It's business as usual for data storage giant EMC (NYSE:EMC).
After months of nail-biting drama around the acquisition of efficiency expert Data Domain (NASDAQ:DDUP), EMC calmly handed in an impressive earnings report and closed the Data Domain deal for good.
Second-quarter earnings came in at $0.10 per diluted share on revenue of $3.26 billion. That's down from $0.17 per share and $3.67 billion in 2008, respectively, but an improvement over last quarter and good enough to send EMC's stock on a 4% skyward joyride today.
CEO Joe Tucci explained the solid performance as a focus on "four of the hottest and fastest-growing areas of IT spending -- next-generation fully virtualized data centers; cloud computing; virtualized desktops and clients; and next-generation backup, recovery and archive solutions." The big man sure hit a lot of buzzwords there, but he walks the talk too.
Majority-owned underling VMware (NYSE:VMW), which stands for the virtualization virtuosity, delivered a whopper of a quarter this time. The new Data Domain assets will fit right into the backup and archive growth area, and are bringing in an estimated $200 million in fresh sales to EMC’s top line in 2009. That deal should neither hurt nor help EMC’s earnings this year, but will provide building blocks for advanced backup systems of the future. Had NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) walked away hand-in-hand with Data Domain, that deal would have been a game-changer rather than a vague benefit.
EMC's own storage-centric cloud computing services don't feel as substantial as the role it plays in other companies building their own clouds. There, the company brings the full force of its storage-market stature to bear, and is constantly up against the big boys -- storage giants like Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA), and IBM (NYSE:IBM). The more "private clouds" you see -- built and maintained by a company and managed like an internal network resource -- the happier EMC will be.
So yeah, EMC does touch on a number of hot markets, whether by providing direct services, by selling hardware and software into standalone solutions, or through acquired hotshots with markets of their own, like VMware. There's nothing wrong with acquired growth if you can afford it -- but I'll always wonder what beautiful music Data Domain could have made together with NetApp.
EMC put the kibosh on that threat with derring-do and panache. It's back to business as usual for EMC -- and business is good.
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