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Dell to Acquire EMC in $67 Billion Deal

With EMC a majority shareholder in VMWare and the new combined company being privately held, the deal would position Dell to make longer-term investments and shift its product-line toward software and storage-based solutions.

One of the biggest tech companies is about to get bigger. In what would be the largest tech deal ever, Dell agreed to acquire computer storage company EMC Corporation for $67 billion.

The combined company is to be privately held and led by Michael Dell, who will serve as chairman and CEO, while Joe Tucci will step down as chairman and CEO of EMC. The deal is expected to go through between May and October 2016.

Dell, now primarily a business and consumer hardware company, is expected to expand its offerings to include more data storage equipment and storage-oriented software. EMC has 81 percent ownership of VMWare, a cloud and virtualization software company. Investors speculate that Dell plans to maintain control of VMWare.

Before the deal goes through, there is opportunity for competitors to make acquisition offers. Hewlett-Packard released a statement saying the company intends to capitalize on the merger:

"This is a real opportunity for HP. Two of our largest competitors are attempting a highly distracting, multi-year merger, just as we are launching two new, focused companies," an HP statement reads.

In the HP split, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will focus on business products like servers, while HP Inc. will focus on consumer printers and personal computers.

Oracle, Cisco and IBM are all potential competitors in the EMC acquisition, but analysts guess that both IBM and Oracle are likely uninterested.

When asked if there would be layoffs as a result of the acquisition, Dell responded: "There will be adjustments to the business, but other companies are better at reducing headcounts than we are. We have added about 2,000 new salespeople. One of the benefits of being private is that we can make investments that may not have an immediate return within a 90-day period.”

Colin wrote for Government Technology and Emergency Management from 2010 through most of 2016.