Dell, which has been a buying spree these past couple of months, has acquired a company in its own backyard, MessageOne. MessageOne, a provider of services for e-mail management, archiving and business continuity, will be rolled into Dell’s Software-as-a-Service suite, for a price of about $155 million in cash. According to Steve Schuckenbrock, president, Dell Global Services, and chief information officer, “This is a valuable acquisition for Dell. MessageOne’s offerings add key capabilities to our growing SaaS-enabled services portfolio for the most critical application to businesses of any size – e-mail.”
A leader in the industry, MessageOne brings to Dell world-class technology and talent that will broaden Dell’s configurable services offerings. The company plans to make MessageOne offerings available after close to both direct customers and channel partners.
MessageOne was co-founded by Adam Dell, Michael Dell’s brother, and is owned in part by two investment funds, Impact Venture Partners and Impact Entrepreneurs Fund, managed by Adam Dell.
Once again, this is great news for Austin, both through a local startup seeing a successful exit, and that Dell is continuing in its acquisition mood!
[Congratulations to Satin, Paul, and Mike. You guys deserve it. You were a shoe-in for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year this year, and when you get acquired I don't think you qualify anymore! --Editor]
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
- Sue.
Not sure I understand the congratulations and group-hug offered up to the Dell brothers in this article. This acquisition smells, and not in the good way. It goes to show how much the board is watching out for the stakeholders by allowing this thinly-veiled pay-off to the Dell family. The closing paragraph should read something more along the lines of “Congratulations to Satin, Paul and Mike. You guys deserve it. Welcome to the good ol’ boys club. You are a shoe-in for an SEC probe and a couple years behind bars, and when you get acquired I don’t think they will be any more lenient!”
I understand the comments by Embarrassed & Enraged….so what would make everyone at ease would be the details…what were the revenues, profit and growth metrics…the metrics behind the valuation. Without these how can shareholders be satisfied that this was an investment in the normal course.
Dell went through a lot of trouble to provide independent valuations on the deal, just to avoid the family issue (it seems from the press release). Sounds like you think Dell overpaid for this company.
You know if it was Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google they wouldn’t disclose anything to anyone because at $150M it’s not even “material” to the business. Not something I agree with by the way, but it happens all the time.
No matter what MessageOne’s revenue, Dell will take the product and sell 20x more of them, so it’s definitely a product leverage deal.
It’s better than investing the $155M in Facebook.
Thanks for the comments. Keep the coming!