For EMC, Three Acquisitions Lead to Three Big Products

The Boston area’s biggest tech company is known for at least two things: non-compete clauses and acquisitions. On Tuesday, the latter paid off in terms of new products.

EMC, the Hopkinton, MA-based data storage giant (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]), has a long history of buying startups and competitors. Acquisitions are an important part of its growth and innovation strategy, as we’ve detailed in previous stories. Together, EMC and IBM have reshaped the enterprise IT landscape with their acquisitions—and with better track records of integrating companies than the status quo in tech.

Here are a trio of product launches that EMC is touting this week, each of which is rooted in a recent acquisition.

—First, a new one. EMC is acquiring Natick, MA-based TwinStrata for an undisclosed sum. The company’s technology will be used to provide cloud-storage access within EMC’s VMAX product line, which is getting a reboot. Interesting stuff to watch, if you care about the future of enterprise data services and the “hybrid cloud.” (TwinStrata had the honor of making my list of “boring Boston tech companies that are actually interesting.” Several of those companies have made news in recent years, including Dyn, Globoforce, and SMTP.)

—Isilon operating-system upgrade: This has been a big product line for EMC in helping big companies store, protect, and manage big data. Seattle-based Isilon Systems was bought by EMC for $2 billion-plus in 2010; before that, Isilon had a long history of ups and downs in the cutthroat storage sector.

—XtremIO 3.0: This is the next generation of flash-storage arrays for servers and data centers. The basic goal is to make enterprise servers faster and more efficient at crunching data. EMC bought XtremIO, an Israeli startup, for $400 million-plus in 2012, after doing a fair bit of internal R&D on flash arrays.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.