Dell quits EMC reseller business

Hardware giant discontinues decade-long relationship, citing the strength of its own-brand storage portfolio

Dell has called time on its 10-year reseller agreement with EMC after spending more than $2bn (£1.3bn) building its own family of storage products.

As of this month, Dell has officially discontinued selling new EMC storage systems, something it hinted at over the summer in an earnings call.

This includes Dell-branded EMC OEM and resold EMC storage products including Clarrion, Celerra, Data Domain and VNX.

Dell said it will now support its customers' storage needs with its own portfolio, into which it claimed it has ploughed $2bn over the past three and a half years.

The investment includes several acquisitions, including EqualLogic, Compellent and Exanet.

Dell said in a statement: "Storage represents a critical piece in the puzzle for Dell in its evolution to provide customers with a broad datacentre portfolio for solutions, consulting and services. With growth from acquisitions and new R&D, Dell sees itself on a trajectory to become one of the top three leading IT storage providers by 2014."

Although Dell and EMC renewed their reseller agreement for three years in 2010, industry watchers viewed their split as inevitable as Dell encroached further onto its former ally's turf.

In a recent Q2 earnings announcement, Dell also confirmed it is keen to ditch low-margin business that is not strategic to the company, and its EMC box-shifting business fell into that category.

Dell stressed that it will continue to provide existing Dell/EMC customers with the "high level of Dell services and support they expect".