UPDATED 08:54 EDT / DECEMBER 21 2010

After 2010 Feats, EMC Awaits Challenges From New Contenders

Arguably, EMC is one of the few tech companies who embraced 2010 with quite a number of feats including the celebrated $2.25 billion acquisition of Isilon, topping the charts in external storage systems, booming revenues and swiftly penetrating the mobile security industry.

It is no secret how EMC has relentlessly pushed for greater things to firmly hold the number 1 spot in storage virtualization. Being a member of the Fortune 500 companies globally, this company specializes in developing, delivering and supporting information structure and virtual infrastructure for software, hardware and other services and made pretty sure that they are the finest at it.

In an analysis presented by John Furrier in SiliconAngle, he digested the clauses and agreements enclosed in the Isilon acquisition deal. Moreover, the same report showed everyone how persistent of a company EMC is when talking about innovations and taking risks. EMC has been aggressively dominating the market with its growth focused in growth in cloud, scalability and data. As Furrier sees storage to be a hot item today and in the coming years, recent moves by EMC should be carefully evaluated by other storage vendors like NetApp. What fuels EMC’s engine to the top is their speed in solutions.

In another report still concentrating on the same analysis, Dave Vellante, founder of Wikibon relates his views on other players in the storage industry. In his blog, it read:

“NetApp – once again EMC is using all its weapons to compete with the smaller NetApp. NetApp is growing faster, gaining more share, has great momentum and EMC just keeps changing the game in an effort to stay ahead of NetApp. VMware, VCE, Data Domain and now Isilon – EMC is pulling out all stops to compete.

HP – Do you think EMC’s Rich Napolitano was paying attention when his former boss Dave Donatelli went out and bought Ibrix? You betcha.

IBM – What happened to SONAS – lots of fanfare earlier this year around what looked to be an interesting global clustered file system – not much happening in the marketplace.

BlueArc and DDN – The two main competitors to Isilon just got more interesting (and more valuable).

Customers – More EMC stovepipes but Isilon could be a unifying force. Those customers worried about doing business with smaller Isilon get a nice EMC blanket around them.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci’s message is pretty clear. He wants Cloud Computing + Big Data = EMC.

As I indicated before, this is actually a good use of cash. Share buybacks and dividends add no long term value to the business and R&D is risky. With Isilon, EMC is buying growth, it’s buying competitive position and it’s covering its butt on an aging midrange file business. While EMC can point to leading revenue shares in its file business the products were not viewed as simple to use and next generation. People will criticize EMC for writing checks instead of code but when you’re printing money the way EMC is, time-to-market is worth a lot.”

While competitors have taken the challenge and are sure to beef up and overhaul their strategies, many experts are still keen that EMC will greet 2011 in cloud 9. Until another player surfaced and show some potential to combat EMC, the storage market will predominantly be about what EMC moves will be or what acquisitions are they looking at.


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