为何说戴尔与EMC合并意义不大？

    本周，听闻EMC和戴尔这两大巨头正在协商进行科技界史上最大的一次合并，业内人士均兴奋不已。

    总部位于马萨诸塞州霍普金顿的EMC是一家拥有36年历史的商用数据存储产品公司，市值约为500亿美元。而总部位于德克萨斯州朗德罗克的戴尔在20世纪90年代凭借廉价、可定制的笔记本电脑声名鹊起，公司于2013年以244亿美元的价格完成了私有化。

    自从周三晚上二者合并的消息传来，许多人对这起交易传闻的财务细节产生了疑问——首先就是这笔交易如何达成？（戴尔现在身负约120亿美元的债务。）另一个问题是，为何两家老迈的科技公司会想捆绑到一起来应对科技业的变革。（换句话说：如果你把两块砖头一起扔进水里，它们会浮起来吗？）

    两家公司都是20世纪90年代第一次科技热潮的受益者：戴尔出售个人电脑，EMC出售公司存储系统。随着计算市场的重心转移，两家公司都开始拓展新业务。尽管戴尔仍然出售笔记本电脑、显示器和服务器，但他们也开始出售安全服务、云管理软件和业务集成服务。自2010年戴尔收购云服务管理公司Boomi起，就开始加大对这些领域的投资。2013年戴尔私有化之后，又与许多云服务供应商合作，讨论所谓的聚合架构，为自己的客户提供私人云服务。

    与此同时，EMC专注于不太受云计算革命影响的高端企业存储设备。公司也大力投资了新业务，如2004年收购虚拟化软件公司VMware（正是这类软件在21世纪最初十年的中期推动了云计算的发展）。公司还在2010年收购了数据仓储软件公司Greenplum，在2013年收购了数据分析软件公司Pivotal。EMC的联盟制商业模式——以传统的EMC业务为核心，VMware（于2007年上市，如今市值已达约340亿美元）、RSA和Pivotal围绕它开展——可以让母公司在获取新公司利益的同时不妨碍新公司的创新，这种模式一直饱守赞誉。而近年来，Elliot Management等投资公司又试图把它们拆分，以获取更大价值。

    那为什么戴尔和EMC要合并？

    从EMC的角度来看，戴尔只是一个具有吸引力的买家——尤其是考虑到惠普不愿收购他们，而思科也不太可能收购他们。在大型IT设备供应商中，戴尔是唯一有可能的对象，这就是该公司可能吸引EMC及其银行家的唯一理由。

    从戴尔的角度看，拜Pivotal所赐，EMC在存储、安全和数据分析上拥有额外价值。戴尔没有EMC在企业存储业务上的影响力，这要归功于EMC的VNX企业存储磁盘阵列，对戴尔来说，这一点十分诱人。如果戴尔决定成为业内人士所谓的“聚合基础设施供应商”——换句话说，也就是网络、存储和计算一条龙服务供应商，EMC的存储产品对戴尔的战略而言也会是一项利好。在统一计算系统服务器上，思科走在了前头，惠普紧随其后。在这一方面，戴尔去年与Nutanix展开合作，已经进行了尝试，不过他们仍未取得多大进步。

    然而，有一点对戴尔来说是个问题：VMware。随着消费者越来越多地选择更便宜、更全能的“开源”产品而不是专有产品，VMware的发展已经开始减慢。而戴尔就是力推开放式网络的公司之一，因此合并VMware之举有悖这家德克萨斯州公司的精神文化。

    所以，如果你是戴尔，正在考虑收购EMC，那么这家公司的产品的确有很多值得你喜欢。（我们甚至还没有提到计算机安全公司RSA。）不过把这些业务全部打包买下来需要几百亿美元，这值得吗？恐怕不值。而且这场交易丝毫没有缓解两家公司存在的困境：在未来，他们的核心业务（和利润中心）将会遭遇竞争，面临衰退几乎是不可避免的。

    这就是目前科技圈对这次合并百思不得其解的原因。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    The technology industry is atwitter this week over news that EMC and Dell, two landmark technology companies, are reportedly in talks to consummate what could be one of the largest tech mergers of all time.

    Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, a 36-year-old industry fixture that makes data, and storage products for businesses, has a market value of about $50 billion. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, which rose to prominence in the 1990s thanks to its cheap, customizable laptops, went private in 2013 for $24.4 billion.

    Since the news emerged late on Wednesday, there have been many questions about the financial details of the reported deal—how, for instance, it could happen in the first place. (Dell has about $12 billion in debt.) Another question? Why two aging technology companies would seek to bind themselves together to endure the winds of technological change. (Put another way: If you throw two bricks together, will they float?)

    Both companies were darlings of the first big technology boom in the 1990s: Dell sold PCs; EMC sold corporate storage systems. As the computing market shifted, both companies expanded into new areas. While Dell still sells laptops, displays, and servers, it also sells security services, cloud management software, and business integration services. Investment in those areas has accelerated since 2010, the year Dell bought Boomi, a company that manages services between clouds. Since taking the company private in 2013, Dell has struck partnerships with a host of cloud providers, talked up so-called converged architectures, and created private clouds for its own customers.

    EMC meanwhile has focused on high-end enterprise storage equipment that’s less threatened by the cloud computing revolution. It has also made key investments in new business areas, such as its 2004 acquisition of VMware VMW -5.84% , which makes the virtualization software that gave rise to cloud computing in the mid-2000s, its 2010 acquisition of Greenplum, which made data warehouse software, and the 2013 launch of Pivotal, which makes data analytics software. EMC’s “federation” business model—traditional EMC at its center; VMware (which went public in 2007 and now has a market cap of about $34 billion), RSA and Pivotal orbiting it—has been applauded for allowing the parent company to reap the benefits of the newer companies’ success without impeding their innovation. In more recent years investors such as Elliot Management have looked to break it up in the interest of extracting more value.

    So why pair Dell and EMC?

    For EMC’s part, Dell is simply an attractive buyer—especially if Hewlett-Packard HPQ 4.18% didn’t bite and Cisco CSCO 1.34% is unlikely to. In the world of big IT equipment providers, Dell is the last man standing, one reason that the company may appeal to EMC and its bankers.

    For Dell’s part, EMC offers additional assets in storage, security, and data analytics, thanks to Pivotal. Dell lacks EMC’s clout in the enterprise storage business, a credit to EMC’s VNX enterprise storage arrays, and that is desirous to the folks in Round Rock. EMC’s storage products are an additional boon to Dell’s strategy if the latter company decides that it wants to become what people in the industry call a “converged infrastructure provider”—in other words, a provider of all-in-one boxes that offer networking, storage and computing. Cisco pioneered the concept with its Unified Computing System servers; HP followed suit. Here, Dell has put a toe in the water with last year’s deal with Nutanix, but there otherwise hasn’t been much progress on that front.

    There’s one catch for Dell, though: VMware. The company’s growth has been slowing as its customers increasingly choose “open source” alternatives that promise to be cheaper and more versatile than proprietary options. And one of the companies pushing open networking happens to be Dell, making VMware integration at odds with the Texas company’s ethos.

    So if you’re Dell, and you’re in the market to buy EMC, there’s a lot to like in that company’s portfolio. (And we haven’t even mentioned the computer security company RSA.) But does it all add up enough to justify tens of billions of dollars for the entire package? Probably not. And nothing about such a deal addresses the existential plight of both companies: a future where their core businesses (and profit centers) are under attack and facing almost certain decline.

    And that’s why technologists are still scratching their heads.