Readers Eye EMC's Expansion

5:10 PM -- EMC's prospects for taking over the data center one day are pretty good -- especially if it beefs up security -- according to Byte and Switch readers.

Of the 322 responses to our recent EMC poll, 38 percent are certain EMC will become as big a power in general IT data management as it is in storage, and 24 percent said it's a possibility. Thirty-seven percent think EMC won't make it in the data center, at least anytime soon.

When it comes to acquisitions, readers were most impressed by EMC's pickups outside of the pure storage arena. Server virtualization vendor VMware was identified as EMC's most instrumental acquisition by far, picking up 57 percent of the votes. (See EMC Gobbles VMware.) Content management firm Documentum placed a distant second with 14 percent. (See EMC Cops Documentum.) Network management startup Smarts drew 11 percent, with Legato picked by only 6 percent. (See EMC Gets Smarts and EMC Gobbles Legato.)

Note: Of all of those acquisitions, backup software vendor Legato was the only storage-specific company.

Readers want EMC to go after security next. (See EMC Nets nLayers, Scopes Security.) When asked if that's the best place for EMC to look for its next acquisition, 55 percent said yes, 35 percent said no, and 15 percent didn't know.To underscore that, security was identified as the biggest gap in EMC's product portfolio by 28 percent of respondents. Virtualization was cited by 14 percent, and storage management by 12 percent. Readers don't think EMC needs to bother much with WAFS and InfiniBand gear; each of those technologies was picked as a potential EMC priority by only 5 percent of respondents.

How has EMC done with its acquisitions? Eighty percent of the second guessers say it definitely (29 percent) or possibly (51 percent) could have done better. Nine percent say EMC hasn't missed the boat on any companies it could have bought, while 11 percent aren't sure.

Now that you've provided EMC with its short-term acquisition strategy, turn your sights to Network Appliance's product roadmap with our new poll.

Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch

Organizations mentioned in this article: