- EMC "held off-and-on merger discussions" with H-P (NYSE:HPQ) for nearly a year before the talks recently ended, the WSJ reports. The storage giant is also said to have held talks with Dell, but it's not clear where the discussions now stand.
- The WSJ notes Cisco and Oracle are also seen as potential EMC merger partners, and reports JPMorgan is advising the company on its options. The WSJ's report follows one from the NY Post stating EMC is exploring selling its 80% VMware (NYSE:VMW) stake, in the wake of pressure from Elliott Management.
- Beyond that, EMC and fellow IT hardware giants have seen their sales pressured by a secular shift towards cheaper hardware, and the adoption of white-label systems by Web/cloud service providers who account for an ever-growing portion of hardware usage. That might be motivating IT giants to explore consolidating, with the goals of becoming more efficient and pitching enterprise clients on end-to-end hardware/software/services offerings.