CRN Storage News

Hard-drive vendor Western Digital Wednesday agrees to buy SanDisk in a cash-and-stock $19 billion deal, as the evolving storage industry focuses more on flash-memory storage chips over magnetic disks.

Dell's SC9000 storage array, with its new hardware platform and refreshed operating system, is just one of many highlights from this week's Dell World.

Last week's announcement that data storage giant EMC will be acquired by Dell triggers the change-in-control clauses in the employment agreements of EMC's six top "named executives," resulting in big paydays for key players if they leave the company.

Being acquired by Dell would likely dissolve EMC's reselling agreement with Lenovo and force the PC giant to find new paths into the data center market, analysts say, perhaps by partnering more closely with IBM or acquiring IBM's storage business.

In a interview at NetApp's Insight conference, CEO George Kurian says the company knows how to partner with VMware 'regardless of what ownership structure they are part of.'

The new training and services, revealed at this year's NetApp Insight program, are aimed at helping partners find better ways to bring customers to hybrid platforms, where the same data is addressed seamlessly on-premises and in public or private clouds.

Here's what a Dell-EMC merger could look like as Dell officially makes its move to buy EMC, in one of the biggest technology acquisitions ever.

While share prices dropped slightly below the final pre-IPO price of $17 per share, Pure Storage, now with a $3-billion-plus valuation, can turn its focus to competing against a host of startups and legacy vendors.

Activist investor Elliott Management has reportedly extended its truce with EMC Corp., and some partners are beginning to lose patience with the situation.