to the Dell DNA,” said Adrian O’Connell, the research director for Gartner, an IT advisory group. “The Dell that we see today or tomorrow is very different from the Dell we saw ten years ago.”

In all, Dell has spent about $13 billion on acquisitions, yet none have made significant contributions to revenue. It needs the billions it still makes off its grandpa boxes to fund any transition. 

To pull this off Dell will have to transform its sales force and integrate all the companies it has bought. This new version of Dell would still make PCs and other hardware, but the company would be focused on selling bundles of equipment and services, designed and maintained to meet the needs of businesses. It’s a little like buying a new HVAC unit for your house: you hire a company not just to install the machinery but to provide the maintenance and advice needed to keep it running.

This isn’t a business Dell is known for. It has to shake off its “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” image and convince potential customers that it can be trusted with maintaining the electronic backbone of their operations. 

“It’s a very long-term transition to grow the business across these new areas,” O’Connell said. 

Yet there’s something familiar about this move. Once again, Dell is following old rivals into the field in hopes of doing what they do, but more cheaply. IBM has long dominated the services market, and HP has been fighting for a foothold, having bought Electronic Data Systems, the company founded in 1962 by H. Ross Perot. Dell’s acquisition of Perot Systems, the Dallas billionaire’s second act, is the sort of me-too move on which Dell built its hardware prowess. 

Now, with HP reeling from its own management turmoil and slogging through a five-year turnaround, Dell hopes to outmaneuver its old rival. Can the strategy work again? The answer may come back to Michael Dell himself and what happens to him after the vote. While he clearly took his eye off the ball in the middle of the past decade, the challenge the company faces plays to his strengths. Tellingly, Icahn had vowed to replace him, perhaps with former Compaq CEO Michael Capellas. That would be a mistake. Capellas is a salesman, and what Dell needs is a leader.  

Michael Dell is no salesman, and he’s no Steve Jobs either. He isn’t the domineering CEO, obsessing over form and function. Perhaps because he was so young when he started the business, he assembled a team of experts, including the manufacturing genius Mort Topfer, and listened to them. That helped the company recover from past missteps, such as when it botched the first group of laptops it introduced, in the early nineties. 

With this acquisition spree, the company has again amassed expertise from across the computing industry. Whether its founder stays or goes, Dell’s future will once again depend on making the most from the parts that Michael Dell has put together.

Loren Steffy, an author and former business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, is a senior writer for the communications firm 30 Point Strategies and a contributor to Forbes.