Working with private-equity firm Silver Lake, Dell has announced they will acquire EMC for approximately $67 billion. The high price tag marks this as the largest tech-industry takeover in history.
Since making the move to become a privately held company in 2013, Dell has continued to make headlines as it sought out new footholds across the IT sector. With this acquisition, Dell has committed itself to a path aimed at further strategic growth across new market segments, expanding its offerings and securing resources it looks to leverage to keep pace with the continually evolving industry.
Currently, most of Dell’s major revenue come from its personal computers and servers, while EMC’s key business segments include data storage, virtualization software, digital security software and analysis, and corporate-data analysis and cloud computing. Following the completion of the deal (expected sometime between May and October of 2016), Dell seems poised to expand into key new areas of the IT industry.
In a post on EMC’s blog, EMC’s Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci outlined the company’s direction following the acquisition. EMC, a Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based storage provider, brings an extensive number of offerings to Dell’s product portfolio as well as the potential to make gains in areas including mobile, security, hybrid cloud, converged infrastructure, digital transformation and software-defined data centers. Tucci further outlined his positive outlook on the potential of the deal:
“The combined company will be a leader in a number of the most attractive high-growth areas of the $2 trillion information technology market. It will have complementary product portfolios, expanded market reach, and four of the world’s greatest technology franchises: servers, storage, virtualization and PCs.”
Tucci is expected to continue on in his role until the deal is finalized. Following the acquisition, Michael Dell is expected to take on those responsibilities.
“It’s certainly a blockbuster deal given it’s the largest acquisition ever in our space…a testament to what Michael Dell has done with Dell since taking it back,” said MJ Shoer, chairman of CompTIA’s board of directors. ”Dell is clearly staking its claim to the enterprise and data center spaces with this move.”
EMC brings to the partnership a number of key holdings, including VMware, which provides cloud and virtualization offerings, and Pivotal, which provides software and services designed to enhance the development of applications customized for cloud-based analytics and data. While VMware will remain an independent, publicly-traded company, its services and offerings will complement Dell’s expanded portfolio.
What does it all mean for the channel and the combined companies’ partners? Stay tuned for further coverage and analysis...
