Dell's pending $960 million acquisition of storage-equipment maker Compellent Technologies will likely unsettle its network of resellers more than its own employees -- or Compellent's.
Dell has offered employment to all 490 Compellent employees and has signed contracts to retain the company's management team, officials from both companies said on a conference call Monday.
The Compellent workers will be folded into Dell's enterprise unit, which also includes workers Dell acquired when it bought storage maker DealLogic for $1.4 billion in Jan., 2008.
Dell made a play for Compellent after losing out to rival Hewlett-Packard in the bidding for another storage company, 3Par, which H-P agreed to acquire in for $2.35 billion two months ago.
Dell and Compellent signed a reseller agreement that calls for Dell's own sales force to start selling Compellent's storage gear immediately.
The reseller agreement is designed "to educate (Dell) customers and partners about Compellent's product line" in the interim before the acquisitions closes early next year, Anderson said on the call.
Compellent had revenue of $110.4 million for the first nine months of 2010. If it receives the $51.2 million in deferred revenue it booked in the third quarter, the company will have full-year revenue of $161 million.
Dell's data center business, which includes its storage, server and networking gear, had $17 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ended in January 2010.
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