Dell completes acquisition of Perot

Dell has completed its acquisition Perot Systems and said that it expects the move to have most impact on its healthcare services.

In September, E-Health Europe reported that Dell would buy Perot for €2.7 billion -the biggest deal in the company’s history. The company closed the deal at the beginning of November.

Dell's new services business will be run by Peter Altabef, who was previously chief executive of Perot. Altabef said the focus will be on increasing automation, performing tasks remotely and using a model of IT-as-a service, including software, infrastructure and applications.

“Dell services is big enough to be credible and have scale and yet we are nimble enough to lead a services transformation,” he said.

Dell said the services business will have the greatest presence in healthcare, where it supplies most of the hospital systems in the US, providing IT infrastructure and business process outsourcing for billing.

Paul Bell, head of Dell's public sector business, identified mobile clinical computing and electronic medical records as areas of focus for the services business.

Chief financial officer Brian Gladden said on a conference call on Wednesday that Dell identified more than €210m in cost reductions from combining the two companies. He also said Dell believes it can grow revenue 5-7% over the longer term.

The newly combined services business will have 42,000 employees and annual revenue of around €5.2 billion, with about half of that coming from the public sector.

In the UK, Perot Systems is best known as a sub-contractor to BT in the delivery of the National Programme for IT in the NHS in London. BT awarded Perot a £108m implementation deal in December 2004.

The six and a half-year deal covered project management, care redesign, clinical best practice solutions, and product implementation and configuration services.

In June, it was announced that Perot will help implement Meditech at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, on behalf of FileTek UK outside of the national programme.

Links: Perot Systems

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