While Dell struggles to go private, private equity is reportedly staging a run on fellow Texan BMC Software, dying to take the thing private and satisfy Elliott Management, which got Novell sold off to Attachmate a while back.

According to Reuters KKR and TPG Capital, which turned their noses up at Dell, have formed a consortium to bid on BMC. So have Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital. Ditto Thoma Bravo, which is said to be participating in still a third consortium.

The deal is expected to top $6 billion.

When the market closed Thursday after the Reuters story circulated and its shares jumped to $45.49 its market cap stood at $6.5 billion.

Reuters says the process is past the first round of bids. Final bids are due in a few weeks.

Elliott, which is believed to own about 9.6%, got the ball rolling last year when it argued that management had missed the shift to Software-as-a-Service and should trim headcount.

Resistance was evidently futile after BMC forecast lower-than-expected profits for 2013 and reported Q3 results than didn't meet Wall Street expectations in January.

The company competes with Oracle, SAP, CA and Compuware.

Compuware, which rejected a $2.3 billion bid from Elliott, is also reportedly talking to buy-out firms.