Dell Buys On-Demand Emailer MessageOne

Dell continues to expand its business from making PCs to offering software services as it acquires on-demand emailer and data recovery firm MessageOne for $150 million.

Computer maker Dell is keeping up with its efforts to diversity its business offerings, expanding from solely making and selling computer hardware and peripherals to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) arena. To that end, the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker has just agreed to acquire on-demand emailer and disaster recovery firm MessageOne for $150 million.

MessageOne offers managed email services, data archiving, and business continuity services for organizations and enterprises. Basically, if a company is hit by a natural disaster or other catastrophe, MessageOne helps the company get back on its feet by making sure email and internal communications are fully recovered and restored. The company also specializes in data archiving and “e-discovery”—wading through years of documents and messages to recover communications and messages relevant to litigation.

“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,” said Dell’s CIO and president of Global Services Steve Schuckenbrock, in a statement. “MessageOne’s services not only meet the needs of large companies—with an impressive roster of existing Fortune 500 customers and marquee partners as proof points—but can also scale down cost effectively to meet the needs of small and medium business customers.”

Dell CEO Michael Dell was excluded from participating in the negotiation because MessageOne is run by his brother, Adam Dell. Nonetheless, all Dell family members are expected to do pretty well by the deal; Michael and Susan Dell have indicated the roughly $12 million they receive from the acquisition will be donated to charity.