Dell Confirms $2.4bn Quest Software Acquisition

After much speculation, Dell has confirmed the acquisition of Quest Software for $2.4 billion (£1.5 billion).

Dell had been battling it out with Insight Venture Partners for the acquisition of Quest. Last week, it had been rumoured that Dell was behind a $2.32 billion bid, indicating it had to go even higher to secure the deal.

Quest will be rolled into the tech giant’s growing software division. Dell recently told TechWeekEurope that services and software now accounted for around 50 percent of its profits.

A Quest adventure?

“The addition of Quest will enable Dell to deliver more competitive server, storage, networking and end user computing solutions and services to customers,” said John Swainson, president of the Dell Software Group.

“Quest’s suite of industry-leading software products, highly-talented team members and unique intellectual property will position us well in the largest and fastest growing areas of the software industry. We intend to build upon the strong momentum Quest brings to Dell.”

Quest provides a range of software, from access management tools to systems monitoring tools to database management offerings. It has been achieving solid financial results too, generating $857 million in global revenue based on its fiscal year 2011 results

Dell acquisitions have hardly been rare over the past few years, as it looks to be the vendor that can provide for all data centre needs, from software and hardware to services.

In March, it announced plans to buy unified threat management (UTM) and next-generation firewall vendor SonicWALL. A month later, it emerged Dell wanted to buy thin client and VDI vendor Wyse Technology.

But Dell won’t be making any moves in the smartphone space, as it confirmed to TechWeekEurope earlier that it would not be making any more devices in a market that is dominated by Apple and Samsung.

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