Perot Reborn as Dell Services

Dell is to significantly beef up its IT services business after it finalised its $3.9 billion (£2.4 billion) takeover of Perot Systems.

Perot will now become Dell Services, which will be headed by former Perot CEO Peter Altabef. Altabef will be president of Dell Services and will report to CEO Michael Dell.

“Customers around the world want flexible, scalable solutions to reduce complexity and drive even greater benefit from IT,” Michael Dell said in a statement. “The Dell Services business, formed out of the powerful combination of Dell and Perot Systems, is an exciting step forward in our ongoing commitment to develop and provide best-value IT solutions.”

It was back in September when Dell announced that it was buying Perot to bulk up its services business, a key part of the strategy under Michael Dell to lessen his namesake company’s reliance on its traditional PC business and expand its capabilities.

The hope within Dell is that bringing in Perot Systems will enable it to build a services business that could rival those of IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Acquiring Perot Systems expands Dell’s services reach into such areas as hosting, consulting, applications and business-process outsourcing, according to the company. It also adds to Dell’s existing managed and modular services.

With Perot in hand, Dell not only increases its customer base, but also will have more than 41,000 services employees and annual services revenue of about $8 billion ($4.8 billion).

Dell officials said the company now owns more than 90 percent of Perot stock, and expects to get the remaining shares “promptly.”