Dell Buys Force 10 to Boost Networking

Dell announced its intent to acquire data center networking company Force 10 Networks Wednesday for an undisclosed sum.

Complimentary Enterprise Portfolio

Force 10 will complement Dell's data center portfolio and help broaden the product offerings available to Dell's enterprise client, the companies said.  Force 10 is a nearly $200 million company with a predominantly North American customer base, and lists numerous Web 2.0 and Fortune 100 companies as customers. Force 10’s Open Cloud Networking is based on open standards, automation and virtualization and is very consistent with Dell’s design philosophy. Force 10 brings global services and support capabilities and their product lines offer open automation and management, a massively scalable core data center network, and automated policy configuration and mobility. In May of this year Dell expanded its PowerConnect networking solutions.

"Today’s data center networks are too complex and require too much manual intervention," said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. . What worked in the past is no longer viable in the virtual era. Dell’s approach of offering customers open, capable and affordable solutions aligns with Force10’s approach to offering customers new levels of flexibility, performance, scale and automation which is fundamental to changing the economics of data center networking."

Rumors had persisted for some time that Dell would (or should) acquire Brocade, but the acquisition of Force 10 raises questions about the future of Dell's OEM agreement to resell Brocade's Foundry switches. Dell said it intends  to keep Force10’s existing operations in Chennai, India.

The transaction was approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close in late summer.