NetApp Insight 2015: EMC YOU LATER

Dell is acquiring EMC!

Besides the obvious messaging that EMC’s storage portfolio is in danger of being rationalised (disappear) after its acquisition by Dell; something that rival storage vendors like Netapp is crowing about; a few parties also actually hope that virtualisation vendor, VMware, in which EMC has 81% stake in, would be spun off in the process.

First reaction to news of EMC’s acquisition at NetApp Insight 2015: EMC you later, EMC!

According to one of Netapp’s technical marketing engineers, Justin Parisi, they had had a close working relationship with VMware before EMC came along.“This relationship ‘changed’ over the years after VMware was acquired by rival EMC,“ Parisi said.

With Dell likely to take over EMC in a USD67 billion deal that is being finalised over the next 7 to 12 months, there is real concern that VMware’s shares will continue to plummet. What will finally happen to VMware is still up in the air, but its CEO, Pat Gelsinger has gone on record to say that they are “navigating those challenges” and even adding his opinion that their OpenStack offering has been “very successful.” Many had questioned VMware’s decision last year, to come up with a distribution of the very technology that they are competing with.

They still do.

But back to Dell and EMC. Parisi observed a lot of product portfolio overlap between EMC and Dell, which will have to be streamlined no doubt, but a hyperconverged infrastructure play will emerge.

Casualty

One of the casualties of the Dell-EMC deal, may very well be Nutanix, a software player of converged infrastructure solutions, that had signed an OEM deal with Dell in June 2014. Nutanix’s web-scale technology would run on Dell’s servers to deliver a scale-out platform for data centres, as both parties do joint sales, marketing, support, service investments as well as product roadmap alignment.

“Personally, I feel what happened to us, could happen to Nutanix as well,” Parisi said.

In not so many words, that had been akin to being kicked to the kerb.

(This journalist was a guest of NetApp’s to NetApp Insight 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada).