40 Tech Deals That Had Big Channel Impact

Dell’s EMC buy

Dell’s purchase of EMC in 2016 brought together the biggest names and logos in what amounted to the largest IT deal of the time – Dell, EMC, VMware -- worth an estimated $67 billion.

The transformational deal saw Round Rock, Texas-based Dell and Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC join to create Dell Technologies, the largest privately-held technology company in the world at the time.

Technology acquired in the deal has been critical to Dell launches such as its public cloud offering Apex, as well as dozens of product integrations.

EMC’s then-CEO Joe Tucci said in 25 years the company went from a storage startup to 70,000 employees, but was ready for its next phase.

“We are entering a new era, where the entire information technology industry is experiencing massive disruption, while simultaneously being presented with unprecedented opportunity,” he said in a blog post. “To keep us growing and thriving through the truly historic changes that are gripping our industry, and to help assure we capitalize on the vast opportunity before us, we decided that creating a new company with Michael Dell, an industry colleague and noted leader, and the team at Silver Lake is the best way to position EMC for success going forward.” [Private equity firm Silver Lake help finance Dell’s acquisition of EMC.

CEO Michael Dell said then that the companies were “at the dawn of the next industrial revolution” as its combined products were in use by 98 percent of the Fortune 500, when the deal was completed.

Both statements proved prescient in terms of sales. The combination of Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware, had a combined revenue of $80 billion at the time the deal was announced.

Last year, Dell’s sales topped $100 billion as it continued to be the largest supplier of computer hardware in the world.