Bangalore: After months of speculation, desktop giants Dell has successfully won a bidding war in purchasing software player Quest. The company confirmed that they have finalized the purchase for a massive $2.4 billion.

Although Dell is one of the leading desktop makers over the globe, the acquisition of Quest seems rather big as Dell has done only one other multi-billion dollar deal in its history. But Quest is one among many of Dell latest additions that includes SonicWall, a network security business and AppAssure, a security software maker.

John A. Swainson, president of Dell’s software group, said that “The addition of Quest will enable Dell to deliver more competitive server, storage, networking and end user computing solutions and services to customers.” 

Quest, founded in 1987 is one of the best in selling solutions as software to manage databases, protect information’s and simplify access to data and also boasts over $857 million in annual sales. Swainson said that Dell was pretty much attracted to Quest’s application monitoring software and its identity access software, which allows users to access multiple password-protected accounts with a single login.

According to Peter Misek, an analyst with Jeffries & Company, “This is the right move for Dell. With Quest, Dell can provide a bundled offering for software applications in a very seamless way.”

With this acquisition Dell has simply made its first step in solutions for organizations and businesses that needs to build and manage their own data centers, whether on site or in the cloud. According analysts, the recent shopping spree fortifies the fact that the internet is providing more new challenges for companies as they need to store and protect more and more content.

Dell acquired Quest by bidding $28 per share which is pretty lofty than Insight’s starting bid. But still analysts are sure that the company has the ability to achieve the best from Quest with the help of its well acclaimed sales force and accounting departments. Rob D. Owens, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities exclaimed that “At $28, it’s a pretty cheap valuation for Quest, it has room to grow.”