Storage giant EMC Corp. has lost not one, not two, but three executives this week, in a reshuffle that suggests there may be some big tensions in the company’s management as it battles to keep its Federation together.

The biggest name of the three is undoubtedly Jeetu Patel, formerly the CEO of sync ‘n share outfit Syncplicity LLC, which was acquired by EMC in 2012 only to be sold this July to Skyview Capital LLC for an undisclosed fee. Apparently finding himself no longer needed, Patel opted to jump ship earlier this month to the file sharing service Box Inc., where he becomes that company’s SVP of Platform and Chief Strategy Officer.

Also leaving is EMC’s CMO Jonathan Martin, who’s departed for flash storage provider Pure Storage, while EMC’s product marketing VP and head of cloud strategy Isabelle Guis has announced she’s to join another file sync ‘n share outfit, Egnyte, in September.

At first glance the departure of three key executives in quick succession suggests there might be something untoward going on, particularly with the rumors that EMC investor Elliott Management Corp. is actively trying to dismantle the company’s Federation, or perhaps engineer a VMware takeover of EMC.

Whether or not that’s actually true is unknown. For one thing, Patel may well have been against EMC’s decision to sell Syncplicity and decided to quit as a result. And as for Martin and Guis, well there’s every chance they were simply made a better offer – especially in the case of Guis, who’s went from being a VP to a CMO, with the associated pay rise that usually entails.

Then again, all three may have decided that they didn’t like the winds of change that are brewing in EMC, a company that’s finding it increasingly difficult to innovate. As such, they might well be betting the future at their new companies is going to be considerably rosier than what’s in store for EMC, if the activist investors at Elliott get their way.

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