging, booking and itinerary systems have made taking a trip less cumbersome.