It makes no sense. Anyone has a plausable explanation?
17 replies (most recent on top)
EMC was a bunch of arrogant frat boys that believed they were the best thing since sliced bread simply because they worked for the mighty EMC. Not that Dell was any better, I know, I worked for both before the merger and stayed at Dell for a year post merger. Neither one was an innovator, EMC's claim to fame having been refining the Clarrion line it acquired from Data General along with buying Legato for its software products needed to fill the holes in its data center strategy. The only unique product EMC owned was Moshe's Symmetrix and that never really fulfilled its potential after he left.
Dell tried to compete with its Compellent acquisition and a few piecemeal software acquisitions. They tried to develop their own archive product built on its servers and Caringo software in the short lived DX6000. Another flash in the pan was their Data Domain competition with the data dedupe DR series, also built on the Dell server platform. Seems like all of Dell's innovation involves gluing acquired software on top of their servers and hoping it makes a profit before they drop it and chase the latest shiny object.
Ultimately the merger of Dell and EMC created a truly mediocre company with no sense of direction or coherent strategy on what to do with a portfolio of overlapping products. The rise of cloud computing left Dell/EMC standing on the sidelines wondering where it's market went as corporations decided to decommission their aging data centers in favor of renting compute and storage from the big 3 cloud providers.
Joe T must have laughed all way into retirement after he convinced Mikey D to buy the bill of goods he had to sell and the aftermath hasn't been pretty.
@OP Dell is a race to the bottom, the 2 companies were direct opposite in terms of Opex... Dell is cheap and have the ethos of do more with less. EMC before the acquisition were a generous company and Dell wanted ROI so cut all expenses possible
Arthur is the real problem here. Once he took over ISG really went to he-l. Arthur is a lawyer who has no technical experience or market experience whatsoever. He’s another manufacturing and operations guy. He looks a numbers on a spreadsheet. He doesn’t have an innovative thought in his head. EMC was an actual technology company. It was innovative. Dell doesn’t understand innovation. They understand putting pieces of hardware and selling them at a cheaper cost. That’s all Arthur understands. He’s single handedly destroying ISG.
Look at Dells history. Every company they touch they just trash. Mike is a terrible CEO.
The company is a manufacturing and operations reseller who undercuts competition. He’s basically a used car salesman. Everything is based on relationships and politics. The man doesn’t have an innovative thought in his head.
Anyone that says, “if there isn’t a crisis make one” is a mo--n. The alternative to that is “motivate your people and lead them”, but that would mean you might have to invest in your people and Mikey doesn’t want to do that.
It’s a trashy company run by trashy people.
@fa run off and sell some laptops son. Go back to operations and manufacturing. EMC was an actual technology company. Dell was pretty much the same as Texas Instruments. No innovation and basic. Dell sells computers from cheap parts. Everything Dell touches turns to sh-t.
After a quarter century working for Dell and getting royally sc--wed, I’m no fan of the company. But all of the incessant whining from EMC people, with ridiculous idealized views of what EMC was, is just laughable. EMC had outdated, uncompetitive products and a financial situation that meant it needed to be rescued. A decade later and you just keep reminiscing over when you were relevant.
And my experience in ISG after the acquisition was that incompetent EMC leaders were put into positions of power in PowerEdge and they absolutely damaged the server business.
@OP Not sure what you mean by destroyed, but you have not seen nothing yet, the profit will be rung out of the products, then the funding for future development will stop, then most of the legacy EMC equipment will go E.O.L or DTS - then massive layoffs follow - that Is the way it rolls - develop a product that is Kick Butt & delivers ROI, or it gets tossed & the funding stops & everyone tied to that funding will be cut. That is Dell in a Nutshell - EMC is long time history.
True, EMC didn't want to assimilate into Dell. In fact, we didn't want anything to do with Dell. And there's good reason for that. We quickly saw that Dell couldn't develop a "Hello World" application successfully. That's why we continued to operate as usual from the EMC point of view.
But it also left us leaderless because EMC leaders were let go to make room for Dell calling the shots after the acquisition. Dell leadership had no idea what they were doing. They didn't even know the EMC product portfolio. And they still don't today.
Net Net: we've both gone downhill ever since.
I'm sincerely sorry to hear that people miss the old EMC. But to dwell on it for ten years seems unhealthy. 2016 was a long time ago. Please take better care of yourselves and stop living in the past. No employer is worth ten tears of heartburn.
This comment makes me laugh....
When Dell acquired EMC, they did this big evaluation on creating the "Winning Road Map" . Guess what one..... Everything EMC, a company that got bought because they were in so much financial trouble that they needed the buyout. But, Dell's BIGGEST mistake was letting it run business as usual.
They should have took the best features of all their products and created something new and unique. Instead, they continued with EMC developments that had been worked on for two years and it took another two to release a pi-s poor product that didn't compare to the products they were already selling.
Dell ruined EMC? HA! they actually did it together and never thought outside the box on where they could have gone. Now it's a mess!
@a1 Dell fell backwards into the AI bo-m (bubble?), as a reseller of Nvidia hardware. Most of the lines of business, acquisitions, and strategies over the last 20 years have failed and not created lasting value.
yes, engineering power moved towards market power of shareholder but all companies operate this way - even Apple - once Jobs departed (rip) , we got edgy-phones which can't be hold in hand comfortably , ipad size phones that won't ever fit to your pocket - just because shareholders chased profits and not usability,
AI is here to stay and drive DELL for another few year into upwards trajectory - and who knows what than will be the 'new' . Very interesting times to start something for all the StartUps - entry cost of 300k down to 50k is what new realities are and anyone missing it will pay the price down the road
The two companies couldn't have been more different. EMC Enterprise was fun to work for and had people that had the experience to get things done(well, most of the time). They at least had good guidance. With EMC you always knew where you stood. Sales decisions were not ruled by Excel.
Seriously? Lol. I think that comment needs to be reversed. EMC is the biggest group of over-paid, over-titled, under-skilled group of resources I have ever come across in 40 years in the tech industry.
Two words: Poor Leadership
@a1 market cap is meaningless. Deep down you must feel insecure to act like that. Work on personal growth rather than trolling a place where people are grieving.
It is truly tragic how Michael Dell took a private company worth about $25 billion, added a $67 billion acquisition of EMC, and somehow ruined them both by turning that combined $92 billion into a meager $301 billion corporate powerhouse today. One can only imagine the sheer corporate embarrassment of accidentally watching your combined value skyrocket nearly fourfold.