Dell Inc. is continuing to sell off assets in a bid to elevate the debt burden from its historic $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corp. The latest division to go is its software group, which was bought by private equity firm Francisco Partners Management LLC and hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. this morning.

The press release that announced the news crossed the wire a few hours after three unnamed insiders leaked word of the deal to Reuters. According to the report, the transaction is valued at $2 billion and includes all the major businesses in Dell’s software group save its Boomi unit, which sells application integration services.  Francisco Partners’ and Elliot’s announcement doesn’t explicitly acknowledge either of the tipsters’ claims, but contains a clue that seems to support their accuracy.

The fourth paragraph of the release provides a detailed rundown of the software portfolio that the firms are acquiring, but conspicuously omits Dell’s application integration offerings from the list. And John Swainson, the head of the group, also neglects to mention the software in a canned quote attached to the announcement despite mentioning several of the other areas where his division competes. But while Francisco Partners and Elliot are mum about the organizational aspect of the deal, they did provide some information about the financial details.

The transaction is supported by debt financing from Credit Suisse Grup Inc. AG and RBC Capital Markets, while Barclays Bank PLC and Citigroup LLC provided buy-side advisory services. Dell, meanwhile, was advised by Goldman, Sachs & Co. during the negotiations. The deal comes less than a month after the vendor sold its professional services giant to Japanese systems integration giant NTT DATA Corporation for $3 billion.

The cash from the transactions will help Dell to more quickly pay back the $50 billion in debt it took on to finance the acquisition of EMC, which means it’ll have to pay less interest. And as an added bonus, having fewer workers on the payroll should also simplify the administrative aspects of the merger.

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