According to several reports, the ‘largest-ever technology merger’ is set to be announced later today — and it’s between Dell and storage technology firm EMC, in a deal said to be worth over $67 billion. [UPDATE]


UPDATE: Dell is buying the storage technology firm EMC for $67 billion. EMC is probably worth a lot more than Dell right now, thanks to having its hands in cloud services, storage, analytics, security, data virtualization (that last one’s VMware) and—oh yeah—all those enterprise clients. But Dell can afford the price tag thanks to financing through Silver Lake, which is the same investment firm Michael Dell used to take his company private about two years ago. The deal still has to jump some regulatory hurdles, which means the big $67 billion cost could still change.

VMware, a name probably known better than EMC, won’t be sold to Dell like the rest of its brethren. Instead, The New York Times writes that Dell will only own a majority stake in VMware and the company will stay privately held.


Both Bloomberg and Reuters report that Dell is expected to announce the takeover some time Monday. It’s said that the deal has been incredibly secretive, with few of the top executives at Dell — which is privately held — being consulted or even informed of the plans. Instead, talks have been carried out between between the CEOs Michael Dell and Joe Tucci at EMC, according to Re/code.



The specifics of the deal remain unclear, and Re/code suggests that “the secretive nature of the talks hints at the fact that numerous terms had not been finalized as of late Sunday night.” The site also suggests that the deal may include a clause allowing EMC to identify other, higher offers — though it’s unclear who would be willing to stump up more than $50 billion.

EMC specializes in digital storage, and also owns the cloud software firm VMware. Combined with Dell’s hardware, Bloomberg points out, the merger could “create one of the biggest providers of enterprise computing products.” Perhaps not the most exciting deal in tech, but potentially one that will have an awfully big impact.


[Bloomberg, Reuters]

Image by Isriya Paireepairit under Creative Commons license.