Computer maker Dell, Inc. may be about to expand its horizons with a report Wednesday that it was in talks to acquire part or all of rival cloud computing company EMC Corp.

The Wall Street Journal quotes the proverbial “people familiar with the matter,” saying that the two companies are definitely talking, however was unable to provide anything more concrete than that.

Later in the day Reuters shed some more light on the deal becoming a simple acquisition, saying that Dell was in talks with banks about raising debt financing for an all-cash offer for EMC.

A merger or simple acquisition would be one of the biggest deals ever in the technology industry, with EMC having a market cap just shy of $50 billion.

The new report isn’t the first time that EMC has been in talks for a merger or acquisition, with the company said to have been in similar talks with Dell and the Hewlett-Packard Company in September 2014.

A possible change in ownership comes at a troubled time for EMC with the company struggling with challenges by activist investors including Elliott Management, Inc. to sell off its 80 percent stake in VMware, Inc. as a way of maximizing shareholder value; that push has been part of broader stockholder demands that EMC sell off parts of what it calls its “federation” of businesses including EMC Information Infrastructure for storage, RSA for security, and Pivotal for cloud platform and agile development.

The company has also struggled in growing the business, having reported declining profits in July, with its storage division reporting no growth at all; overall EMC grew only 2 percent between 2013 and 2014, compared to 16 percent between 2010 and 2011.

One possible outcome of an acquisition could see Dell keeping EMC’s core Big Data-storage operation which would be complementary to Dell’s direction since it went private in 2013, while spinning off, or divesting the other parts of EMC which aren’t as strong a strategic fit; EMC’s 80 percent stake in VMware alone is worth approximately $27.5 billion based on VMware’s current market cap of $34.3 billion.

The market responded positively to the reported talks between the two companies and drove EMC’s share price up 7.86 percent to $28 per share in after-hours trading, up from the closing price of $25.81.

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