Dell said Tuesday it has purchased application modernization vendor Clerity Solutions, in its second enterprise software-related acquisition news this week.
On Monday, Dell announced it has agreed tobuy Wyse Technology, makerof software and hardware for thin clients. Now the Clerity deal, whosefinancial terms were not disclosed, will give Dell technology fortransitioning applications now running on older mainframe systems tonewer architectures, including cloud hosting platforms.
Dell’s acquisition of CleritySolutions targets the enterprise software market.
Clerity’s tools automate the migration of legacy applications to newsystems, reducing the amount of re-testing and staff training,according to a statement.
The Chicago company has about 70 workers, who will become part ofDell’s services division. It competes with vendors such as Micro Focusand CA Technologies.
Earlier this year, Dell tapped former CA Technologies CEO John Swainsonto lead a newly formed software division. Observers expected Swainsonto begin making a number of acquisitions to build out the business, ashe was known for doing at CA, with a focus on system management andcloud services.
While Dell’s applications strategy has seemed geared more towardsmaller and medium-sized businesses versus the large enterprises thatare more likely to be using mainframes, the Clerity deal doesn’t signala schism, said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.
“While they’re trying to get to the SMBs, they’re also in theenterprise when you think of the size of contracts they have, as wellthe public sector with the government,” he said.
Swainson also clearly sees value in the mainframe modernization market,according to Wang. “There’s still a lot of money to be made justmanaging application lifecycle,” he said. “[Customers] are trying toautomate these application lifecycle processes so they can go dosomething else.”