The Alternatives: Sale To Or Merge With Cisco

Of all the possible combinations of EMC and a systems vendor, one with Cisco would be the most likely given how closely the two partner via their VCE joint venture and on developing VSPEX converged reference architectures. Furthermore, the two have practically no overlap in terms of storage offerings, although the software-defined networking technologies in VMware's NSX and Cisco's ACI offerings strongly overlap and would come under scrutiny if a merger or acquisition were announced.

However, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers was quoted Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal as saying that a possible Cisco deal for EMC would have happened "a year or two ago" and that there are no such deals currently being discussed.