Dell Sells IT Services Unit For $3 Billion (informationweek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: On Monday, March 28, Dell has publicly announced it is selling its IT services unit to NTT Data of Japan for more than $3 billion. The sale of Dell's IT services marks the first and largest transaction the company has taken on since it disclosed in December that it was considering divestitures to help offset its buyout of storage giant EMC, said Dell spokesperson David Frink. However, Frink cautioned that it's not fair to speculate that there will be more divestitures to come or that this will be the last, as the company moves forward with its EMC buyout deal that is valued at roughly $60 billion. The deal between Dell and NTT Data will help ease some of the financial burden of the deal between Dell and EMC. According to Frink, that mega-deal with EMC is expected to close in the August to October timeframe.

Comments

Perhaps not the wisest move...

[Junta]

Though Dell is not the biggest of players in that space, that seems like the most 'clingy' sort of customers. If you truly have outsourced your IT, it's very challenging to change your vendor, since you by definition opted not to have the in-house skills needed to be able to do that.

Compare that to any hardware/software solution, where the client retains enough in-house to be able to say 'You know what, we can switch vendors and here's what the cost picture looks like'. This includes EMC gear.

Also interesting that Dell acquired this division in 2009 for 3.9B. They lost 900 million dollars on the effort.