Dell, EMC Sign On for Five More Years

NEW YORK — Dell on Tuesday renewed its five-year-old partnership with storage giant EMC, an arrangement that will keep the companies close through 2011.

EMC CEO Joseph Tucci joined Dell CEO Kevin Rollins on stage at a Dell technology event here, where the two gushed about the close relationship between Dell and EMC, which began in October 2001.

Since that time, the Dell-EMC duo has sold more than 34,000 networked storage systems to more than 10,000 customers. The two have expanded those provisions to include storage management, backup and replication software.

“This is without a doubt, in my opinion, the most successful partnership of its kind in the IT industry,” Tucci said.

Rollins and Tucci said they look forward to continuing their partnership for the next five years.

The news comes amid signs that the two may not be as dominant as they once were. Dell has been beset by disappointing results and missteps over the last year, while EMC warned twice in July that its results would come in below expectations. In the second quarter, EMC and Dell posted the slowest growth of the major storage vendors, according to IDC.

Still, analysts expect EMC to return to double-digit growth this quarter, as Symmetrix and Clariion product transition issues get resolved.

EMC’s ambitions have grown since the two first announced their pact. No longer content to be the dominant storage vendor, EMC has branched out into broader IT management, adding server virtualization, security and content management as part of its “information management” strategy (see Storage, IT Converge).

Baird analyst Daniel Renouard sounded an upbeat note on the Dell-EMC renewal, noting that the agreement accounts for 13 percent of EMC’s revenues. “We are encouraged with the longer-term commitment, which we believe lends stability to that portion of EMC’s business,” he wrote.

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com, with additional reporting by Paul Shread of Enterprise Storage Forum.