Computer maker Dell Inc. (DELL) expects corporate demand to pick up next year and is open to more acquisitions, an executive said Wednesday.

Steve Schuckenbrock, president of global large enterprise said the company will look at acquisitions that will complement its growth strategy and is interested in areas such as software.

Last month, Dell agreed to buy information-technology services provider Perot Systems Corp. for $3.9 billion. The deal is the latest example of a tech giant seeking to expand beyond its traditional turf to find new sources of profit in a sour economy.

Schuckenbrock also said it expects the launch of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) latest operating system Windows 7 to speed up a PC replacement cycle.

Microsoft is slated to release Windows 7 on Thursday. Despite a continued weakness in information-technology spending worldwide, Dell's large enterprise business in the Asia Pacific region including Japan is doing well, with strong performances in China and India, said Jim Merritt, president of Asia-Pacific Japan large enterprise.

"In the first-half, we saw sequential growth across all Dell's businesses in China. China is going to be the bright spot with continued investment in technology even during the downturn," said Schuckenbrock.

Merritt said he expects the strong momentum in the deployment of virtualization and cloud computing to continue in the Asia-Pacific region.

Virtualization enables multiple storage devices to be accessed the same way no matter what their type or location while cloud computing is where software is accessed via the Internet rather than installed on individual computer hard drives.

Merritt said the company is helping Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc. (BIDU) and Tencent Holdings Ltd. (0700.HK) to build their cloud-computing infrastructure.

Dell has benefitted from China's stimulus package which has promoted investments in the public sector and IT infrastructure. Merritt said Dell is working with some Chinese banks and oil companies but he declined to name the companies.

When asked about Taiwan's Acer Inc. (2353.TW) surpassing Dell as the world's second-largest PC maker by shipments behind Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) in the third quarter partly due to the strength of low-cost PCs, Schuckenbrock said: "Chasing pure PC units is not our priority."

Profitability of the company is more of a concern than unit growth, he said.

-By Lorraine Luk, Dow Jones Newswires; 852-2802-7002; lorraine.luk@dowjones.com
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