Greg -
You keep talking hardware
au contraire, mon ami. I said that EMC's play consists of Hardware, Software and Services, likewise IBM and CPQ's offerings, and that DELL's weakness in competing was in both the software and services segments. The software is easier - EMC is weaker in its software offerings than either CPQ or IBM, both of whom offer full integrated packages for a variety of architectures. DELL will have to partner to get similar offerings, and is doing some of that now. The services is much harder. This is not break-fix, it is analysis of storage hierarchy, performance planning, and a host of other systems analysis to make the storage effective. EMC is quite strong in that area also, as are CPQ and IBM.
And I said "if DELL can pull it together". This is a somewhat risky play, but at least it is in character for DELL and potentially opens up a big new market without violating DELL's basic business model. Time will tell.
EMC still has a ways to run, this is a complex topic and the EMC folks are great at PR. I have known some of the principal players there for a long time and they could charm the numbers off a gold watch.
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