Two of the biggest players in enterprise technology, Dell and EMC, are reportedly in talks. According to the Wall Street Journal, the privately held Dell is in advanced discussions to buy EMC in a deal that would be mostly made up of cash.

A deal could be as soon as a week away, although there was a possibility the discussions could fall apart, the Journal quoted an unnamed source with knowledge of the situation as saying.

If the deal happens, it will be one of the biggest in the technology sector in years. EMC, which began life as a data storage company but which has since expanded into other enterprise IT services, was last quoted at US$25,96/share on the New York Stock Exchange, giving it a market capitalisation of $50bn.

EMC owns 80% of VMWare, a high-flying software virtualisation business that itself is worth a hefty $34bn (EMC paid just $625m for the asset). Under the proposed Dell deal, VMWare would reportedly be spun off.

EMC is headquartered in Massachusetts on America’s east coast and has been listed since 1986. It has more than 70 000 employees and is the world’s largest provider of data storage systems to the enterprise market.

Both Dell and EMC have offices in South Africa. Former Gijima CEO Jonas Bogoshi was recently named as EMC’s new country manager for South Africa, while at Dell South Africa, Doug Woolley was recently appointed as GM. — (c) 2015 NewsCentral Media