Dell's acquisition of EMC is hailed as the biggest tech acquisition in history. (Photo : REUTERS)
Dell has finally sealed the biggest tech merger in history. Dell's record-breaking acquisition of data storage conglomerate EMC costs $67 billion. The merger will be completed in mid-2016.
The deal will put Dell in the center of the cloud storage market. EMC owns cloud and virtualization software company VMware. Software and services from VMware is used by some of the world's biggest data centers. This includes data centers owned and operated by some of deals biggest rival, not only in the hardware market but in the software market as well.
After the EMC-Dell deal was done, Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell reassured some of its competitors, and now clients, that the partnership with VMware will stay the same.
Mr. Dell told The Australian Financial Review, "One of the first things I did was I called top 15 or so VMware partners, which would include most of my competitors, to explain to them and to reassure them that we're going to treat VMware very much in the same way that EMC has."
Mr. Dell added that many of VMware's partners were pleased to learn about his assurance, it did not deter investors to be skeptical. One week after Dell took over EMC, VMware shares plummeted by 26 percent.
Dell assured that EMC stockholders $24.05 per EMC share in cash. On top of that, for every one share of EMC stock, stockholder will receive over a tenth of a share of new tracking stock that will represent EMC's majority stake in VMware.
With big tech companies slowly gearing their attention towards the cloud, many analysts consider Dell's acquisition of EMC as a smart move. This is despite the fact that EMC's stocks price deteriorated after the acquisition. According to Tech Crunch, the Dell-EMC deal could spark the next massive technology contraction that will shape the future of the tech industry.
