back to article Dell close to selling software division for $2bn – reports

Dell is close to agreeing the sale of its software division for more than $2bn as it digs behind the settee cushions to fund its mega-acquisition of EMC. A consortium including Francisco Partners and Elliot Management are “in advanced talks” to acquire the division, Reuters reported today, citing “three people familiar with …

  1. James 51
    Joke

    “three people familiar with the matter”

    Oh please let them be called Curly, Larry and Moe.

    1. Lamb0
      Joke

      Re: “three people familiar with the matter”

      ... and Reuters is Shemp listening to "Pop Goes The Weasel" for mood music?

  2. Fehu
    Pint

    Dell has a software division?

    ..... Oh, so do I and I'll sell mine for $1.5 beelion. That'll buy a bunch of brewskis.

  3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    It will all end in tears.

    Question is, for whom.

  4. W. Anderson

    Dell's confused state of mind

    Dell's success is due almost entirely to their Desktop and laptop sales with Microsoft Window. They also experienced a blip with small server sales with Windows, but now that these 2 categories are on down swing. along with that of Lenovo for same reasons, which all other periphery business cannot make up for in such negative trends.

    Two possible reasons can be pointed to as reasons for this dilemma. Dell was never a networking or enterprise service company at heart, and recent. rapid global technology moves to Mobile computing – where Dell is non-existent - and Cloud Domputing/Docker virtualization/containerization amoung other related developments has caught the company out completely, with outdated networking architectures (no software Defined Networking) and partnering with Microsoft exclusively for Cloud Computing/virtualization when Amazon AWS and Openstack based products were eating Microsoft's lunch.

    The other significant reason is technology industry, enterprise and governments adoption of Linux for all infrastructure requirements against the Windows preferred and pushed from Dell.

    A recent very credible study of technology needs going forward showed that 85% of the Fortune 1000 corporations, US government departments and especially international governments declared their intent of making Linux and other Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) the foundation of their technology use.

    Dell and Quest software division has very little experience and no expertise in non-Microsoft technologies, and SonicWall was initially a Linux structured product, so it makes perfect sense for the company to ditch these technologies.

    The really difficult choice comes however, when Dell's Microsoft obligations and commitments, not to mention their inseparable bonding, come in direct conflict to strongly competitive solutions from EMC and especially VMWare that Microsoft has been furiously attempting to destroy for several years.

    1. Maventi

      Re: Dell's confused state of mind

      Some good points there but I don't entirely agree - I buy Dell desktops and servers by the thousands. All desktops come with Ubuntu and servers with nothing. Not a single MS license there, and Dell are a lot easier to obtain this from that most of the other big manufacturers. Even for small orders.

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