Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer

Dell said Thursday that it's buying the privately held systems management appliance company Kace Networks Inc. It did not say what it's paying.

Acquisitions are rare at Dell, but the company is desperate for growth and confirmed this week that it's trying to buy bankrupt Exanet in Israel.

Dell will create a new unit to house Kace and its people under current management.

The California company, which started to put its software in Dell servers last year, chases the mid-market and public institutions like government, education and healthcare, offering to manage their desktops, laptops and servers. It claims 1400 customers.

Its KBOX systems handle device discovery, system inventory, asset management; configuration management, including operating system deployment, power management software distribution, application virtualization and scripting; system deployment, imaging and Windows 7 migration; end-point security via patch management, security-policy enforcement and vulnerability scanning; and service management through integrated service desk, user portal and alerting.

The widgets are supposed to take a day to install and in a lot of cases pay for themselves in three months.

KBOX appliances support Windows, Mac, Linux and integrated application virtualization. Kace is currently hot for application virtualization. Its products are available as both physical and virtual appliances.

Dell is supposed to give it global reach and added resources for development and support.

Kace is backed by Sigma Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Focus Ventures.