Dell on Monday said it is buying Wyse Technology to expand its business offerings in the Internet "cloud" in the face of softening demand for traditional computing hardware.

The Texas-based computer maker did not disclose financial terms of the deal for Wyse, which has its headquarters in the California city of San Jose.

"We believe that taking this step with Dell is a very natural progression for our business," Wyse chief executive Tarkan Maner said in a release.

"The combination of Wyse and Dell provides us with tremendous growth opportunities for our core desktop virtualization business, helps us expand into new and fast-growing market segments including mobility and cloud computing, and provides us with reach and scale we did not previously have."

Virtualization is a hot trend in which software can get a single computer do the work of several machines.

Dell saw the takeover as broadening the array of online services it sells to businesses at a time when global sales of personal computers is slowing.

IDC enterprise platform research group vice president Matt Eastwood expected the multi-billion-dollar market for desktop computing "virtualization solutions" in big data centers to see strong growth globally in the years ahead.