Tuesday 6 November 2007

Equallogic gets Bought

Dell have announced their intention to purchase Equallogic, an iSCSI hardware vendor.

The purchase price is $1.4 billion in cash but the deal doesn't complete for some time, late 2008 or 2009.

Is this an attempt for Dell to move on their storage business? I've never taken them seriously on the storage front, especially as they sell EMC equipment at an effective loss. I could never see the point of that, even if it did gain them some market share.

I wonder how many organisations which would have purchased Equallogic will now not bother?

3 comments:

Marc Farley said...

Hi Chris, (Marc Farley from EqualLogic commenting)

The way I understand it, the deal should close sometime during the first quarter of the 2008 calendar year.

It's interesting that you posed the question about how many of our prospective customers will choose not to buy from us now. I suspect most of them will continue, but we might lose (or postpone) a few deals that are in final discussions, but we will probably pick up quite a few new ones because we haven't had this much free PR day in ages. Leading up to today we have been very subdued and saying very little due to SEC quiet period restrictions - and then today there has been a flood of news about the acquisition. People that never knew we existed are hearing about us for the first time and they are hearing very good things, so its not all that bad from our perspective.

FWIW, Dell tells us they want us intact and in place. They are not anxious to mess with the recipe of success we've had.

Chris M Evans said...

Marc

Fair comment - I guess only those really into the industry will know Equallogic, the Dell acquisition will give the company more exposure.

Stephen said...

I think the customers will benefit greatly from Dell purchasing EqualLogic. I have seen a couple of entries (no I don't have them saved and it was a few months ago) that suggest that after sales service from EqualLogic left a bit to be desired. Perhaps growth factored a bit with that. At least it is still outside the normal storage market.