Sunday night in Spain a few of us who were lucky to attend the vRockStar party, put on every year before VMworld Europe commences, were talking about the latest rumor that Dell may purchase EMC. Yesterday, Monday October 12, the announcements came out and sure enough, Dell and EMC announced that in November EMC would start breaking up. Dell is buying parts of EMC to the tune of $67 Billion dollars. VMware is to become it’s own public entity (although part of it is already traded publicly…I believe about 20%).
This is very interesting news as Dell went from public to private over a year ago. Dell has its own storage solution, but taking on EMCs midmarket arrays as well as some of their all flash or hybrid solutions could prove very lucrative to Dell. Not to mention, Dell is fantastic at selling in general. VMware stock has only fallen more since the announcement, and as of this writing it’s the lowest I’ve seen it in years at around $72 a share.