The Wall Street Journal reports that according to unnamed sources Dell is in talks with storage company EMC over a full or partial merger.

EMC has reported declining profits in July, and its core storage division has seen revenue growth grind to a halt; it grew just 2 percent between 2013 and 2014, compared to 16 percent between 2010 and 2011. Activist hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., which has a 2 percent stake in EMC, has also pressured the company to sell its 80 percent stake in VMware.

Dell was taken private in 2013 in a $25 billion leveraged buyout by founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake. Even before the buyout, it had been increasingly positioning itself as an enterprise-oriented firm, expanding its server, storage, and security offerings in a bid to move away from the slim margins of the PC business. Merging with some or all of EMC would be consistent with this shift.

WSJ's sources say that it's possible that no deal will be reached, and that EMC is considering several options as part of a strategic review. With EMC having a market capitalization of $50 billion, any merger would be among the largest technology deal of all time.