At first glance, the random acquisition of an email services company doesn’t sound all that intriguing. But Dell spent $155 million for MessageOne, so it’s pretty noteworthy from a business perspective. And to make matters even more interesting, MessageOne’s cofounder is the brother of Michael Dell.
Both companies have worked to prove that the acquisition isn’t an example of nepotism, however. Going into the deal, it seems that boards of directors, groups of investors, and Morgan Stanley all had their say (and said “yea”). Also, after the acquisition, Michael Dell will apparently donate to charity the money that he, his wife, and his children’s trust would have received.
We’re willing to let everybody off the hook at this point; if stockholders are happy (Dell’s value is up 1.27 percent in pre-market trading), let come what may. Yet Steve Schuckenbrock, Dell’s CIO and President of Global Services, made a good point about the addition of MessageOne. “Somewhat coincidentally, all of this comes to a head one day after a national ‘Blackberry blackout,'” he wrote on the Direct2Dell blog.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better illustration for the importance of e-mail continuity,” Schuckenbrock then continued. “To realize the promise of e-mail continuity though we need a new way for delivering services.”
Some onlookers are bound to remain suspicious – alarm:clock wasn’t thrilled with all this, for example – and given the circumstances, it’s hard to blame them. Still, family ties or not, it looks like nothing more than a big and well-intentioned acquisition has taken place.
