Dell to buy Wyse Technology

Dell has said that it is looking to buy Wyse Technology to further its aim of moving to the cloud.

The acquisition, for an as yet disclosed sum, will see Dell make its bid for market share in the desktop virtualisation space, with an aim to bring together its existing hardware capabilities and virtual stack to provide “end-to-end IT solutions.”

For Wyse, it will mean much bigger support to get its products out into a wider market, despite already having 200 million people using its products every day.

 Jeff Clarke, president of end user computing solutions at Dell, believed the move was the best thing for his company’s portfolio.

“The Wyse Technology desktop virtualisation capability complements Dell’s strongest-ever device and computing solutions portfolio, and strengthens our position in offering customers among the broadest set of computing choices from the edge to the core to the cloud,” he said.

Clive Longbottom, founder and principal analyst at Quocirca, agreed the acquisition was a good move for Dell.

“To be more effective in the server-based computing environment, [Dell] has to be able to play a more blended approach,” he told Cloud Pro.

“[Dell cannot have] just PCs backed up with agreements with a thin client vendor, but [needs] a full architecture that includes PCs, thin clients and hybrid delivery models where local resources can be utilised at the device whilst still maintaining the opportunities that server-based computing offers.” 

Longbottom added: “Wyse brings the devices, plus a load of software, that will enable Dell to integrate the capabilities into its KACE environment to provide a full function server based computing platform.”

Although it is not yet clear what is role will be after the acquisition has been finalised, Tarkan Maner, president and chief executive (CEO) of Wyse, also believed the deal gave customers a better opportunity to take on Dell’s portfolio.

“We believe that taking this step with Dell is a very natural progression for our business and offers our customers many great advantages not available to them today,” he said.

The deal will also see Dell brought closer to Citrix, which holds close ties with Wyse. Longbottom added that the acquisition would “cement” Dell’s existing partnerships with the company.

The figures involved have not been made public, but it has been confirmed both boards are happy with the acquisition agreement and it is expected to close in the second quarter of Dell’s 2013 fiscal year – which runs from May to August.