The Wall Street Journal is reporting that shares of EMC Corp. (EMC) jumped Thursday on speculation that Oracle Corp. (ORCL) may be considering acquiring the data storage systems company.  EMC shares were up 4.88% to $21.29 in early trading, closing in on its 52-week high of $21.83. Oracle’s stock was down about 1.16%.  EMC shares are up about 22% for the year to date — in part due to deal speculation.

I contacted EMC and they had no comment.

There is no way Oracle can do this because the bidding war would be off the charts in that IBM HP or Cisco wouldn’t let this happen.  Not just that but Oracle would be pulling out some serious dough to get VMware.  EMC owns 80% of VMware.  From a strategic perspective this is a strong move by Larry Ellison if they could pull it off.

However, the market would revolt. For about $50 billion Oracle would take out VMware and get the assets of EMC which has considerable technology and accounts.  EMC is #1 in storage virtualization and VMware is virtualization.

On the heels of the big industry news of HP and Dell bidding for storage vendor 3Par (which SiliconANGLE covered like a blanket), there is a silent war going on. A war for leadership in virtualized storage. A battle for number one in virtualization by the leading vendors EMC, IBM, HP, NetApp, and others.

According to multiple industry analyst firms, EMC is #1 in virtualization. Specifically, EMC is #1 in storage shipments for VMware environments.

At the recent industry cloud event VMworld 2010, a massive conference held by VMware the leader in virtualization, there were many claims on who is # 1 in virtualization. The most debated contest was in the storage market for virtualized environments or VMware environments. At the event EMC even hung a huge banner on the show floor stating that EMC was #1. That claim was instantly refuted by NetApp. Now validated by two industry research firms Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), and Wikibon.org. Recent data from two old school firms (ESG and IDC) and one new school firm (Wikibon.org) essentially add up to this conclusion.

EMC (via their Greenplum acquisition) was the only storage vendor that was active and present at the Hadoop World or Hadoop movement in NYC. EMC Greenplum had a appliance announcement yesterday around big data or data warehousing.

My Angle

Oracle could absolutely own the market with this kind of deal up and down the stack. Oracle for about $50 billion becomes the instant market leader in virtualization. Larry Ellison said this at Oracle Open World when he said he wants to be #1 in all the markets they compete in. To be #1 in the IT business you need to be #1 in storage virtualization and #1 in virtualization.

Bold move indeed by Oracle if they pull this off.