Industry figures welcome EMC takeover of DG

EMC's pending acquisition of Data General (DG) may mean the end for one of the oldest major brand names in computing, but users have generally reacted well to the announcement.

Last month, EMC said it will pay $1.1bn for DG, its rival in Massachusetts. The move surprised some industry watchers, DG saying only ten weeks earlier it would grow its Clariion storage unit - the main prize for EMC - with several hundred more personnel pushing Fibre Channel- (FC) based products and services.

Chris Yetman, director, customer services delivery at GTE Internetworking, and a Clariion user, said: "I think EMC brings a lot to the table. Overall I'm not too worried."

Referring to EMC's high-end strengths, he added: "Sometimes it's 'too much for what we need', and I also expect [the merger] will make it easier for EMC to get other products in use in our data centres."

In an earlier video interview with Silicon.com http://www.silicon.com/a32672 , Jim Dawson, Clariion VP EMEA, explained why Clariion should be considered as a supplier of FC-based storage area networks (SANs) - reasons which arguably also show the company's worth to EMC.

He said: "We have a history of providing storage technology for mission-critical environments. We've been on the leading edge both in the development of RAID technology in general, and now our advancements in Fibre Channel technology."

Bull OEMs both EMC and Clariion storage products. John Rhodes, Bull UK business manager Storage Systems, said: "EMC is very strong within our proprietary base, but less so in our open systems market. DG [products] get sold more at the lower end where users are more conscious of price per megabyte. The merger will especially help our disk storage business."