back to article The incredible IT hulk: Dell + EMC - did someone say 'synergy'?

So, Dell and EMC have signed a definitive agreement for Dell to buy EMC and maintain VMware as a publicly traded company. Essentially EMC goes private as part of Dell and Elliott Management gets the payoff it wanted. The big eight IT suppliers: Cisco, Dell, Oracle, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM and NetApp, have consolidated to seven with …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > We anticipate NetApp will continue to go it alone, not looking for a tie-up deal with Cisco, IBM or HP, but will develop a much stronger hyper-converged product offering.

    Strong track record: FlashRay anyone? cDOT?

    Not that NetApp acquisitions have been any better...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Strong Track Record

      Haters going to hate hate hate. In any case for acquisitions, name a large NetApp acquisition that has failed. NetApp's acquisition of LSI went quite well with more E-Seires controllers being out there in the world running today than any other storage product. OnTap also is #1 in storage OS market share which will ultimately translate to cDOT market share as customers migrate. As far as Flash Ray goes, certainly that was announced prematurely, but aspects of it are already in NetApp's AFF product which is also doing quite well. There are a lot of NetApp haters on here, but if you look at the facts they generally are wrong.

  2. Lynrd

    So, what becomes of VCE?

    Is it just "VD" now?

  3. chivo243 Silver badge

    New kinda dollar

    I know a silver dollar, and a half dollar, now they're payin' in some new kind of dollar, the billion dollar.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Revenue synergies

    Yes, maybe Dell customers become more likely to buy VMware over HyperV since they'll get some sort of bundled deal. But HP and Lenovo may be less likely to push VMware than they used to because of the worry that Dell might steal the server buy, so they'll have more reason to get in bed with Microsoft and HyperV.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Synergy schminergy

    If I am HP and IBM, I would be looking very carefully at VMware's behavior after this merger. VMW is nominally independent of DellMC, but actions speak louder that words.

    If the channel starts pushing VMware as always running the best on Dell, that might just push me into the arms of an alternative just so that my enterprise virtualization strategy is not entirely beholden to one of my deadliest rivals.

    Luckily for VMW, the alternative, OpenStack, is still in pieces on the floor of the opensource treehouse. Maybe a Microsoft/Docker alliance with help from HP and IBM is the Plan B?

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Synergy schminergy

      If I were IBM I'd be looking to make sure that OpenStack runs like shit off a shovel on 'P' Series. IBM has release a number of new 'P' Series boxes optomised for Linux. (S812LC etc)

      Then they can tout that and give two fingers to VMware.

      After all IBM have spent an awful lof of investment $$$ on Linux and Linux Products in recent years.

      But will they?

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Adam R

      Re: Synergy schminergy

      OpenStack isn't the competitor to VMware (regardless of what vendors/analysts say, and neither is docker), that is Hyper-V.

      OpenStack is aimed at newer cloud applications that do their own HA, deployment etc where the PaaS layer is king (and docker is just another way of providing the run time environment for the code).

      All the application needs is a programmatic API to hook into, they don't require "enterprise" grade infrastructure (i.e, no need for HA/DR from the tin). OpenStack is great at that, and it is one of the reasons VMware offer VIO to try and capture some of those workloads that they are loosing.

      If Dell are smart they will leave VMware out in the wilds as a mature cash cow (which is what it is) and just take the cash off the back to pay the no doubt ridiculous interest charges (billions of $'s a year) they will have on the debt they are taking on to buy EMC. If they are dumb they will p*ss off the other vendors (by trying to promote) and make them jump into bed with MS to promote Hyper-V for traditional apps and keep promoting OpenStack for the newer applications.

  6. AbstPoolAuto

    Regarding vmware

    The same doubts were cast when emc bought them, whether the relationship with HP especially would be impacted, it wasn't.

  7. Howard Hanek
    Facepalm

    Timber!

    If two big trees fell against each other in the IT forest do you think they'd keep each other up? In any case there will be a cascade of leaves falling.....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Timber!

      Up? No. Leaning crookedly against each other in the vain hope of mutual support until the rotten roots eventually collapse.

  8. Terafirma-NZ

    for this $$ couldn't they have just bought: Pure Storage/Brocade/Aerohive/PaloAlto Networks

    That would form a strong set of integrated parts.

    This Dell-EMC buy leaves me feeling that they need to by Brocade to top it all out leaving only wireless to figure out.

    For those that sing along about HCI you must be in the same camp as the people who said cloud IaaS is cheaper call me skeptical but I am yet to see a product in this space that is priced decently.

    What Dell customers will get form this is leverage to swing better deals and the EMC SDS could be pushed to lower ends of the market.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why try to recreate a "federation" from a weak set of disconnected pieces, when they could just go buy the original, and make a bigger splash doing it. The splash is probably what they're really after anyway.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The main competitors for a combined Dell-EMC entity will be Cisco, HDS, HP, IBM, and NetApp."

    NetApp are a minnow compared to all of those companies. Why not include QNAP and Synology for good measure - OK, I'm only joking but to include a relatively small storage solution vendor is surprising.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      NetApp has higher annual storage revenue than HDS. It is certainly not "relatively small" compared to these companies when you look at impact in the storage business.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      NetApp are a minnow?

      Might want to check IDC on "NetApp are a minnow". In NAS+SAN NetApp is #2 in revenue and #2 in capacity shipped behind EMC. NetApp ships more capacity than #2 IBM and #3 Dell combined for NAS and SAN and generates more revenue for NAS and SAN than IBM, Dell, HP or Hitachi. Not sure how that equates to "minnow".

  10. luis river
    Alert

    Dell vs HP

    The main concern of Dell acquisition, is not the overlapping of products, neither if VMware will lose market, not even the integration; but the great debt that acquires that it will suppose a payment of 2.5 billions $ a year, will need more than 25 years to cancel it, this ballasted R&D, the recruiting, the purchase of companies and other investments; HP didn't buy EMC in a wise decision that leaves it free the hands to define the future that wants, Meg Whitman of HP will make purchases with more sense.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting merge, let's see how it ends

    VmWare -- distance itself from HP and IBM, already from Cisco; And HCI, Docker, Public Cloud, Hyper V, Open source hypervisor, all are not good for VmWare's future.

    EMC -- High end storage array is shrinking while low end storage system went to startups and hyper converged system. Did not see bright future, and that is also why they did not buy Dell, instead Dell buy them.

    Dell --- Got the big pie of storage from EMC. Boost its server sales by providing e2e solution.

    Cisco --- Either make their own storage system or buy startups. UCS or switches sales will be affected.

    HP --- Did not finish split before starting another talk. Their plan is totally screw.

    IBM --- ??

    It all depends on future IT. If evolves into private/public cloud, others prepare earlier and stay ahead.

    Let's see how this merge will turns out.

    1. AndrewDH

      Re: Interesting merge, let's see how it ends

      Cisco have already made a start of sorts in Storage by buying Whiptail, unfortunately that didn't work well and Cisco killed the products earlier this year. At the time it was speculated that EMC had them under the cosh and that the Invicta arrays had quality issues.

      Now that EMC looks even more like a competitor than it did before Monday Cisco could either double or quit.

      Buying Nutanix could move them forward and there are plenty of independent AFA vendors with products that actually work. Pure have IPO'd and declined a bit, Violin would be very cheap. Both have products that actually work.

      1. MityDK

        Re: Interesting merge, let's see how it ends

        Cisco MUST acquire a storage company or two, one for file and one for block. As of right now, they are completely shut out of the converged/hyperconverged arena with this merger.

        Nutanix, Simplivity, Violin, Kaminario, Tegile, Tintri are all available for a song right now.

        Cisco must get bigger or become much smaller as they get shut out of deals.

  12. kbuggenhout

    networking hardware is not OEM'ed at Dell, Dell aquired Force10 2 years ago

    inaccuracy of the article, Dell owns Force10 for more than 2 years now which designs its own hardware, of course based on ASICS that are in house designed under license. so there is no network aquisition in the making, it has already been done.

  13. jzl

    Laptops

    Which bit of that Dell org chart is the bit which sells laptops?

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