back to article HP to buy EMC? We think so, say Wall St money men

An HP and EMC merger still seems like a fanciful sticking plaster to heal two tech giants, but financial analysts in the US are advising that such a transaction not only looks logical but more likely. Wall St money men spent last week analysing HP’s direction in the corporate enterprise following the Discover event in Las …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh crap

    RIP EMC.

    1. zkysr
      Mushroom

      Re: Oh crap

      More like RIP EMC and HP. That is a recipe for a gravitational collapse creating a supernova.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh crap

      That will be EMCs generally good customer service and support by competent staff based in the UK, that speak English as a first language all circling the plug hole then....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Really?

    Any analyst who sees value in HP buying anything given their appalling track record over the last decade is either a paid shill or an idiot.

    I wouldn't even trust HP to buy one of their own printers and have it work afterwards.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Really?

      Legitimate question: outside of the the really large printing press stuff, do any of HP's printers work after purchase? I haven't had a reliable HP printer since the HP Laserjet II.

    2. luis river

      Re: Really?

      This is the comment more voted to favor, but people have very bad memory, the purchase of companies on the part of HP most of times they have been a success, for example the controversial purchase of Compaq rises to HP in what is today, the first servers supplier, Window and Linux of the world, the purchase of 3PAR in the company of more growth in storage. It seems that in this forum this subsidized by the disloyal competition of Hewlett Packard

  3. Canecutter

    Oh Jeez! Not again!

    Will these "Financial Analysts" please shut up already?

    Here they go again, prescribing another of those big corporate moves motivated by a desire to "increase share price", and again, no one thinks of what happens when the Customers of both firms start walking away. And they most certainly will, as surely as night follows day.

    When will they ever learn?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typo, I hope

    "pubic/hybrid cloud"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Typo, I hope

      Maybe just admitting that their cloud customers will get fucked?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Innovation, Invention?

    So, once upon a time, HP used to do a lot of both, Innovation & Invention that is. Like other big, bloated companies, they're now run by bean counters, they've lost their tech soul, and aren't capable of anything more than buying other companies.

    1. streaky

      Re: Innovation, Invention?

      aren't capable of anything more than buying other companies

      They've made it pretty clear they aren't even capable of doing that competently, or at minimum integrating the company competently, anyway.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    I dont think this is a great idea

    A). Sounds a lot like Wall Street pushing a deal to bump up M&A activity to benefit Wall Street

    B) Merging two big organizations from opposite sides of the country with different cultures? Just the internal political wrangling would take years to fall out.

    C) Where's the value for customers in this? I don't see an improvement in products/service/pricing coming out of this.

    D)If HP and EMC were serious about this, HP could have just sold off their enterprise business to EMC months ago, without the disruption of the intermediate step of creating HP Enterprise.

    1. ToddR

      Re: I dont think this is a great idea

      I'm not sure the cultures are the biggest problem, after all a big chunk of HP cam from it's merger with Digital, Waltham MASS.

      Arrogance is HPs biggest problem.

    2. JennyZ
      Stop

      Re: I dont think this is a great idea

      remember when Salesforce was shopping itself around for a buyer - all that did was to up the stock price. Same deal here.

  7. John Chopper

    McNealy said ...

    "the sound of two garbage trucks colliding" Deja Vu isn't it ?

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: John Slopper Re: McNealy said ...

      ""the sound of two garbage trucks colliding" Deja Vu isn't it ?" Unfortunately for the Sunshiners, that sound which McNealy was confused about was actually Sun's share-price crashing, as Sun's customers abandoned them for hp, IBM and Dell.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looks good on paper

    On paper, it's the kind of check-box We Have One of Everything exercise that financial types think makes sense.

    In reality? Not so much

  9. Terafirma-NZ

    sure you thought it through?

    End 3Par for what VNX that's a sure fire way to kill the storage business of both companies. Heck why stop kill VMware for HP's KVM Openstack

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My impression is that EMC are an exceptionally well run business (at least by large enterprise standards) that is facing choppy waters because of uncertainty in its core market. It's made some solid efforts to diversify, but there's only so far you can do that when you're a storage business of that size.

    HP, in contrast, are a historically important business that have been poorly run for years now and whose executive team show no sign of getting a clue any time soon.

    I have three points to note:

    1) Given that HP have explicitly identified the move away from giant monolithic contracts as a challenge to its business that will require it to get leaner and more agile is a mega-merger really going to help?

    2) Even if a merger were a good idea shouldn't it be EMC's management team (competent) rather than HP's (incompetent) that shareholders trust to front it?

    3) It's amusing that financial analysts are one of the best paid professions and probably the only one that most of us don't at all trust to be better informed than the lay person.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HP is where tech companies go to die

    Given HP's appalling track record of acquisitions, it would be unwise to support this as an EMC shareholder and employee. Few of HP's acquisitions in the past several years have been good for HP shareholders. They have been horrible for employees.

    1. Fortycoats
      Alert

      Re: HP is where tech companies go to die

      As a former Compaq employee, I have to agree with you. Horrible for employees. And anytime I see the word "Synergy" (i.e. firing people) I feel like inflicting a BOFH-style halon incident (or the cattle-prod) on the person who uttered such nonsense.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm sceptical. Instead, what would be really cool, would be a reverse take over by EMC. So EMC could add some servers, switches n' stuff to its own portfolio, and drop the less interesting parts.

    There would also be no overlap on the client side, but since the margins are razor thin there I highly doubt anything will happen there.

    1. ToddR

      Anyone can create a server business, so if makes sense for EMC to do so, (similar to Cisco), they just go to a Chinese ODM, or Supermicro and viola server bus' without HP dummies being involved.

  13. Drummer Boy

    The last time HP bought a company I deal with

    it turned them from a well run, tight enterprise security outfit, into an unhelpful company, who i can't even get quotes out of for new hardware.

  14. Phuq Witt
    Facepalm

    Has Anyone Seen a Babel Fish?

    Rajesh Ghai [said]: “...HP Enterprise - the enterprise part of HP - will be a lot more aligned with the current EMC and VMW businesses in terms of end-market focus and selling motions, which will enable the revenue and cost synergies across the two organisations to be a lot more apparent.

    We also believe the worsening secular backdrop and the trends towards software-defined architectures and pubic/hybrid cloud may also compel the two parties to do a deal...”

    Seriously. Do these people go on a special course to learn to Twat-Speak© like this? Or do they come out with guff like this over tea and toast at the breakfast table too?

  15. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    WTF?

    So what does hp gain?

    So, other than VMware, what does EMC actually have to offer that isn't an overlap with hp's business already? I suppose they could finally ditch the XP array and wave goodbye to Hitachi seeing as EMC can offer mainframe capability, but that's about it from the EMC storage portfolio. And whilst EMC do have some very good sales, support and services people, that's not really a good enough reason to want to pay up for them. It can't be Dave Donatelli's doing, I hear he's finally and totally cracked and gone to work for Mad Larry's vapourware division.

    1. klaxhu

      Re: So what does hp gain?

      vmware, pivotal, isilon? data domain? should I continue? :-) - each of these make more money than any other BU in HP right now. you drank ALL the cool aid, right?

      you sir, have no idea what you are talking about

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: clotyou Re: So what does hp gain?

        "vmware....." Duh, I said other than VMware!

        "......pivotal, isilon? data domain? should I continue?....." No, you can just try and explain why all those amazing results had EMC talking cuts - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/29/emc_results_q4_layoffs/

        "...... each of these make more money than any other BU in HP right now......" Ahem, did you not read the actual results before you decided to be silly? The article above stares the following for EMC - "....Full-year 2014 revenues were $24.4bn...." Now read the hp Q1 results here - http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?wireId=1923229#.VXepFBSCOrU - "......First quarter net revenue of $26.8 billion....." (emphasis mine) Now, seeing as maths is obviously not your strong point, would you like me to explain the difference between a quarter and a full year?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: clotyou So what does hp gain?

          how about comparing profitability versus revenue?

          1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
            Facepalm

            Re: AC Re: clotyou So what does hp gain?

            "how about comparing profitability versus revenue?" If you think EMC are drowning in profits I would refer you back to the Reg article talking about cuts.....

        2. klaxhu

          Re: clotyou So what does hp gain?

          oh man, are you still at hp or part of one of those 50k+ layoffs because of the awesome revenues and strategy/direction hp has ? :-)

          as you are so great with numbers, do you know the difference between revenues and profit?

          good luck with the job-hunt!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So what does hp gain?

        I see you didn't mention VNXe, VNX, VMAX, Vplex or Xtreme in that list :-)

        VMware and Isilon yes, Pivotal - meh and even though DD has a larger revenue share today StoreOnce is way ahead from a technology and scalability front.

        Unlikely to happen, just imagine the fun all the other Vendors would have during any such merger / takeover

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe I'm being hopelessly optimistic, but surely these two combining forces would be unstoppable in the marketplace? I imagine the culture mix would be like oil and water though - they're two very different companies to deal with, with a very different ethos

  17. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    Fun time!

    OK, so what would they call the new behemoth? HEMP (as in "what were they smoking?") maybe?

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