BUMP!
Posted on 09/21/2009 7:16:46 AM PDT by deport
NEW YORK — Dell Inc. plans to buy the technology services company Perot Systems Corp. for about $3.9 billion as it tries to expand beyond the PC business and compete more aggressively with Hewlett-Packard Co. — which also recently bought a tech-services company founded by H. Ross Perot.
Dell said it will offer $30 per share in cash for Perot Systems_ a 68 percent premium over its closing price Friday. Perot Systems' shares rose $11.73, or 65 percent, to $29.64 in morning trading.
Dell shares fell 80 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $15.89.
Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot Sr., now 79, serves as chairman emeritus of Perot Systems, which he founded in 1988. He earlier had made a fortune from founding Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 and selling the company to General Motors Corp. in a 1984 deal worth $2.5 billion. Hewlett-Packard bought EDS last year for $13.9 billion.
........Plano, Texas-based Perot Systems would bring Dell more than 1,000 customers in a wide range of sectors, from government to manufacturing and financial services. About 48 percent of its revenue comes from the health care industry and 25 percent from government. Its customers include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the military.
End snips
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Recall too that when some of his Perot Systems folks got grabbed in Iran, he launched an undercover rescue mission and got them out. There’s a whole hallway near the cafeteria in the Plano PS campus about that, with photos and memorabilia. Wild stuff.
As a former Dell employee who quit 5 years ago I can tell you that Dell is anything but a straightforward company. Cheap product, cheaper support and a philosphy that once the check clears the bank, the customer is stonewalled. Tech support pretty much knows nothing but how to read a decision tree script to try and solve problems. Don’t tell them what is wrong, the script will tell you. I am scared that our government does anything with this company.
>> the customer is stonewalled.
As a Dell business customer for at least the last six years, I can tell you that support and equipment repair have been fantastic. I had one issue, however, where a RAID drive replacement required first stepping through controller and firmware upgrades (the decision tree). Support offered an onsite tech, but I declined preferring to do it myself which inevitably delayed the repair process because of parts shipment.
I used to assemble my systems, but turned to Dell without regret.
I have no investments with the Dell, or know anybody that works for the company.
HP is worse.
Dell is betting $3.9B that Obama will get “ObamaCare” pushed thru...as it requires electronic medical records and Perot Systems is the odds on favorite to get a majority of the hospital/doctor/government contracts for electronic record systems. I am rooting against Dell on this one!
Really? I thought it was an active data warehouse.
This gives the little guy enough money to run for President....again....
I can understand that and what I (and Gene Eric just below you) said as well. Dell’s product strikes me as fairly industry standard simple. Because of that, I would always look to them first for a laptop, as there are a lot of cheap, spare parts available to fix them. Most manufacturers don’t have that to fall back on. Not that the manufacturers like it, but buyers like the option. So Dell can be a good buy from the “Support” poinjt of view, even if Dell doesn’t supply the support.
I build my own non-laptops every couple of years, so Dell is irrelevant to me there. It does strike me as the old IBM in a number of ways, though: Straightforward product, may not as good as the competition but ubiquitous, a whole world of people who know it, so it all works. It’s predictable and “good enough”. Not a bad position to be in.
It also says that there is a relatively simple corporate culture in the sense that there couldn’t be too many internal power centers or there would be a much more diverse product.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.