Veritas compares Dell EMC to Kim Jong-un and Kim Kardashian mash-up

Vendor's tongue-in-cheek Las Vegas keynote pokes fun at rival's likeness to combo of dictator and vacuous celebrity

Company conferences are a good chance to slate rivals to a supportive audience and Veritas did just that in Las Vegas on Tuesday, taking aim at merged giant Dell EMC.

Mike Palmer, executive vice president and chief product officer at Veritas, used his keynote address to twist the knife into its rival, somehow dragging in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and celebrity Kim Kardashian in the process.

Making a point around the dangers of data, Palmer used the analogy of "data monsters" and displayed six such 'monsters' on the big screen: Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc., Shrek, Frankenstein's monster, Stripe from Gremlins, the Night King from Game of Thrones and finally an image which blended the faces of Kim Jong-un and Kim Kardashian.

Palmer used each 'monster' to demonstrate a different type of data threat. For Mike and Sully, Palmer said: "some monsters learn how to add value in society, such as these guys who eventually created energy through laughter", while the likes of Stripe transformed into something evil and were "not as well intentioned".

When Palmer got to the Jong-un-Kardashian mash-up, he said: "I got this from Dell EMC. They went to the Kim Jong-un school of sales training, realised that sort of dictatorial hardware image isn't what they wanted, so they mashed it up with Kim Kardashian [and] that is what we got."

The jibe drew the day's biggest laugh from the Veritas Vision audience, as industry giant Dell EMC looms as an easy target for its various rivals.