UPDATED 18:53 EDT / OCTOBER 19 2016

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Analysts examine Dell EMC’s power to change the market | #DellEMCWorld

The merger of Dell and EMC is affecting companies across the tech industry, with server, storage and cloud providers having to reconsider their market strategies in light of the expanded company’s capabilities.

As the last day of the inaugural Dell EMC World conference came to a close, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, met to discuss the highlights and announcements from the event, along with analysis of where things would head for the merged company.

Joint productions

Out of the various product line changes being affected by Dell’s acquisition of EMC, one of the more visible, as noted by Miniman, is the move to adjust the physical branding of select hardware to “Dell EMC,” something he saw as really marking a milestone for the company.

From that point of change, the hosts moved on to examine the flexibility of hardware choice being pursued by Dell, with product providence tailored to the needs of the individual customers. Another point in this examination of the hardware side of Dell’s business was the “year of all flash” slogan (and #YOAF hashtag) that’s emerged as flash becomes more and more of a viable storage solution.

On still another side of Dell’s hardware, Vellante noted that its holding of EMC could prove a long-term point of stability for its server sales, as well as potentially serving as a useful testing ground for future solutions. “Dell has a pipeline into EMC, who consumes a lot of servers, and will continue to consume servers – it’s a captive base,” Vellante stated.

Software selling

Moving away from hardware, the Vellante and Miniman also discussed the competitive field of software and SaaS providers and companies that would be looking to expand into storage. Miniman saw the future for Dell in this area as a bright one. In his analysis, “Michael [Dell] wants to make sure that whatever of those software options win, the underlying server structure will be his.”

As Vellante saw it, the sheer size of the Dell-EMC merger has its own business advantages, with strategy beyond the immediate revenue and market penetration. “Michael Dell can write whatever narrative he wants, and it’s not a bunch of Wall Street analysts writing the narrative. That’s a big advantage,” he said.

But in the software and SaaS realm, cloud utilities and providing are becoming a piece that can’t be ignored. “The bigger picture is Dell EMC. How do they compete in the cloud? … They sell solutions to cloud providers,” Vellante pointed out. “I think [Dell’s work with Microsoft’s] Azure Stack is the correct strategy … because I think a lot of companies want to mirror as closely as possible what they do in the cloud on-prem,” he added.

As the hosts considered the many areas in which Dell’s acquisition of EMC has opened up further growth potential, they came to the conclusion that partners would play a vitally important role in many of them. Talking specifically about the recently announced Amazon/VMware partnership, Miniman said, “The macro thing I look at is … VMware has told everybody ‘public cloud is a great place to hold your workloads.’ … I still think this is a much better deal for Amazon in the long run.”

But as Dell comes to terms with its new and expanded form, both hosts expect to see the company maintaining its strong position in the market. As Vellante put it, “This is not a complacent company, it is not … a vulnerable company.”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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