The acquisition, rumored for weeks, should help the longtime PC and server manufacturer move more toward offering business services.

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For two years, Michael Dell was the technology industry’s invisible man, toiling behind the scenes to remake the computer company he founded three decades ago in his University of Texas dorm room. Now, with his audacious plan to acquire EMC — the largest tech merger in history — Dell is launching a once-improbable second act.

After having helped finance a $25 billion deal to take an ailing Dell private in 2013, he is teaming up with longtime private equity partner Silver Lake — and taking on considerable corporate debt — in a $67 billion bet that EMC’s dominance in data storage can help him fend off Hew­lett-Packard, Amazon.com and others in the enterprise-computing market.

The deal had been rumored for weeks. EMC, based in Hopkinton, Mass., makes data-storage equipment and provides other IT services to companies.

Big deals

Dell’s proposed $67 billion acquisition of data-storage company EMC is the most expensive involving two technology companies. Many of the tech industry’s other notable deals haven’t panned out as well as the buyers planned. Here’s a look back at some of those past acquisitions:

Avago Technologies buys Broadcom

$37 billion, May 2015

Facebook buys WhatsApp

About $21.8 billion, 2014

Hewlett-Packard buys Compaq

About $19 billion, 2002

Symantec buys Veritas

About $13.5 billion, 2005

Hewlett-Packard buys EDS

About $13 billion, 2008

Google buys Motorola Mobility

$12.4 billion, 2012

Oracle buys PeopleSoft

$11.1 billion, 2005

Hewlett-Packard buys Autonomy

About $10 million, 2011

Microsoft buys Skype

About $8.5 billion, 2011

Oracle buys Sun Microsystems

$7.4 billion, 2010

It also has an 80 percent stake in cloud-computing company VMware, which will stay an independent, publicly traded company.

The acquisition shifts Dell’s focus away from hardware like PCs to the more profitable areas of storage and other business services. Dell has been investing in research and development and expanding its software and services business as those in the technology industry struggle with soft PC sales.

EMC, meanwhile, has been shifting from a provider of data-storage hardware such as on-premise data centers to offering a more comprehensive suite of products to businesses, from cloud storage to security offerings.

Dell will serve as chairman and CEO of the combined company. Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC, will remain in those roles until the deal is complete.

Second act

Second acts in tech have a decidedly mixed record. Steve Jobs, of course, rebounded from years in the wilderness and went on to unleash game-changing products. Meg Whitman left eBay after failing to reverse a slowdown and is still struggling to turn around HP.

Dell, 50, must prove the case for getting larger when many of his rivals have come to prize agility over size.

“There are many challenges,” said Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst at FBN Securities. “It’s not at all clear that putting these two companies together is going to result in a whole lot of value creation.”

Dell was one of the most lionized CEO-entrepreneurs of the 1990s. His signature innovation was a direct-sales model that allowed consumers to build their machines online, then get them delivered to the front door.

Sales soared, Dell became one of the best-performing stocks of the decade, and its founder-CEO famously suggested that a then-struggling Apple should shut down and give the money back to shareholders.

In 2004, Dell handed the reins to his hard-driving chief operating chief. Three years later, Dell returned as chief executive after his company lost the PC market lead to HP. Later that year he abandoned the pioneering practice of selling products only via the Web or by phone.

Tired of dealing with Wall Street, Dell decided to take his company private. Even that wasn’t easy.

Dell had to overcome a frustrated board preparing to appoint a strong second-in-command over his objection, a bid by buyout firm Blackstone Group that may not have included him, and a potential proxy fight by billionaire investor Carl Icahn to install a new board that would have replaced him.

Ultimately, Dell prevailed, throwing a celebratory party at his Austin home, where 150 guests ate ribs, drank Lone Star beer and listened to a country-swing band. A rainbow appeared in the sky, and, according to people who were there, Dell said: “That rainbow ends in Round Rock,” where his company is based.

In February, Moody’s upgraded Dell and said it was paying down debt faster than expected. The ratings service said revenue growth would probably remain in the single digits for its computer and enterprise groups.

During a call with reporters Monday to discuss the EMC deal, Dell touted the debt upgrade. He revealed Dell has hired about 2,000 salespeople, noting that remaining private allows him to make investments without an immediate return.

“He doubled down on the focus of the company,” said Adriana Karaboutis, who was chief information officer at Dell until last year. “He was very consistent with his message around the products, the customers, the solutions and the service.”

On the call with reporters, Dell pointed to the broader selection of products and services he can offer customers by merging with EMC. The companies complement each other, he said, because EMC has strong relationships with large corporations while Dell has the market for medium-sized companies covered.

Still, Dell risks becoming a slow-moving behemoth when the rest of industry is running in the opposite direction. The new company will have more than $80 billion in revenue and tens of billions in debt.

Despite complementary businesses, integration will take time — and HP has already said it will use that period to become even more of a threat.

Meanwhile, disruptive competitors such as Amazon are revolutionizing the enterprise business by delivering computing power at lower prices over the Web. For both Dell and EMC, the main business is selling companies hardware in a “world moving to off-premise, cloud offerings,” Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., wrote to investors.

Dell’s longtime colleagues say it would be foolish to rule out a comeback.

“I would never in a million years bet against Michael Dell,” said Jim Breyer, a former board member and venture capitalist. He’s “fiercely competitive.”