Paul,
<<Data storage is rapidly becoming more software-intensive, an area where Dell has no experience, he [of EMC] says.>>
Well, this is surely true for the huge, centralized tera/petabyte type of storage that EMC excels in. However, the type of storage that Dell will be selling--at least initially--will be much less ambitious than that. They are aiming at the low end, as is Snap/DSS, at workgroups and small businesses. In larger corporations, these smaller configurations can stand independently of the larger systems, or can be connected to them. There is a good deal of off-the-shelf software to manage them--witness the growth in VRTS, not to mention companies like CA and LGTO--and NAS companies like DSS and NTAP also make their own or bundle others' software. Dell won't--I'm guessing again--make its own software for that, they will just bundle what others have made, and do what they do best--sell, sell, sell.
EMC's approach seems to me not unlike IBM's approach to mainframes back in the early 80s--proprietary, highly centralized, unwilling to allow open standards in storage systems. I'm sure Gus will correct me if that is an incorrect perception. Maybe EMC can successfully pull this off where IBM couldn't. Certainly they were the dominant force in high end storage systems in the 90s, no doubt about that, and can still lay claim to that today. Whether they will maintain that dominance in the next decade, or will fall victim to the kind of competitive pressures that brought down IBM--well, I won't hazard a guess. But I am guessing that there will be a huge multi-billion market for the smaller, more targetted kind of storage that Dell and DSS are trying to sell, as well as the huge EMC-type systems.
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