Foiled in an earlier attempted to expand its virtualized storage product line, Dell announced Dec. 13 that it had acquired Compellent to broaden its enterprise-class storage portfolio and expand its data center capabilities.
Compellent specializes in virtualized storage products with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning. Its main product, Compellent Storage Center SAN, is a combination of data storage hardware and storage management software. With the Compellent merger, Dell can focus on data management, thin provisioning, and storage for cloud-computing environments, said Brad Anderson, senior vice-president of the enterprise product group at Dell.
With the purchase price finalized at $27.75 a share, the all-cash deal is valued at about $960 million. The buyout will actually cost $820 million after Compellent’s current cash holdings are included in the deal.
It’s no secret that Dell wants to expand its data center business to offer customers a combination of servers, networking, and storage, instead of relying on the commoditized PC business. In August 2010, Dell sought to acquire 3Par, another maker of virtualized data storage products, but lost a prolonged bidding war to HP.
The company has several storage offerings, which was grown “organically” through enterprise investments and “inorganically,” such as by acquiring EqualLogic, said Anderson. Dell is “committed to the storage industry,” Anderson said.
For more, read the eWeek article: Dell Buys Compellent for $960 Million to Expand Storage Lineup.