The Alternatives: Sale To Or Merge With IBM

Reports of possible merger partners or acquirers have been silent about one other potential suitor: IBM.

While IBM is selling its x86 server business to Lenovo, it has staked part of its future on the storage and converged infrastructure markets, and could possibly get a huge boost in both from a deal with EMC. IBM traditionally OEMs a significant part of its storage business from other vendors, and so it could take advantage of EMC's storage technology. IBM, like HP and Dell, could also benefit from acquiring VMware.