14 DAY TRIAL // World's second largest computer manufacturer Dell announced that it will acquire business e-mail services provider MessageOne, founded by Michael Dell's brother. The move is alleged to allow Dell to develop a service that can be compared to either Microsoft or Google's offers in the webmail market.
The deal was inked between the two companies for $155 million, and is the latest purchase in Dell's shopping spree season. Recently, the company has purchased network storage provider EqualLogic in order to increase the company's presence on the storage market.
The software produced by MessageOne is delivered to customers via web, and is alleged to help the companies in all the e-mail-related tasks, such as sending and receiving electronic communications, e-mail management and archiving, as well as data loss prevention and outage impact minimization.
"It simplifies (information technology) for our customers," said Steve Schuckenbrock, Dell chief information officer. "It will compete up against ... solutions that are emerging in the market from companies like Google, like Microsoft and others."
The computer manufacturer claimed that MessageOne is a venture of two investment funds, namely Impact Venture Partners and Impact Entrepreneurs Fund. However, Michael Dell (Dell chairman and founder) as well as his family are investors in both funds.
This is why the company excluded Michael Dell from negotiating the terms and decisions of the acquisition. However, Dell and his family will get about $450,000, while his brother, Adam Dell (the funds manager) will receive an estimative $970,000. According to the company, Michael Dell has already announced that he will donate all his proceeds from the deal to charity organizations.
MessageOne is more than an average e-mail service. It is a second site to take over the company's e-mails, should its own mail servers fail due to overload or database corruption. Moreover, MessageOne does this job way cheaper than its market competitors, because it uses some other technology to back-up the existing e-mails.