Dell reached an advanced stage of negotiation to sell its Perot Systems arm to TCS, according to online publication Recode. But the deal fell through recently because the parties could not agree on the price, it said. Recode said Dell is trying to sell Perot, the IT services business which it acquired in 2009 and which has a significant proportion of its employees in India, for over $5 billion. It said Dell has approached several potential buyers including French IT firm Atos, the IT BPO firm Genpact and Canadian IT firm CGI, apart from TCS. Dell is believed to be trying to sell some non-core parts of its business to finance its $67-billion buyout of storage company EMC. It is expected to incur a debt of $45 billion on this acquisition, and sale of assets could lighten that load. Multiple reports say that two other acquisitions, Quest Software and SonicWall, are also being considered for sale. Dell’s acquisition of Perot Systems for $3.9 billion had substantially strengthened its IT services business, especially the healthcare vertical. Suresh Vaswani, who is part of the Dell executive management team and who was previously Wipro’s joint CEO, leads the services business. In an interaction with TOI in early 2012, Dell founder Michael Dell had said services were growing faster than the rest of the company’s business. Dell has now justified the EMC acquisition on the grounds that the combined entity will have the ability to deliver a wide range of IT products ranging from the PC all the way up to industrial-grade storage gear and software to make it all run more efficiently. Dell has said the IT marketplace wants fewer vendors. May be in this new strategy, services will play a lesser role.
