Dell Says Compellent Deal Is Done

Dell said this morning that it has a "definitive agreement" to acquire Compellent Technologies (CML) for $27.75 a share, which values the storage vendor at about $960 million. Dell will actually pay $820 million since Compellent’s cash holdings are included.

The two companies disclosed their deal talks last week , prompting a selloff in Compellent, which had surged above $33 a share in recent trading amid heated speculation of future storage takeovers.

Compellent specializes in virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning, for enterprise and cloud-computing environments. Dell said it will integrate Compellent's offerings into a storage portfolio including PowerVault, EqualLogic and Dell/EMC offerings. Dell said it will keep Compellent’s existing operations in Eden Prairie, Minn.

"Compellent is a natural complement to Dell’s expanding enterprise storage portfolio," said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Enterprise Product Group. "The Compellent storage platform will enable Dell to provide customers additional mid- and high-end network storage solutions that simplify and reduce the cost of data management. Compellent’s design focus on intelligently managing data to increase efficiency, agility and resiliency is consistent with Dell’s approach of building solutions that can quickly scale to meet the most demanding enterprise environment.”

“We are excited about our merger with Dell," said Phil Soran, President, CEO and Chairman of Compellent. "This is the next logical step in our goal to scale our products, channel and team worldwide. With Dell’s scale and technology leadership, we accelerate the adoption of our virtualized platform, Fluid Data, to redefine the value of enterprise storage for data centers and cloud computing.”

The transaction is subject to approval by Compellent’s shareholders and is expected to close in early 2011.