Dell to buy Texas-based data protection company

Credant is part of firm’s push to be full-service supplier.

Dell Inc. has done another deal.

The Round Rock-based company said Tuesday it had reached an agreement to buy Addisonbased Credant Technologies, which it described as an industry leading provider of data protection solutions. No terms of the deal were disclosed.

Credant secures data sent from “endpoints” — such as personal computers and mobile phones — to servers, storage networks or to cloud computing environments.

The Credant solution protects and encrypts data as it moves between computers and other smart devices. The technology works within existing systems management processes and also works with multiple mobile operating systems. Credant now secures more than 2 million endpoints in a variety of industries including aerospace, defense, energy, financial services, universities, government, retail and health care.

Dell has made more than two dozen acquisitions over the past five years as the company has moved toward becoming a full-service supplier of advanced hardware, software and services. Part of Dell’s emphasis has been to acquire more advanced security.

“The Credant assets will complement and extend current Dell device securities features to make Dell computers among the world’s most secure,” said Jeff Clarke, president of end user computing solutions at Dell.

The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of January. said Nicolas Franchet, head of retail e-commerce at Facebook.

That’s one of the trickier aspects of WalMart Store Inc.’s new “Toyland Tuesday” contest, which lets fans vote on which of two toys will be discounted on the following Tuesday. Once a winner is declared on Thursday, the retailer acts quickly to inform its 4,000 stores of how to adjust pricing and displays, says Wanda Young, senior director of social media for Wal-Mart, which has more than 25 million likes on Facebook.

Although it’s the first time Wal-Mart is letting shoppers have a direct say in what merchandise gets discounted, the retailer is learning to use social media in more discreet ways as well.

Last year, Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., acquired an analytics company called Kosmix that monitors online chatter to try and predict what products might become popular.

The unit, now called (at)Walmartlabs, suggested that the retailer give juicers prominent display for the holidays last year, after a movie about an obese man who lost weight on a juice diet started trending online. Wal-Mart declined to give examples of how it used online chatter this holiday season but said it’s slowly playing a bigger role in product decisions.