Dell to acquire enterprise e-mail service MessageOne
Updated at 5:55 AM PT to include comments from Dell.
Dell is expanding its horizons a bit further.
The PC maker plans to acquire enterprise e-mail service MessageOne for $155 million in cash, the company said early Tuesday.
Though Dell has made very few acquisitions over its two decades in business, this one isn't that much of a stretch: Austin, Texas-based MessageOne, which manages the process of archiving, e-discovery, and long-term storage of e-mail, was founded by Adam Dell, the brother of the PC maker's CEO, Michael Dell.
To ensure fairness, the company says founder and chairman Michael Dell was excluded from the negotiation and decisionmaking related to MessageOne.
Steve Shuckenbrock, Dell's chief information officer and president of Dell Global Services, says it was actually his idea to buy the company after MessageOne approached him about starting a commercial relationship.
"As soon as I brought this idea forward, Michael realized it was a related-party action, and recused himself," Shuckenbrock said in an interview.
MessageOne services will be available to Dell customers as another of its growing stable of software services for enterprise customers. It's the fourth business software buy for Dell in the last six months: first SilverBack Technologies, then ASAP Software, and Everdream. Chief rival Hewlett-Packard has also been building up its services offerings through acquisition.
Though this is not its traditional course of action, Dell isn't hesitant these days about growing through acquisition. "Where an acquisition can help us accelerate the capability for our customers faster, we're certainly not shy about using our assets to do that," said Shuckenbrock.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
"As soon as I brought this idea forward, Michael realized it was a related-party action, and recused himself," Shuckenbrock said in an interview.]
What a bunch of crapp! Everyone including Michael new this was going on, Michael didn't just realize anything, he knew the whole time. Little brother gets $155m in cash....
Michael says: My brother owns a company? Worth millions? I didn't know that!
It is not a trivial amount, so someone needs to scrutinize the amount paid by the metrics of the deal....where is the beef?
- dell doing more
- by krymarh February 21, 2008 3:37 PM PST
- Instead of expanding into one more field, Dell should fix their computers and their computer service. NOt even two months ago be bought computer for our daughter to help her write college applications and prepare visual art portfolio. From the start computer was malfunctionning shuting itself every few minutes. That might happen, but that happened after two contacts with technical support. After the third contact computer went completely blank. It never happened to any other computer we owned before (seven so far). The worst thing is their customer support supervisor told us there is nothing to be done about it - no number to call, no address to write. Politely, very politely they told us that. I found an address, wrote a letter delivered 18 days ago. No answer yet. Someone called that Dell would call back next day. Two days passed. $1200 to help our daughter and only lost time, lost materials, lost pictures, lost work, she had to redo. And they want to do more? First repair your computers and your customer service. Very disappointed.
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