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Let's check out Dell, doom and the competition

Now would be a good time not to be in Dell's crosshairs

NetApp is hosed

NetApp was already in trouble. EMC + Dell means there's one of everything in the new Dell for every storage market bigger than "can be serviced adequately by a Synology". With backups in case the primary product lines don't work out.

Its only chance is a diagonal move into hyperconvergence with a hope of building an endgame machine of its own. Yottabyte could give it the software, SimpliVity the hardware (along with a better underlying storage platform than anyone else, anywhere has). The alternative is probably courting Nutanix.

If NetApp bought Yottabyte and SimpliVity both, managed to integrate the products and didn't botch the job like NetApp usually do, they might just have a chance. NetApp is so much bigger than both companies that it could get away with dominating those relationships.

The bigger question is whether, in dominating those relationships, it could hang on to the minds that created all the goodies they would be buying. I don't hear very good things from former acquisitions on this front.

Getting in bed with Nutanix would be a lot harder. Nutanix is so close to IPO that it can taste it. It doesn't think of itself as an underdog and it won't be dominated by anyone in any relationship. I cannot see the cultures of those two organizations doing anything other than violently conflagrating if it should attempt to become one.

There are other options, but they require even more work and even more delicate integration by NetApp. At the core of the question surrounding NetApp's future is that for it to be still operating 15 years from now it has to admit today that storage (in any and all forms) is a feature and not a product.

I don't believe NetApp is capable of this and with the Dell/EMC merger as the final nail in the coffin I believe that NetApp is no longer a long term viable concern.

If I were Dell I'd be a lot more worried about Supermicro, or Chinese giants like Quanta or Huawei waking up and realizing that shifting tin is not enough. Supermicro has already begun it's move upmarket with a new focus on services and an global enterprise support offering that has now been in operation long enough to shake out the bugs.

If Supermicro ever figures out that they need to actually own the stack, they're going to be a problem for everybody.

IBM is doing its own thing, and it always will. It's not interested in the war that the rest of the industry is fighting. This spreads it thin and means it'll never be the dominant player, but it keeps them consistently relevant. There's really not much Dell (or anyone else) can do about that: as long as IBM keeps up the R&D they'll keep on keeping on.

Other competitors such as Ericsson and even General Electric could leverage their expertise in telecommunications and small, low-power internet-of-things devices to make a play for the spaces Dell will occupy. Doubtful, but possible. The real threat is Lenovo. It is starting to have enough pieces of an empire to be a real threat. Samsung isn't far behind.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM will rent you time on their data centre so you can pretend it's your own. Who will remain to challenge Dell at selling you your own data centre is open for debate. In the end, it's unlikely there will be many competitors left standing.

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