Plural CEO Says He Will Stay On At Dell

Neil Isford, CEO of Plural, kept his conversations short Friday afternoon following the surprise news that Dell Computer is acquiring the e-services firm.

"We are excited," said Isford before hanging up to call a customer. "Dell wants to grow this business dramatically."

Isford said he would still run the Plural unit, and a Dell spokesman confirmed it.

"This acquisition is a normal part of the ongoing growth of our services business," the spokesman said. He noted that services account for about 10 percent of Dell's annual revenue.

While the spokesman said he wouldn't speculate on whether Dell would move to buy other e-services firms, industry observers speculated that this would be first in a series of small acquisitions that would jack up the portion of Dell's revenue generated by services.

All 200 Plural employees are expected to join Dell under the terms of the deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Once a darling of the Web services market, Plural, based here, has staggered under the weight of the dot-com crash. The company made multiple rounds of job cuts over the past 18 months, slashing its workforce down from its peak of nearly 600.

Along the way, Plural formed a very tight relationship with Microsoft, which invested financial and other resources in the company. The Dell spokesman said he didn't know whether Microsoft had been involved in the merger discussions between Dell and Plural.

In October 2000, Microsoft named Plural a Gold Certified Partner for e-commerce solutions. Four months later, the companies collaborated with Compaq on the launch of a lab at which applications for Wall Street clients would be developed and tested. The idea behind the lab was to give financial clients peace of mind that Windows 2000 and .Net servers could support their transactional demands.

By last May, Plural was developing some of the earliest .Net solution prototypes for its clients and building extensions that would be packaged with Microsoft Office.

Isford said he will report to Jeff Lynn, vice president and general manager of the Americas for Dell Professional Services.

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