Dell continues buying spree

Dell plans to acquire Canadian services outfit Make Technologies, a company that modernises legacy applications.

The announcement continue’s Dell’s push into software and services, and is its third planned acquisition in as many days.

Earlier this week Dell said it would acquire thin client vendor, Wyse Technology, at a speculated price range of US$500 million to US$1 billion.  

Dell India chairman Suresh Vaswani points out that the planned Make acqusition is aligned with Dell's Tuesday purchase of Clerity Solutions, another application modernisation outfit.

"We will now be able to better help customers with all their modernisation needs—from re-hosting to application re-engineering," he said. 

Terms of the latest deal have not been disclosed, however it will add about 1800 staff or two percent to Dell's current headcount, the Wall Street Journal reported.  

In February Dell also acquired AppAssure, an enterprise backup and replication company founded by a former Symantec Veritas executive, which specialises in backing up virtualised environments.  

The buying spree is all part of Dell's enterprise makeover as revenues from its second largest unit, desktop PCs, continue to decline by nearly US$1 billion a year.  

Dell’s latest 10K SEC filing in March 2012 shows that desktop PC revenues declined four percent to US$14.4 billion. In 2009 desktops brought in US$19 billion a year for the company.

Dell in February emphasised its "enterprise solutions and services" business made US$18.6 billion of its US$62 billion in annual revenues in fiscal 2011.

However, once broken down, each of the units that make up that figure pale in comparison to desktop and mobility.

Services revenue for the year to February 3 grew 13 percent to US$8.3 billion, but revenue for Dell's storage business, which it has thrown billions at - gaining Compellent for just under US$1 billion - declined 13 percent compared with 2011 to US$1.9 billion.