EMC drives jockeying in data storage

EMC Corp. has bested NetApp in the bidding for Data Domain with a $2.1 billion offer. CEO Joe Tucci says the combo forms "a powerful force in next-generation, disk-based backup and archive," according to a Boston Globe article. The deal is expected to close at the end of the month.

A Bloomberg report speculates that NetApp, a maker of storage computers for the likes of Oracle, may now itself become a takeover target. "In the storage market, either you're a consolidator or you are consolidated," says analyst Ashok Kumar of Collins Stewart LLC, as quoted by Bloomberg article. Both EMC and NetApp wanted the Data Domain technology to help cut storage costs.

For its part, EMC is not resting on its laurels. The maker of advanced data storage gear has been architecting a future for itself in such key markets as cloud computing, energy-efficient data centers, and personal data management, according to a separate Globe report: It recently unveiled an alliance with the MIT Media Lab, opened a research center in Cambridge where EMC engineers will team up with local university computer scientists, and is joining with MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Boston University, and Cisco Systems to build a $100-million advanced data center.

"We're a collection of university research partnerships all around the world," says EMC innovation network director Burton Kaliski Jr., in the report. "We're not looking merely for the acquisition of knowledge, but the application of knowledge."

- see the Boston Globe Data Domain acquisition report
- here's the Bloomberg report
- here's the Globe's EMC partnerships report