Dell announced a deal to buy high-performance datacenter networking firm Force10 in a move aimed at broadening offerings for businesses.
Dell is buying Force10 as a trend toward software being offered as services in the Internet "cloud" pushes demand for efficient, capable datacenters where the computing work is done.
"Combining Dell's global scale, reach and enterprise portfolio with our innovation in high-performance networking provides our customers the best end-to-end solution for today's and tomorrow's data centers," said Force10 chief executive Henry Wasik.
Force10 has its headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose and has grown into a global operation boasting nearly $200 million in annual revenue since it was founded in 1999.
Dell said that it planned to keep Force10's research and development facility in Chennai, India.
Round Rock, Texas-based Dell has been beefing up its business products portfolio in recent years and deemed Force10 a natural complement to its strength in the server market.
"Today's datacenter networks are too complex and require too much manual intervention," said Brad Anderson, Dell's enterprise solutions group senior vice president. "What worked in the past is no longer viable in the virtual era."
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2011
