Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. on Wednesday completed what has been dubbed the biggest technology merger in history, joining two data providers and manufacturers of computing equipment into one $74 billion composition.

The deal, announced in October 2015, closed Wednesday after it received the necessary regulatory approvals at the end of August.

The transaction has created the world’s largest privately controlled, integrated technology company, Dell said in a statement, and unites Dell’s strength with small business and mid-market customers with EMC’s strength with large enterprises. The aim is to continue to generate profitable growth, especially in the $2 trillion information technology market.

The joint technology portfolio will be able to solve complex problems for customers in the industry’s fast-growing areas of hybrid cloud, software-defined data centers, converged infrastructure, platform-as-a-service, data analytics, mobility and cybersecurity, Dell said.

The joint entity will be called Dell Technologies and will serve 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies, have a combined revenue of $74 billion, and a combined sales force of over 40,000, Dell said.

“We are at the dawn of the next industrial revolution. Our world is becoming more intelligent and more connected by the minute, and ultimately will become intertwined with a vast Internet of Things, paving the way for our customers to do incredible things,” Michael Dell, founder and chief executive officer of Dell, said in the statement. “This is why we created Dell Technologies. We have the products, services, talent and global scale to be a catalyst for change and guide customers, large and small, on their digital journey.”

As of end of 2015, EMC was ranked the sixth-largest software company in the world, and the seventh-largest information technology (IT) company in terms of market share. The company has more than

70,000 employees in 86 locations around the world and has invested a total of $16.5 billion in R&D since 2003, according to EMC data.

Over the years it has acquired and incorporated more than 75 technology companies, including from Israel. The company also has a significant and growing presence in Egypt and Morocco.

David Goulden, the president of the Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group, described the company as “global in nature.”

“We have a significant number of strategic development and R&D and manufacturing sites around the world that form part of our critical ecosystem,” Goulden said on Wednesday.

EMC has been active in Israel since 1996 with its sales and service operation, located in Petah Tikva. Following a number of acquisitions of Israeli companies, the company set up its first official R&D center in Israel in 2006 in Ramat Gan.

In 2011, after several acquisitions of Israeli startups, the R&D center expanded and turned into a Center of Excellence (COE) located in Herzliya, led by Dr. Orna Berry. The COE operates in four sites, two in Herzliya, one in Haifa, and one in Beersheba, and is one of eight EMC COEs in the world.

The Israeli center has registered more than 200 patents to date. Areas of expertise at EMC Israel are flash, big data, high availability, security, cloud, cyber solutions and software defined data centers.

Dell, who is Jewish, visited Israel in May for the Dell Future Ready Conference and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“At Dell we are deeply committed to Israel,” Dell said at the conference in Tel Aviv. “We want to be here, we want to be a partner in the incredible innovation that occurs here.” – Times of Israel

Photo: Michael Dell