Dell continues on the acquisition trail, buying privately-held, California-based network products and services reseller, Force10 Networks. Terms were not disclosed, but Dell said that Force10 was on a $200m p.a. run rate, with 80% coming from the US market – so it’s probably reasonable to assume they paid somewhat less than that.
Networking companies have been in the acquisition spotlight of late (e.g. NTT’s $3.2b acquisition of Dimension Data – see NTT dials a new Dimension), being seen as an essential component of a data centre infrastructure product and services proposition. DiData had been turning over $4b p.a. prior to its acquisition.
It works the other way round, too, with networking companies dead keen to play directly in the data centre services space, viz. Colt (see Managed services growth slows at Colt) and Logicalis (see Logicalis continues push into services), just to name a couple closer to home.
Whether Dell can actually make anything of Force10 is of course a different discussion entirely.