Dell, the company that's perhaps best known for it's line of colorful, college student-friendly laptops, is getting into the cyber security business with its fairly sizable purchase of SonicWALL, Inc. 

While we don't know exactly how much Dell spent on the software company, analysts estimate the price was between $1 and $1.5 billion. (That's a lot of laptops.) It seems like a sensible move for the Texas-based technology company, though. As its competitor HP, the number one PC maker, moves its business towards the cloud-based enterprise software business, and Lenovo, the number two, does the same, Dell is undoubtedly trying to find its niche, where it can keep growing. With all of these hackers bringing down websites and stealing people's credit card numbers, there's little doubt that cyber security will be a growing field for some years to come. Regardless, the idea of buying a company that fights hackers is infinitely better than trying to compete with Apple in the hardware business. Remember the time Dell tried to create an iPod-like device? Neither do we.

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Adam Clark Estes