Introduction

Try to discover the story of Dell Technologies and its efforts to revitalize its value proposition

and escape a commodity trap by acquiring EMC for $$67$ billion$$the largest tech acquisition in

history. It also shows the deeply intertwined connections between a company$$s business

strategy and its go$-$to$-$market operations. Michael Dell founded Dell Inc. in $1984$ to assemble

PCs$.$ The company quickly became the market share leader by the end of the century. By $2008$

$($before the recession$),$ Dell had expanded into servers, networking and storage, as well as

services. Still, the hardware market was beginning to commoditize, with the trend accelerating

after the recession. EMC, founded in $1979,$ had a similar story. It became the dominant player in

data storage through early $2000$ only to find that new technologies and nimble competitors

were putting its business under severe commodity pressure by the turn of the century. Thus in

$2015,$ when Dell made a $$67$ billion acquisition of EMC, many knowledgeable IT industry

observers found it hard to comprehend the logic of two commodity$/$hardware players coming

together. By then, most enterprises, large and small, were eyeing digital transformation. Cloud

service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud seemed to

be serving their needs. Thus Michael Dell had to carefully construct a strategic position for the

newly constituted Dell company in the rapidly evolving IT market space. In addition, Dell and

EMC also had to decide how to merge their Go$-$to$-$Market operations to gain the synergies

promised by the merger. Dell had over $365,000$ customers and EMC nearly $430,000.$ Dell had

$17,000$ salespeople and EMC, $7,000.$ Each had over $10,000$ channel partners. Adding a wrinkle

to the merger was a third actor, VMware, an independently listed cloud software company, $80\%$

owned by the new Dell Technologies entity. Integrating their software capability would be an

exciting opportunity and a challenge.

In this case study, you$$re encouraged to extensively research background information and

analysis reports related to this merger and acquisition. While there's no strict requirement for

computational work, you should aim to apply the knowledge and concepts discussed in our

classes to analyze this M&A$.$ If appropriate data is available, a brief analysis of the merger's Net

Present Value $($NPV$)$ can also be attempted. This approach will deepen your understanding of

the practical application of theoretical concepts in real$-$world scenarios. Try to answer the

following questions as your best:

$1.$ The Basic Forms of Acquisitions:

Explore the structure of Dell's acquisition of EMC and how it fits within the broader spectrum of

acquisition types.

$2.$ Synergy & Sources of Synergy:

Analyze the synergies forecasted or realized in the Dell$-$EMC merger. Discuss sources such as

technology integration, market expansion, and cost savings.

$3.$ Friendly versus Hostile Takeovers & Defensive Tactics

Classify the nature of this takeover and is there any defensive strategies EMC might have

employed during the acquisition process.

$4.$ Have Mergers Added Value?

Assess whether the Dell$-$EMC merger added value to the combined entity.

$5.$ The NPV of a Merger$($Optional$)$:

Calculate or estimate the Net Present Value $($NPV$)$ of the Dell$-$EMC merger.