This year’s EMC World 2016 conference, held in Las Vegas, is shaping up to be a cornerstone of the upcoming year in technology. Recent events with EMC, including a merger with Dell and the departure of EMC’s long-term CEO Joe Tucci, threaten to change everything the industry knows about the company.

To bring these events into focus, John Furrier (@furrier), Dave Vellante (@dvellante), Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, joined forces at a roundtable after the day’s keynote announcements during EMC World. Their concerns pointed straight to the heart of EMC’s future.

A moment in transition

The conversation opened up by considering the changes seen at the show over the past few years. Vellante pointed out what they’re seeing is the cloudification of business, as people go to remote computing. The big companies in the industry, he said, have their own strategies to deal with that. It’s the end of an era, Vellante said.

EMC World has changed a lot, Miniman said. It started out with strong technical roots, and now it’s big with a strong portfolio.

On the subject of EMC’s own changes, Vellante mentioned how many of people who were part of EMC’s brash teenage years are still with the company. Post-merger, Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, Inc., has laid out a vision of the future for EMC, setting them up as an arms dealer for the next generation in technology, according to Vellante.

EMC and the next five years

Things then turned to tech rivals. Miniman described the keynotes as the same server presentations the public has been hearing for years. The real competition, he thought, would come from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, not EMC-Dell’s traditional rivals.

Vellante countered, saying that while EMC’s core product portfolio is shrinking, it will still spend on R&D and continue to push its product roadmap. That will allow them to get to a transitional business and keep going, he said.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE