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EMC's Meaning of Life? |
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He's dressed up in pounds of prosthetic fat, his waist five feet in diameter, and he's throwing up. We're talking high-pressure projectile vomit that's splattering everywhere. In the end, after a full meal of everything on the menu plus several crates of ale, the waiter asks, "Would you like an after dinner mint? It's wafer thin."
Mr. Creosote slips the after dinner mint into his mouth and explodes, coating the other diners with buckets of gunk.
EMC [Corp.] has been gorging on smaller companies for years, close to 30 since 1999 for a total of well over $8 billion. Could its next acquisition be the thin mint that makes Mr. Creosote, ahem, Tucci, explode?
Here's the list of announced acquisitions in chronological order starting with the most recent EMC whopper.
2006
RSA Security -- Secure ID cards -- $2.1 billion -- June 2006
ProActivity -- Business process management software -- $30 million -- June 2006
nLayers -- Application discovery software -- $50 million -- June 2006
Akimbi Systems -- Change management testing software -- Not disclosed -- June 2006
Kashya -- Heterogeneous replication software -- $153 million -- May 2006
Interlink -- Microsoft-focused services -- Not disclosed -- May 2006
Authentica -- Digital rights management software -- Not disclosed -- March 2006
Acxiom (buys IP only) -- Grid software -- $30 million -- January 2006
Internosis -- Microsoft-focused services -- Not disclosed -- January 2006
2005
Captiva -- Document management software -- $275 million -- October 2005
Acartus -- Archiving software -- Not disclosed -- October, 2005
Rainfinity -- File virtualization software -- $80 million – August 2005
Maranti Networks -- Intelligent switch assets -- Not disclosed -- August 2005
2004
Smarts -- Event automation/network management -- $260 million -- December 2004
Allocity -- Microsoft storage management software -- approximately $10 million -- November 2004
Dantz -- Backup software for small and midsized businesses -- approximately $50 million -- October 2004
2003
Legato Software -- Enterprise backup software -- $1.3 billion -- July 2003
Documentum -- Enterprise content management software -- $1.7 billion -- October 2003
VMware -- Server virtualization -- $635 million (cash) -- December 2003
BMC Software (buys IP only) -- Storage management -- Not disclosed -- July 2003
Astrum Software -- Storage resource management -- Not disclosed -- April 2003
1999-2002
Prisa Software -- Storage area network management software -- $20 million -- September 2002
Luminate Software -- Storage performance monitoring software -- $50 million -- September 2001
Filepool -- Content addressed storage software -- approximately $50 million -- April 2001
CrosStor Software – Network attached storage software - $300 million - November 2000
Terascape Software -- Network storage management software -- approximately $50 million -- March, 2000
Data General -- Midrange storage arrays -- $1.1 billion -- August 1999
Will EMC recoup the price of all these acquisitions? Clearly VMware [Inc.] was a good bet -- but what about all the others? One Wall Street analyst said he could envision a situation two years from now where EMC ends up having to divest everything that's not storage related. This could be extremely painful for EMC users already down the path of trying to integrate all the pieces.
Alternatively, the company pulls off its bold vision of transforming itself from a storage hardware company into a broader IT software and services company, and proves everybody wrong. Let's hope so.
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