Dell on Monday said it is buying Wyse Technology to expand its business offerings in the Internet "cloud" in the face of softening demand for traditional computing hardware. The Texas-based computer maker did not disclose financial terms of the deal for Wyse.

"We believe that taking this step with Dell is a very natural progression for our business," Wyse chief executive Tarkan Maner said in a release. "The combination of Wyse and Dell provides us with tremendous growth opportunities for our core desktop virtualization business, helps us expand into new and fast-growing market segments including mobility and cloud computing, and provides us with reach and scale we did not previously have."

Virtualization is a hot trend in which software can get a single computer do the work of several machines.

Dell saw the takeover as broadening the array of online services it sells to businesses at a time when global sales of personal computers is slowing. IDC enterprise platform research group vice president Matt Eastwood expected the multi-billion-dollar market for desktop computing "virtualization solutions" in big data centers to see strong growth globally in the years ahead.