It’s not a month in this industry unless Dell adds something to its tool belt through acquisition, and the Round Rock, Tex.-based company got April off to a flying start, opening the work month with the announcement it intends to purchase thin client market leader Wyse Technology.

Dave Johnson, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Dell, called the Wyse deal “an important next step in our end-user computing strategy, the critical area of cloud client computing.”

The deal will also add value to Dell’s enterprise computing business, which provides the infrastructure on which thin client and zero client solutions from both companies run. While Dell has an active virtual desktop practice, it has not offered thin clients to date.

Last month Dell announced its purchase of firewall and security appliance vendor SonicWall, just part of its busy acquisition schedule of late, which has also seen it buy AppAssure, Force10, and Compellent, among other deals.

What exactly will the move mean for Wyse partners? Dell’s strategy has typically been to invite partners of new acquisitions into the PartnerDirect community and expose them to the wider Dell product base, as well as extending the new products to the existing base. Johnson indicated that strategy would also be the case with Wyse partners brought ton board.

“We fully embrace the channel,” Johnson said. “The addition of 3,000 [Wyse] partners will broaden Dell’s overall channel reach. We will retain those channel partners.”

Johnson said that Wyse partners who today have no connection to Dell will be broad on board and trained up. And at the same time, the company will look to get its existing partner base up to speed on Wyse technology.

Gilles Philippe, marketing manager for commercial channels at Dell Canada, said last week that when the company makes an acquisition, it seeks to bring “the best parts” of its new businesses’ channel programs into the PartnerDirect program itself.

Tarkan Maner, president and CEO of Wyse, said that since the announcement was made at 5am Pacific time Monday, his “phone has been buzzing with calls and text from our channel partners globally,” most of whom are excited about the deal. Like SonicWall chief Matt Medeiros last month, he said he believes joining Dell will extend the reach and options of his company’s channel partners.

“Partners are excited for many reasons, one of which is that they now have an end-to-end solution to sell their customers,” Maner said.

Maner said there is a degree of overlap between the existing Dell and Wyse channel partners, but declined to quantify exactly how many of Wyse’s 3,000 partners are joint partners. Maner said announcements were still to come from Wyse and Dell on training certification paths for all involved. “We hope to have the right certification program in place over the next few months,” he said.

Like its earlier acquisition of SonicWall, the Wyse purchase is expected to close in Dell’s second quarter, which ends in early August.