Vendor lineage
EMC Corporation
Made storage a category of its own, then became the largest technology acquisition in history.
EMC was incorporated in Massachusetts in August 1979 by Richard Egan and Roger Marino, whose initials are the E and the M. It began selling memory boards and became the company that made enterprise storage a purchase decision in its own right rather than something bundled with a server.
The strategy was unusual and deliberate: persuade customers to choose storage independently of who supplied the rest of their infrastructure. That is why EMC ended up selling into IBM, HP and Sun accounts alike, and why 'best of breed' became a phrase storage buyers used.
It bought heavily. Data General in 1999, largely for the CLARiiON array line, which is how one of the first minicomputer companies ended up inside a storage vendor. Documentum and Legato in 2003. RSA Security in 2006, which put a security business inside a storage company. VMware in 2004, for $625M, which turned out to be the most consequential of them all.
Iomega followed in 2008, later rebranded LenovoEMC through a 2013 joint venture that dissolved when Dell arrived.
In 2016 Dell acquired EMC for $67B, the largest technology acquisition ever recorded at the time, forming Dell Technologies. The VMware stake EMC had bought for $625M twelve years earlier was a substantial part of what made the price sensible.
1999 Data General
One of the first minicomputer companies, bought largely for the CLARiiON storage array line.
- 1968 Data General is founded (origin, not a purchase) — Founded by ex-DEC engineers; it defined the minicomputer market before ending inside a storage vendor thirty-one years later.
The mid-range array business.
2003 Documentum and Legato
Content management and backup software, bought in the same year.
The software half of what became the EMC federation.
2004 VMware $625M
Server virtualisation, bought before virtualisation was a category most buyers had a budget line for.
By 2016 a large part of what made a $67B price for EMC sensible. The most consequential purchase EMC ever made.
2006 RSA Security $2.1B
Encryption and authentication, which put a security business inside a storage company.
RSA, later divested.
2008 Iomega
Consumer and small-business storage.
Rebranded LenovoEMC through a 2013 joint venture, dissolved when Dell arrived.
- EMC SEC merger filing (DEFM14A, 2016): incorporation in Massachusetts in 1979
- Wikipedia: EMC Corporation - founders, defunct September 2016, Dell Technologies
- World Economic Forum: the $67B Dell-EMC deal as the largest tech acquisition of its time