Dell-dumped EMC reports bumper results

EMC may have just been dumped by Dell over a year earlier than expected, but its results show the storage giant is in fine health.

The company posted a 28 per cent rise in profits, following strong demand for its storage products and plenty of business from its virtualisation-focused subsidiary VMware.

Net income went up to $605.6 million up from $472.5 million in the same quarter last year, whilst revenue was up 18 per cent.

"The priorities we have outlined in our financial triple play' to gain market share, invest aggressively to take full advantage of the massive opportunities at the intersection of cloud computing and Big Data, and improve profitability continue to guide us through 2011," said David Goulden, EMC executive vice president and chief financial officer.

"We are confident that our company strategy, disciplined investment approach and continued focus on execution, which have driven our success over the past several years, will continue to serve us well in the future."

The break-up

The results came as EMC was dumped by long-time storage partner Dell ahead of schedule. The two were supposed to remain partners until 2013, but Dell decided this week it was not going to sell EMC storage products anymore.

Dell has its own storage products following the acquisition of Compellent, which was completed earlier this year.

Michael Dell's company was selling a wide range of EMC-made equipment over the past 10 years, including the popular CLARiiON and Celerra networked storage lineup, as well as NAS gateways and backup disk arrays.

The early parting should be good news for both parties. Dell is looking to become a complete data centre hardware provider, having bought a tonne of related companies on top of Compellent, including EqualLogic and more recently Force10 Networks.

EMC is looking to focus more heavily on its VNX products, moving away from its CLARiiON and Celerra products.