The EMC Corp. Federation has been hit with yet another executive-level departure, with Mark Thurmond, who until this week was senior vice president of global sales for VCE, announcing that he’s left the company to take on a new role at visual analytics provider Qlik International AB.

Thurmond will take over as the new executive vice president of worldwide sales and services at Qlik, while VCE has yet to name a replacement for the position he’s vacated.

While Thurmond’s departure on its own wouldn’t be big news, the move comes after a succession of similar executive departures from the EMC Federation in recent weeks. Before Thurmond, EMC was hit by the departures of VMware Inc CTO Ben Fathi, who is now unemployed, and Chuck Hollis, VMware’s chief storage strategist, who left the company to team up with former EMC executive Dave Donatelli at Oracle Corp.

Prior to those departures, Pivotal Software Inc. CEO Paul Maritz announced he was stepping down from that role last week, though he remains executive chairman of the company’s board of directors. Maritz’s chair was quickly filled by Rob Mee, one of the co-founders of Pivotal, who previously held the role of executive vice president of worldwide sales and services at Qlik

Concerns have been raised that the EMC Federation, which encompasses EMC, Vmware, Pivotal, VCE and RSA Security LLC is bleeding executives at what could be a critical time in its history – next month, a temporary standstill agreement between it and the activist investment firm Elliott Management Inc. is set to expire, and it’s also rumored that EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci may finally reveal whether or not he plans to retire anytime soon.

Elliott Management’s efforts to break up or restructure the EMC Federation have been widely publicized. The investment firm is said to be unhappy with the Federation’s structure, and is pushing for big changes to be made to deliver greater shareholder value. What those changes might involve isn’t exactly clear, with a possible breakup of the Federation, an EMC acquisition of VMware, a downstream acquisition that would see VMware acquiring EMC, and a merger with Hewlett-Packard Co. all being mooted.

However, two respected industry analysts yesterday dismissed the likelihood of an EMC Federation breakup happening any time soon. Holger Mueller, Principal Analyst of Constellation Research Inc., and Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst at the Enderle Group, both insisted the recent executive departures from EMC were unrelated to Elliott Management’s activism. Rather, the analysts agreed most of those who left the Federation likely did so for their own reasons.

“Most of the changes are either tied to a divestiture or because of a better offer from the recruiting firms,” Enderle told SiliconANGLE.

Not everyone is convinced that EMC can ride out this storm so easily, however. Patrick Moorhead, Founder, President & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE it’s inevitable that EMC will struggle to keep its current structure together in light of the massive transition the storage systems industry is going through.

“In-rack storage and object storage are in, proprietary block and file are on the decline,” Moorhead said. “This in itself is driving change and turmoil. Then you have investor pressures to resolve the EMC-VMware standoff. The two tied together is driving massive change at EMC.”

Moorhead said he believed the pressure from Elliott Management was having a big impact on EMC’s relationship with VMware, and voiced the opinion that it’s unlikely the status quo can remain in place, even though any break up would probably be detrimental to both companies.

“I expect big changes at EMC, VMWare and The Federation,” Moorhead said. “I don’t see the tight integration between EMC and VMWare continuing. This will negatively impact The Federation.”

Image credit: Antranias via pixabay.com