Dell is in talks with at least two private-equity firms interesting in buying the company, according to a report citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Bloomberg reports that a deal could be announced as soon as this week, but also the talks could all through if the firms can't raise the necessary funds to take the IT giant private.
It's not the first time Dell has mulled the idea of going private. Back in 2010, CEO and namesake Michael Dell admitted to investors that he had thought about taking the company private. According to Bloomberg, Dell owns 15.7 percent of the company himself, which should make it easier for the firms to raise the necessary funding to take the company private.
Dell is best known for its PC line, but so-called "post-PC devices" like smartphones and tablets are cutting into the desktop and laptop markets. Over the years, Dell made forays into making MP3 players and Android-based phones and mini-tablets, but those initiatives have been shuttered.
Instead, the company is -- like HP -- working to move into the higher margin enterprise technology business in recent years. It acquired companies such as database technology company Quest, storage company Compellent, software based networking company RNA Networks, and cloud integration company Boomi. It also began offering services for building and maintaining private cloud services, and formed partnerships with the big data services company Cloudera.
Meanwhile, Dell has been courting the developer community by releasing a programmer-centric Ubuntu Linux based laptop and backing open source projects like Crowbar, a tool for automatically deploying cloud and big data systems.
A record 30 percent of Dell's $62.1 billion revenue came from its non-PC business in 2011, according to Fortune. But it takes time to transform from a commodity hardware company into high-end enterprise technology and services company, and investors have been getting impatient. The company stock's fell 32 percent over 2012, from $14.74 a share to $10.14.
