The lesson from IT history is that very big acquisitions don’t work; there is evidence to back this up, according to Stu Miniman (@stu), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team. Merged companies grapple with product glut, identity loss and market gulfs too wide for them to straddle. But there are exceptions. Sometimes having everything but the kitchen sink in its portfolio can work in a company’s favor — if they can cram it all into a package customers can get their arms around.

Miniman, along with theCUBE cohosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), during EMC Dell World 2016 in Austin, TX, spoke about EMC’s spat of acquisitions over recent years and said they may be bringing more to the party than its new owner, Dell Technologies Inc., can accommodate.

Portfolio packaging woes

“Even if they have a home run with one of these new technologies, it’s not necessarily enough to keep them growing, because they have such a diverse portfolio,” Miniman said.

Burris agreed, saying Dell will have to productize its messy portfolio, which will require some financial tweaking and reallocating. “So Dell wants to have a low cost of capital not only to service its debt, but also because it makes it easier to extend out into their overall engagement strategy,” he said.

Vellante remarked that it won’t be easy, but if Dell can jockey to success, the taste will be sweet. “To the extent that they can achieve that, they can go to customers with a flexibility message that is — look how IBM has played that card over the years so successfully,” he said.

Dell’s PC panacea

Vellante offered his view that undue panic has spun about over the debt Dell has taken on with the merger. “I don’t see that as a problem unless the PC market dramatically tanks and things really go south and cash flow’s squeezed,” he said.

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