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In an effort to offer more services to its enterprise customers, Dell announced Nov. 14 that it would acquire ACS, a London-based IT services provider.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed and the two companies, in a joint statement, did not indicate when the deal would be finalized. Dell did note that it would absorb ACS employees once the acquisition is complete.
The purchase will now give Dell, which is based in Round Rock, Texas, the ability to blend ACS application management, deployment services and infrastructure consulting into its own services offerings.
On June 28, Dell announced a new line of services called Platinum Plus, which was seen as a way for the company to offer bigger and better services to high-end customers by packaging standard offerings with its equipment.
In a statement, Stephen Murdoch, a vice president with Dells Europe, Middle East and Africa division, said the acquisition of ACS will help when systems migrate to Microsofts new operating, dubbed Vista. Vista is set to be launched to businesses Nov. 30, and consumers early in 2007.
ACS infrastructure consulting is centered on the areas of virtualization, security and Microsoft products.
“With the expertise we acquire with ACS, Dell extends its existing capabilities to support the full lifecycle of our customers application deployments,” Murdoch said in the statement.
“By engaging earlier in the planning phases, we can help ensure critical changes such as Microsoft Vista migrations are well planned, designed and executed.”
The purchase of ACS also gives Dell a bigger presence in the international marketplace. ACS application packaging can be centrally located, which gives Dell the ability to deliver these services worldwide.
ACS, which has offices in London and throughout the United Kingdom, was founded in 1990 and serves several customers in the United Kingdom financial services market.
Dell, which has found itself slipping behind Hewlett-Packard in worldwide and U.S. PC sales will announce its third-quarter earnings Nov. 16.
In the lead up to that quarterly report, Dell has looked to expand its hardware offerings to the enterprise.
In addition to refreshing its Intel-based line of servers, the company also began using Advanced Micro Dynamics technology in some of its servers and PCs.