Enterprise tech firm CEOs are seemingly falling over themselves to take a dig at Dell Inc. in the wake of its $67 billion takeover of EMC Corp. Following on from the gloating remarks of Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Meg Whitman and IBM’s Ginni Rometty, Pure Storage Inc. CEO Scott Dietzen has penned a blog post in which he suggests Dell’s move is a desperate attempt to stay relevant in rapidly evolving enterprise tech world.

The move “comes out of weakness, not strength,” Dietzen said in his remarks. He added that Dell is reacting to the same kinds of disruptive forces in the PC and server markets that forced HP to split itself in two, and IBM to sell its x86 server business to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd.

“As an independent public company, EMC is facing a comprehensive turnover in its storage portfolio as flash memory and cloud make for the biggest disruption in storage since EMC seized the market lead,” Dietzen continued.

However he conceded that Dell’s move is probably justified, given EMC’s announcement yesterday that its latest quarterly earnings are going to be weaker than first thought.

But necessary as it may have been, Dietzen says the deal will be bad news for some EMC and Dell employees, as it’s inevitable that some will be laid off. Describing the level of debt as “unprecedented”, he said it’s highly likely that we’ll see “redundant and less successful product lines eliminated, with future investment in flagships like Symmetrix/VMAX, VNX and Compellent potentially at risk.”

Dietzen added that EMC’s acquisition was the end of an era for a company that led the market for Tier 1 and performance optimized storage for several decades. “Just a few years ago, the idea that EMC would be an acquisition target would have been unthinkable,” Dietzen wrote. “And yet here we are”.

For all Dietzen’s wisdom, it’s worth bearing in mind that just like HP and IBM, Pure Storage is a competitor to Dell and so it would obviously benefit if people saw the acquisition in a negative light. As such, it’s no surprise that Dietzen reckons “now is a great time to investigate alternative solutions” to get the most out of their technology investments.

Image credit: Laughing Raven via pixabay.com