12 Dell Acquisitions And What They've Brought To The Company

Dell's Dozen

Dell's EqualLogic acquisition wasn't its first, but that's the one that laid the foundation for Dell's PartnerDirect channel program. Beginning with EqualLogic, Dell has made 12 acquisitions over the last three years to further expand its solutions portfolio and the company said more acquisitions are likely to come. Here's a closer look at what each one has brought to the company.

EqualLogic

November 2007

The acquisition of EqualLogic, a provider of high-performance iSCSI storage area network SAN solutions optimized for virtualization, set the foundation for Dell's Enterprise Architecture certification and channel program. Pictured here is the EqualLogic PS 60000 storage array.

ASAP Software

November 2007

The $340 million deal for ASAP Software, a software solutions and licensing services provider and a subsidiary of Corporate Express, improved Dell’s software business by integrating ASAP’s expertise in managing software licensing, purchasing, renewals, and compliance.

Everdream

December 2007

With Dell's acquisition of Everdream, a provider of SaaS solutions for remote-service management, Dell extended remote management of servers, storage, printers, and the like to desktops, notebooks and other end-user devices globally.

The Networked Storage Company

February 2008

Dell picked up The Networked Storage Co., which specializes in moving customers to IT data storage systems, for an undisclosed amount. Located in the U.K., the storage company is privately held and has a customer roster of leading European financial institutions.

MessageOne

February 2008

Dell acquired MessageOne, a provider of on-demand e-mail management, compliance and archiving services, for $155 million in cash to broaden the company's ProSupport line of configurable service offerings. MessageOne delivers e-mail continuity, compliance, archiving and disaster recovery services that Dell says help businesses eliminate complexity and downtime associated with managing and archiving e-mail messages.

Allin

January 2009

Dell acquired the Microsoft IT consulting and solutions portions of Allin in a $12 million stock purchase deal. The acquisition included 100 employees and four offices, based in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Jose and Walnut Creek, Calif., and boosted Dell's Microsoft expertise, with units specializing in consulting services based on Microsoft's core infrastructure as well as business-management software and services.

Perot Systems

November 2009

Dell bought the former VAR 500 company, No. 51 in 2009, for $3.9 billion, or $30 per share, to provide services expertise surrounding applications, technology, infrastructure, business processes and consulting.

Kace

February 2010

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.

Exanet

Feb. 2010 Dell acquired storage vendor Exanet for $12 million to provide clustered NAS technology. Exanet is a developer of clustered NAS technology. The company's appliances allow NAS to scale as more appliances are added, and can sit in front of other vendors' storage capacity.

Scalent

July 2010

Dell agreed to buy Scalent in a bid to add enhanced virtualization capabilities to its data center management solution. Scalent, Palo Alto, Calif., is a developer of software that helps customers create a dynamic IT Infrastructure that quickly adjusts to the changing needs of business. The company's software is typically available in pre-packaged configurations from such vendors as Dell, Red Hat, EMC, Unisys, QLogic, Emulex, Cisco, VMware, Oracle, and Epoch Concepts.

Ocarina Networks

July 2010

Dell acquired Ocarina Networks, a developer of storage compression and deduplication technology which could give Dell the ability reduce the amount of data customers store across a wide range of devices. Ocarina Networks is a developer of content-aware deduplication technology which looks at the content of a file and how it is structured to choose the best way to compress and dedupe the data from over 100 possible algorithms.

Boomi

Nov. 201

Dell added some Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integration muscle to its cloud computing arsenal with the acquisition of Boomi's AtomSphere Technology. It gives Dell a SaaS application integration service play that will enable VARs and end users to move data and applications between cloud and on-premise systems without software, hardware or coding.