I’m kicking myself for not completing the thought a year ago. But Arik Hesseldahl beat me to it with a great article about the EMC board thinking about a “downstream merger.” Mr. Chris Evans followed with a bit more industry color. Chris’s post inspired me to add a few more quick points, to avoid the “stuck blog” trap.

• VMware has a more valuable and differentiated position in the data center. When folks think private cloud and future infrastructure, VMware has to be in the picture. EMC storage is one of many options.
• Software and public cloud is the future, not hardware appliances. VMware is in a better position to operate as a pure software company with optional appliances, not the other way around. Go-to-market strategies (e.g. selling hardware, giving away software) and everything supporting them are very difficult to change, if not impossible.
• Finally, while VMware still accounts for only 25% of the revenue of the “EMC Federation,” it is quickly becoming the profit engine, as seen below in the net income results over the last ten quarters.

I’ll be watching very closely to see what the EMC board decides!