A hedge fund with more than $1 billion invested in EMC plans to convince the company to spin off its subsidiary, VMware, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Elliot Management Corporation is the fifth-largest shareholder, owning approximately two percent of EMC, and people running the hedge fund believe EMC will significantly increase its stock value if it spins off VMware.

EMC’s core business has and continues to be storage, while VMware is known for virtualization. Elliot’s analysts believe EMC can make substantial gains by spinning off VMware and returning focus to the core server and storage products and services.

Companies like Elliot are often called “activist investors” as they primarily invest for the purpose of effecting major change within a corporation. EMC owns 80 percent of VMware and considers it a major strategic asset, part of its federation strategy, which includes its storage business, its information infrastructure (VMware) and its cloud developer (Pivotal).

Wikibon CEO Dave Vellante commented via Twitter, “Elliott Management move to strong arm EMC to relinquish its control of VMware – Tucci will fight but he’s retiring in 6 mos -new era coming?”

SiliconANGLE CEO John Furrier added, “@dvellante It will be interesting to see how EMC handles this they are not push overs for self serving activists.”

Some analysts believe EMC will attempt to appease Elliot investors by spinning off some VMware shares and then buying them back. VMware revealed its second-quarter earnings Tuesday, while EMC is scheduled to report Wednesday before markets open.