After the rumors in recent days came the official confirmation of the agreement that will allow Dell to buy EMC, also known as EMC Corporation or EMC². There was talk of huge figures, around $50 billion, but this prediction has been largely superseded because Dell will pay a total of $67 billion. The payment will be of $33.15 for each EMC share of which 24.05 in cash and the rest in stock tracking, which are equity offerings linked to the evolution of the shares of VMware, a subsidiary of EMC that remains independent. This is the biggest acquisition in the technology world.

The name EMC is not well-known among the general public but it’s a very big corporation in the storage field, more recently in cloud, in security and also through its subsidiary VMware in virtualization. Founded in 1979, initially produced memory chips before specializing in enterprise storage solutions. In 2001 came the appointment as CEO of Joe Tucci, the same one who concluded the agreement with Dell.

This acquisition is the final act of a relationship began in 2001, when Dell began reselling EMC storage solutions. The relationship became conflictual a few years ago and in 2010 Dell tried to acquire 3PAR, a competitor to EMC, that however was eventually bought by Hewlett-Packard. At the end of that year, Dell got a sort of consolation prize with the acquisition of Compellent and commenting that acquisition I wondered what would change in the relationship with EMC. After a few months the relationship between the two companies broke off.

The value of EMC is much higher than Dell’s but then how is it that the latter can buy the former? Michael Dell (photo ©mikeandryan), the company’s owner, has his own equity firm called MSD Capital L.P. and another one, Silver Lake, will contribute to the financing of the acquisition. They’re the same firms that at the beginning of 2013 allowed Michael Dell to start the operations to buy his own company back.

It’s not accidental that it was Michael Dell himself who negotiated the acquisition of EMC with its CEO Joe Tucci. For Dell’s owner it’s a big move to get a bigger slice of the enterprise market, the reference for EMC. The company can invest and innovate more than ever and compete with biggest competitors in the storage field. VMware will remain independent but will be controlled by Dell, which is reinforced in the field of virtualization services as well.