Tag: EMC

Dell, EMC prepare for channel merger

Posted on November 20, 2015 by - News

Sarah Shields, DellEMC and Dell have gone into overdrive in the expectation that the two companies will merge.

Sarah Shields, general manager of Dell UK, said that both companies had put senior members in place to work on the integration plans. She said that EMC products are complementary to Dell’s.

“The integration is a bit of a no-brainer,” she said. She said there are some obvious synergies and she herself was looking at the EMC programmes already in place.

“From our point of view it’s business as usual and so far it’s looking very positive,” she said.

She said that Dell shifted its business model to include the channel eight years ago, and although she declined to give figures, said channel business accounted for 40 percent of the company’s revenues.

She said that while business worldwide had been challenging last years, Dell had continued to grow. She said that both channel revenues and units were both positive.

EMC staff “making stuff up” about Dell sale

Posted on October 28, 2015 by - News

pinocchioA furious EMC president of global sales Bill Scannell told his sales teams to stop making stuff up about the company’s coming merger with Dell.

According to Channelnomics  Scannell told his staff not to “veer from the script” after the $67 billion acquisition by Dell was announced earlier this month. He slammed some of his staff for saying the wrong thing to customers.

He said that he had seen a couple of things happening in the field where people are veering from the script and kind of making things up.

“That’s not healthy, that’s not going to allow us to make this a painless and very successful merger… Understand what you can and can’t say now prior to the closing, realising this could be another six to nine months before we get the regulatory approvals and the shareholders’ sign-off to do this merger.”

Scannell told his staff to focus on quarterly business and exceeding customers’ expectations. They needed to sure they understand what we’ve said publicly about this acquisition and that it is all is going to be great.

If the deal goes ahead, EMC will go private but VMware – in which it owns an 80 per cent stake – will remain a publicly listed company.  This means that EMC will not have to worry about shipping products at the end of the quarter to make the quarterly revenue numbers.

This is going to have huge impact on savings from inventory with EMC, Scannell said.

Dell-EMC deal will rock the channel boat

Posted on October 12, 2015 by - News, Opinions

Dell logo* DELL has confirmed it will take over EMC for $67 billion.  VM Ware will continue as a publicly traded company.

It now looks almost certain that Dell will announce it is taking over EMC today – a move that will cause ripples right throughout their respective channels.

The deal, said to be worth over $50 billion, is expected to be concluded either today or tomorrow, although EMC, being a listed company, will have to be offered to other prospective suitors.

A prospective suitor this time last year was HP, but HP Inc and HP Enterprise aren’t that interested any more.

For Dell, there are clear advantages to the acquisition. It has been building up its channel portfolio for several years now and at last week’s Canalys Channels Forum, senior executives said that at least 70 percent of its business was now going through two tier distribution. The acquisition will also put Dell into the top league, along with IBM and HP one and two.

Dell has also had a pretty smooth path when it’s taken over other countries, managing to successfully integrate them in a comparatively short period.

Obviously, there will be some consolidation involved and doubtless some people will be made redundant as part of the proposed takeover. But sorting out the channel implications will require some deft and delicate moves on Dell’s behalf. Reports suggest that EMC’s VM Ware division may itself be subject to either a sale or some equity investment.

HP should buy EMC

Posted on July 3, 2015 by - News

INDUSTRY HP 1Analyst Raymond James has created a flap over his idea that now is the perfect time for HP to buy EMC.

James believes an acquisition deal between HP and EMC is a “distinct possibility” as HP inches closer to its company split date in November. The two companies agreed, at least once before, and had more than a year’s worth of merger talks before giving up, mostly on the matter of price.

Channel partners of both companies said the deal makes sense and would be beneficial to them and it is looking like other analysts agree.

Such a deal would improve HP’s cloud portfolio with VMware and Virtustream services, while EMC and Pivotal would boost the converged infrastructure and analytics side of the portfolio. HP provide some good mobile tech.

HP is splitting the enterprise divisions from the PC and print side of the business, and is certain to have that done by Christmas. HP CEO Meg Whitman has indicated further acquisitions and so it is possible that EMC is on the table.

HP Enterprise of the new HP – will be a lot more aligned with the current EMC and VMW businesses in terms of end-market focus.

A united company is worth $2 billion more. HP would kill off its 3Par storage over time, and EMC would shelve its Content Management in favour of HP’s Autonomy.

 

 

 

EMC names new channel supremo

Posted on May 22, 2015 by - Moving People, News

kevin_sparks_emcEMC has confirmed Kevin Sparks is to replace Russell Poole as director of alliances and channels for the UK and Ireland.

Poole has been doing rather well for himself climbing the greasy pole within EMC. He replaced Terry Beale as EMC’s head of channel just last August has been promoted to the position of senior director, enterprise sales for EMEA.

Sparks joined EMC five years ago and was most recently the vendor’s cloud and service provider sales manager. He has 22 years of experience in technology sales and marketing, including leadership roles at Ericsson and BT, before joining EMC.

He has to evolve EMC’s channel business in the UK&I which has been getting better of late and might be showing signs of opposable thumbs.

EMC has been trying to transform its relationships with the channel and distribution businesses over the last few years. Sparks’ will “work closely with the partner community to help them find additional value from their relationship with EMC” which we guess means a generous drinks cabinet for thirsty channel partners.

 

Back up kit worth over a billion

Posted on March 20, 2015 by - News

emcboxThe market for customised backup appliances reached $1 billion worldwide in the fourth quarter of last year.

This market represents standalone disk products that use software, disk arrays, server engines, and more specifically data coming from backup software.

IDC said that the market for this kind of kit rose by four percent in 2014 and generated revenues of $3.26 billion.

Annual capacity in 2014 rose by 42.8 percent compared to 2013 to a staggering 2.68 exabytes.

Liz Conner, a research manager at IDC, said reasons for the rise in revenues included better software, data tiering, file sharing, data analytics and more investment in integrated systems.

In the fourth quarter, top of the storage pile was EMC with 63.8 percent market share, dwarfing the other players Symantec (11.5%), IBM (6.7%), HP (4%) and Quantum (2.3%).

 

VCE widens its portfolio

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeVCE, which specialises in converged infrastructure, said it has added a raft of software and hardware products aimed at customers looking to move to a hybrid cloud model.

The company said its Vscale architecture offers speed and simplicity for data centres. The VxBlock Systems use Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure or VMare NSX for software defined networking.

Its VCE Vision Intelligent Operations 3.0 is an update to its management software with unified intelligence across many VCE converged infrastructure systems.

It supplemented these announcements with VCE technology extensions – pre-tested and pre-validate hardware – the announcement means that businesses can add storage and computing resources including EMC and Cisco products.

Further VCE said that it has launched the Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, making it easier to build scalable systems.

VCE said it is now shipping the Vblock System 540 and the System 740 in volume. These products were announced last October.

 

Hyper scale data centres give storage boost

Posted on March 6, 2015 by - News

emcboxIDC said that the storage market ended well. In the last quarter, worldwide enterprise storage systems revenue grew 7.2 percent year on year to amount to close to $10.6 billion.

And capacity shipments rose by 43.7 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year to represent 99.2 exabytes.

Eric Sheppard, a research director at IDC, said spending on enterprise storage grew in most markets worldwide with factors including demand for midrange systems using flash memory and systems designed for hyper scale data centres.

EMC was the top dog in fourth quarter, with a 22.2 percent market share. That company was followed by HP (13.8%), Dell (9%), IBM (9%) and Netapp (7.2%).

Screen Shot 2015-03-06 at 14.37.20

EMC warns of the perils of masses of small data

Posted on January 12, 2015 by - News

zxzzzzd1Guy Churchward, head of EMC’s $20-billion core technologies division, has warned that small data is going to cause even bigger headaches than the big stuff.

Taking to the Economic Times  Churchward said that data challenges for the Internet of Things or driverless cars were huge,

He said that millions of driverless cars, and billions of other internetconnected devices will not be Big Data. “What you have is not big data, it is actually `small data’ – because what it is, is billions and billions of small data objects.”

EMC expects IoT to create a sprawl of billions of autonomous devices, which will create security, storage and management nightmares in future.

Churchward warned that  “small data sprawl” will take the challenges of Big Data and make them 100x more difficult.

Security, storage, management and applications would be completely different in a world filled with billions of devices, each of which will have its own big data. None of the currently available tools and applications would work in such environments.

Part of EMC’s over $2.3-billion research and development budget is being used to address this `small data’ problem but the company thinks that it will take between three to five years to start bearing fruit.

 

Storage revenues continue to grow

Posted on December 8, 2014 by - News

storageThe generation of vast amounts of data continues to fuel the disk storage systems revenue in the third quarter.

With revenues of $8.8 billion, up 5.1 percent from the same period last year, 25 exabytes shipped in the quarter, said IDC.  Capacity shipments soared by 42 percent during the quarter, compared to Q3 2013.

IDC said sub $100K external array revenues grew by over six percent during the quarter, but shipments ODMs (original design manufacturers) directly to hyperscale datacentres showed positive growth.

EMC remains at the top spot for the quarter, followed by HP, Dell, IBM and Netapp.

ODM direct sales accounted for 24 percent of the market however, outstripping the traditional vendors.  And this trend is continuing, as we’ve reported previously, with ODMs also shipping more and more servers directly and bypassing the brand names,

Intel announces 3D NAND-Flash

Posted on November 21, 2014 by - News

IMFT Sign - Lehi

Rob Crooke, VP & GM of Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Solutions Group was last up in the company’s day long Investor Meeting today in Santa Clara.

Though last, he had the most newsworthy announcement about the company’s future memory intentions.

Intel announced it is back in the memory business – 3D NAND-Flash that is (mass production in-house is conditional though).

Crookes’ revelation ends any rumination on Intel-Micron Flash Technologies 3D Flash development – it also includes SK Hynix when the device goes into production 2Q 2015. Evidently those who have been nice have early sample devices according to sources.

The specifics:

  • 4G hole array 32 layers deep | (216 x 216)(Array) x 25(Layers) x 2(MLC) = 256 Gbits
  • 1TB in 2 mm package
  • SSDs: 10TB and up planned
  • Production 2H 2015 – IMFT (Lehi, Utah facility mentioned) & SK Hynix
  • Intel can also produce internally
  • Replacement of HDD with SSD in all PC and Mobile devices

Crooke allowed that the devices will not use Intel’s cutting edge 14nm technology but a slightly relaxed geometry  – Micron is on record at 16nm geometries for 3D NAND. The openly known fact that prevaricating about Flash Geometries may hold sway – a hefty dose of caveat emptor is recommended.

The announcement coincides with reports that Intel and Micron are involved in a project with EMC2-DSSD – an effort to produce the first NAND-Flash In-Memory Database appliance.  The proffered memory type may be a custom type expressly tailored for the application and may be produced in-house by Intel – more on this as roll-out time nears.

“Odd couple” HP and EMC refuse to merge

Posted on October 15, 2014 by - News

Tony_Randall_Jack_Klugman_Odd_Couple_1972The maker of expensive printer ink,  HP has ended merger talks with EMC after months of useless negotiations.

Reuters reported that its deep throats in HP said hopes to merge two of the tech industry’s largest enterprise-oriented firms had been dashed.

Pressure is building on EMC to do some spinning off  in an attempt to unlock shareholder value, become more agile, and capitalise on faster-growing businesses.

Executives from the two companies were still trying to hammer out a deal as recently as last week, but talks bogged down on price.  We guess EMC really could not believe that printer ink had the same value as gold.

HP suspended its stock buyback program ahead of its November 25 earnings because the company said it is in possession of material non-public information. Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak noted on a conference call that the non-public information pertains to a possible acquisition.

It is not clear what the two were thinking of merging.  A straight-up merger of the two companies would have created one of the industry’s largest providers of data storage, and created a computing giant with deep penetration in the business of providing computing hardware and services to corporations.  However last week HP announced its plan to split off  into HP Enterprises, a tech infrastructure, software and services business, and HP which will play in the PC and printer markets.

Elliot Management, which owns 2.2 percent of EMC, has been vocal about wanting EMC to merge or spin off some of its assets, such as software subsidiary VMWare. EMC has said that it wants its company to stay together.

 

EMC needs to spin off VMware

Posted on October 9, 2014 by - News

ElderlyspinneraActivist investor Elliott Management is trying to get data storage products outfit EMC to spin off its VMware virtualization software unit or merge with someone else.

The outfit penned a 13-page letter to the company’s board which was signed by portfolio manager Jesse Cohn and warned that EMC’s structure of combining several businesses obscured its enormous value.

Elliott, which has $25 billion under management, owns a 2.2 percent stake in EMC and said it was writing a letter to help inform EMC’s board on its “current review process” of how to maximize long-term value at EMC.

EMC’s “federation strategy” comprises a core data-storage unit, a virtualization software unit VMware, enterprise security business RSA and cloud-computing software maker Pivotal.

EMC held merger talks with HP recently that broke down. Elliott said the acquisition interest in EMC’s assets on the part of several large companies that make strategic sense.

So far, EMC has publicly said it plans to keep its company together. But pressure is building as other technology companies recently have been spinning off operations in an attempt to become more agile and capitalize on faster-growing businesses.

HP joggles PC/printer divisions – again

Posted on October 5, 2014 by - News

Whitman's-SamplerOnce Again, HP has decided to evolve the PC and Printer operations as a distinct and separate corporate entity.

HP came close to selling both divisions during the short reign of Leo Apotheker. After the discovery of a massive over payment for Autonomy Corp. HP’s Board decided Leo had to go and PC & Printers had to stay.

Slipping to the number two position behind Lenovo, HP has decided to spin the combined organization into a separate entity under the aegis of Dion Weisler as CEO (Weisler is an exec in the PC and printer operation currently). Patricia Russo will be installed as the Enterprise company’s new Chairman (former lead independent director).  Meg Whitman will remain CEO of the Enterprise company and oversee corporate guidance of the PC/Printer entity as Chairman.

What difference does this make? Reporting structures loaded with changes in culpability mostly, freeing Whitman up for minding the Enterprise store and:

  • Aligns Weisler for the fall when and if the PC/Printers Division comes in under plan.
  • Allows time to position the PC/Printer Group for a potential sale.

HP has been struggling in their efforts at penetrating the Cloud with their Moonshot technology – Whitman may find the ice a little thin for skating this Winter and into next Spring.

HP’s merger discussions with EMC recently ended. We’re left wondering if what we are now seeing is part of a “Plan B” by HP’s Board of Directors…,

 

EMC nearly married HP

Posted on September 23, 2014 by - News

weddingIn a merger that would have ranked alongside that of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, EMC was seriously considering tying the knot with the maker of expensive printer ink, HP.

A Wall Street Journal report suggested that EMC and HP have investigated a potential merger deal that would have created a super-vendor worth close to $130 billion.

The deal was approached as a “merger of equals” and was in discussion over the past year. HP CEO Meg Whitman would have become CEO of the combined company, while EMC’s Joe Tucci would have been President.

Fortunately, the deal fell apart because both companies had concerns over whether their respective shareholders would have approved it.

That is not to say it was completely bad.  HP would have gained EMC’s storage expertise and domination over the mid-range storage sector. HP’s forays into cloud computing have shown the strategy of a chicken with its head cut off.

EMC has some good technology in cloud computing, commodity hardware and modular approaches to IT, but these are successful at the expense of its highly lucrative core businesses.Its VMware subsidiary is doing well, but it is not making enough for the outfit to be a truly happy bunny.

What the pair clearly forgot was that they compete for business; integrating the two operations would have been a nightmare for managers, but great for accountants.

Fortunately, the idea died a death before anyone heard about it.