Dell is acquiring KACE, a supplier of systems management appliances for midmarket customers, in a move that will expand Dell's systems management product portfolio.
Dell did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition and said the deal is subject to customary closing conditions.
KACE, based in Mountain View, Calif., targets sales of its KBOX appliances with systems deployment and systems management capabilities toward IT administrators in midsize businesses and public (government, education and health-care) organizations.
In 2008 ChannelWeb identified KACE as one of the hottest vendors in the midmarket.
"We talk directly to thousands of these customers and they tell us they need systems management tools geared for their environment," said Steve Felice, president of the Dell Consumer and Small and Medium Business operation, in a statement. "The KBOX family of appliances is highly capable, quick to deploy, simple to use and provides a rapid return on investment, exactly the sort of best-value solutions we're delivering to customers."
KACE largely sells its products through the channel and last April, when ChannelWeb featured the company in an emerging vendor profile, had 115 channel partners. Dell said KACE products would be available directly from Dell and through KACE partners. The appliances are offered as both hardware-based systems and software-only "virtual" appliances.
A number of managed service providers also use the KACE appliances to deliver systems management services to their customers. And KACE has met with some success positioning its deployment offering as a tool that solution providers use to manage system upgrades, such as from Windows XP and Vista to Windows 7, for their customers.
The KACE products provide a broad range of capabilities including device discovery, system inventory, asset management, configuration management, application virtualization, system deployment, endpoint security and service management through integration with help-desk systems. The products support Windows, Mac and Linux operating environments.
