Dell has acquired Clerity Solutions of Chicago and announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Make Technologies of Vancouver, B.C., both leading global providers of application modernization software and services that the company says reduce the cost, risk and time required to re-engineer applications.

"The addition of Make Technologies and Clerity Solutions to Dell Services positions us to lead in the fast-growing applications modernization space," said Steve Schuckenbrock, president, Dell Services. "We have the capabilities to help customers with all their modernization needs—from re-hosting and re-platforming to code re-engineering. These offerings will enable Dell to support the thousands of commercial and public sector customers looking to migrate business-critical applications to open, standards-based architectures, including the cloud."

"We continue to build and acquire the intellectual property necessary to execute on our strategy, and enable our customers to more simply and quickly deploy solutions that meet their needs,” said Dave Johnson, senior vice president, Dell corporate strategy. “By implementing the technologies acquired in Clerity Solutions and Make Technologies, Dell can help customers consolidate their legacy application on industry standard infrastructure. This will simplify their operational environments, lower their infrastructure costs, and enable them to leverage the cloud."

Companies are modernizing their applications portfolios so they can reduce legacy infrastructure operating costs. These applications run most effectively on open, standardized platforms including cloud, according to Dell. With the acquisition of Make Technologies, Clerity Solutions and existing Dell Services capabilities, Dell provides end-to-end solutions from hardware through application migration services.

Make Technologies' Automated Migrations

Make Technologies’ unique approach to the automation of application and code migration has helped IT departments significantly reduce both volume of code and associated operational costs, according to Dell. The company differentiates itself from competitors in several ways:

• Provides customers with end-to-end application portfolio transformation solutions that modernize entire portfolios of legacy applications in less time and with higher precision
• Provides automated application and code migration tools to re-architect legacy application software and data to a more modern architecture
• Reduces cost of maintaining and managing legacy applications
• Drastically reduces the amount of custom code in legacy portfolios, while protecting the legacy information and business processes of the business functions it supports
• Increases business agility through a re-engineered application that better aligns with our customers’ current and future business processes

Make Technologies was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. It has developed unique intellectual property, including TLM Enterprise Suite, its applications migration software suite. Dell said it looks forward to welcoming Make Technologies’ approximately 100 employees to the Dell Services team. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction remains subject to customary conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of Dell’s fiscal year.

"The combination of Make Technologies and Dell provides the market with a single vendor solution for any modernization activity and is an exciting step in expanding growth opportunities for our core application modernization software and services," said Bill Bergen, president and CEO Make Technologies, Inc. "Together, with Dell's global reach, scale and reputation for customer support, Make's methodology and tools will become even more accessible to more customers struggling with the dilemma that surrounds legacy environments."

Dell has taken significant steps over the past three years to expand its services capabilities to help customers manage the increasing complexity of IT, including the ability to support growing volumes of data, streamline processes and ease the transition to cloud-based solutions.

Clerity's Re-hosting Solution

Clerity’s unique re-hosting solution makes it easier for customers to move applications off legacy computing architectures into the new IT environment of their choice. By automating this approach to IT modernization through its UniKix offering, Clerity helps customers minimize the need to retest systems and retrain IT personnel—which results in overall cost and time savings.

Clerity was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Chicago, Ill. Dell said it welcomes Clerity’s approximately 70 employees to the Dell Services team, and plans to make continued investments to grow the applications modernization capabilities of its Services business. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Unlike other providers, Dell remains committed to open architecture computing and to helping our customers implement optimal platforms for their applications,” said Dell's Schuckenbrock. “Increasingly, these x86 platforms are enabling super-scale cloud environments, and the addition of Clerity gives us a clear advantage in helping customers modernize and migrate their applications off outdated hardware infrastructure to more current architectures. We are thrilled to welcome the Clerity team to Dell.”

“The combination of Clerity and Dell provides tremendous growth opportunities for our core application modernization and re-hosting solutions, and rapidly expands our global reach and scale,” said Brandon Edenfield, president, Clerity Solutions. “Taking this step with Dell is a very natural progression for our business and offers customers access to world-class enterprise solutions and services offered by Dell Services.”

About Clerity Solutions

Clerity Solutions is a leading full-service provider of legacy migration, modernization, and optimization solutions. Drawing from over 20 years of experience, Clerity recognizes that companies have significant investments in core applications and procedures and provides a wealth of low risk, high value tools, technology, and services to reduce IT costs without sacrificing current functionality and service level agreements. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with offices worldwide, Clerity has customers in all major countries, including some of the largest financial services ISVs and Fortune-class end users.

About Make Technologies