A friend of mine sent me this MSN Money article last night, A Tech Stock To Own Now. It discusses the rise, fall, and steady growth of EMC stock. He knew I was into virtualization and that I might be of some help. He wanted to know if EMC would be a smart investment for his stock portfolio. At a previous employer, I was a Network/VMware/SAN administrator for an EMC NS40 and NS352, so I have a little bit of experiance playing with EMC products. It's no V-Max, that's for sure, but here was my response.
Take in mind, he doesn't know anything related to virtualization or SAN technology and that I know nothing about the stock market or investments. I'm also not an EMC guru, so I don't know the ins and outs of EMC, this is just my own opinion.
"EMC is the largest SAN (storage area network) player in the game. Back in the 90s they were one of the ONLY players in the game, and they did it the best. They gained a huge market share and once you go with EMC, it's hard to turn back. The whole IT world is headed towards virtualization. Currently, Data Centers are being virtualized so servers are more robust and have greater efficiency. It is already common that organizations have adopted virtualization, or they are messing with it. Up next is going to be desktop virtualization, which might only be 2-4 years away from hitting mainstream because its almost ready for wide-scale deployment. VMware is software that enables virtualization, while EMC is the storage behind all of that. The fact that EMC owns VMware, lets them see a profit from that, even though you can buy VMware stock.
There is a saying in the IT world. "No one ever got fired for buying EMC". It holds pretty true. Their products are great, but they are also very expensive. Alot of Fortune 100 companies have the kind of money to buy EMC products. In the past few years, the amount of SAN providers competing for EMCs customers has soared. Virtualization has brought many new competitors (literally hundreds) to the market and I can see even more coming into it as the product further matures. EMC is still on top and there is a reason for that. Since EMC owns VMware, they get a little bit of "home cooking". The newest technologies that are built around storage technologies are always compatible with EMC products first. EMC has alot of money and time invested with R&D into future technologies, so they are usually one step ahead of the game.
I don't know whether I would say to invest in EMC or not. Since I'm in that world, I know which way the market is trending and leaning, and I can see a steady incline in the stock, but it won't sky rocket.
You could think about investing in VMware. Virtualization is on the rise and won't start dropping off any time soon. More people adopt the product everyday. There are other virtualization providers too, such as Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VirtualIron, but VMware technology is YEARS ahead of the other players. That's why they are the best players in the game right now."
Let me know your thoughts or opinions. I would like to hear.