Websense, a product of the first dotcom boom, has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $906 million.

In a release, the company said that the deal will give shareholders “immediate and substantial” return on their investments and that the $906 million figure is fair given the company’s assets and prospects.

Websense specializes in security products for enterprise and education (including libraries). Its specialty is website blocking, which has come under some criticism in recent years for its perceived link to censorship of free speech and the dissemination of knowledge. For example, the company took some heat in 2011 for blocking students from accessing non-sexually explicit LGBT support websites on school networks.

In 2011, the company announced a high-profile partnership with Facebook to protect Facebook users from spammy and malicious links.

Websense stock prices have hovered around $20 for years. The price had been on a downward slope throughout 2008 and never quite recovered from the economic crash in late 2008.

In terms of percentage change, Websense isn’t necessarily doing worse than some of its dotcom-era counterparts. In fact, it hasn’t performed much worse than Microsoft and Yahoo since 2004:

Websense is trading up 28.86 percent at $24.78 as of this writing.

Websense was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in San Diego, Calif.

Image credit: Websense

With news circulating about Icahn’s involvement, Dell shares rose one percent this morning to $14.30.

The Dell privatization saga has experienced twists and turns with shareholders stepping up to fight the sale. Icahn announced last week he would buy six percent of the company.

The activist investor has sided with shareholders, including Southeastern Asset Management and T Rowe Price who opposed the terms of the deal, in arguing that the buyout “significantly undervalues” the world’s third largest computer maker.

A special committee on the board has said it would welcome Icahn’s input on the sale process.

In a letter to Dell’s board, Icahn took a stand against CEO Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Management’s plan to go private at $13.65 a share. He proposed instead that Dell pay shareholders a special dividend of $9 per share in a combination of cash on hand and additional debt.

Evercore Partners, a Dell advisor, has been running a “go shop” process. According to Bloomberg, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo have both taken advantage of the buy-out talks in order to get a look at Dell’s books but are unlikely to make a bid.

For technology founders, an IPO is like marriage: It takes years of preparation, and it’s a pain to have to report to someone, but it’s usually the ultimate goal.

Equidity‘s outspoken founder and CEO, Mona DeFrawi, sees some major structural problems with the IPO process. Namely, she said that markets have shifted from being investor-focused to trader-focused, and “no one has noticed.”

Mona DeFrawi believes the IPO process is broken.

This has resulted in tech companies failing to attract the “right buyers,” according to DeFrawi.  Traders will typically only hold on to stock for less than 24 hours so they can make money if the stock pops or drops. Meanwhile, long-term growth investors care about the “fundamentals,” meaning the company is less likely to crash.

To support private companies that are readying for an IPO, DeFrawi (a serial entrepreneur and former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University) is distributing invitations for 130 high-growth companies to participate in a beta service called “Equidity 360 degrees.”

Related: Read our IPO predictions for 2013.

The private companies that accept the invitation will be connected with long-term growth investors; they can securely share financials and key company information in advance of an IPO.

Equidity will make money through selling its advisory services. It’s a similar business model to DeFrawi’s previous company, InsideVentures, which was acquired by investment platform SecondMarket in 2009.

DeFrawi will help these pre-IPO companies line up investors that are in it for the long haul and not just for a few short hours.

“These companies wouldn’t put their software out without sales and marketing, but they do it with their stock all the time,” said DeFrawi. During her career, she has also worked in investor relations — a role which believes is undervalued, misunderstood, and that some consider as a “chick job.”

She said most investor relations professionals are adept at paperwork and scheduling conference calls with analysts but forget about the marketing and business development work that is needed to attract growth investors.

With companies like Dell going private, DeFrawi fears that tech startups will delay an IPO for as long as possible. She cites research that over 90 percent of job growth occurs post-IPO (although media reports suggest this may be overblown).

As part of the beta launch, DeFrawi compiled a list of tech companies that are in a strong position to IPO, which she shared with us. They include:

• Cloud storage and CRM: Dropbox, Sugar CRM, Box
• Consumer tech: Eventbrite, Gilt Groupe, Living Social
• Business software services: Docusign, SurveyMonkey, Marketo, and Evernote
• Next generation storage: Violin Memory and Nimble Storage
• Wearable computing and health: Jawbone and Zocdoc

Dell has been trying to rebrand itself as an enterprise solutions provider — a provider of enterprise technology like servers and cloud computing — in recent years, Dell CFO Brian Gladden said in the interview. Enterprise solutions, like providing online video and cloud computing, has become a $17 billion business for Dell.

Taking the company private is an option that’s kicked around a lot over at Dell’s Round Rock, Tex.-based campus. If the company weren’t in the middle of re-branding itself to work more for enterprise customers, it would be a much more viable option, Gladden said. But because the PC manufacturer is in the middle of changing its focus, it’s probably not an option for the immediate future.

By acquiring 3Par and its data storage capabilities, Dell would have been able to make a stronger push as a cloud provider and bring the cost of providing cloud computing down. But instead, Dell withdrew its $2 billion offer for the 3Par in September, ceding the company to HP. The bidding war happened over several weeks, with HP making the final acquisition for $2.4 billion. Dell was caught by surprise by just how much HP was willing to pay for 3Par, Gladden said.

That doesn’t mean Dell is throwing in the towel in the cloud computing marketplace. The PC giant picked up Boomi, a provider of web-based software services, earlier this week.

Around half of Dell’s revenue comes from personal computer sales now — and 80 percent of that comes from enterprise customers. That market is worth around $6 billion, Gladden said. But at the same time, Dell wasn’t planning on taking on companies like HP in the retail sector, he said.

Dell’s revenue grew 22 percent in its most recent quarter when compared to the same quarter one year ago — from $12.8 billion to $15.5 billion. Its services component, which includes enterprise solutions, grew 35 percent to $2.9 billion last quarter when compared to $2.1 billion the same quarter a year earlier. Its net income grew 16 percent to $886 million, compared to $762 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

Dell reports its earnings for the third quarter this year in around two weeks.

[Photo: Pink Sherbert Photography]