What does a Silicon Valley giant do when it wants to move into a new kind of business? Go shopping, of course!
Storage colossus EMC
Greenplum brings a couple of nice extras to the table. The customer list features heavyweights of various industries, including both NYSE Euronext
And like a toy in your cereal box, Greenplum comes with a little surprise: Unpaid executive advisor Scott McNealy will continue to guide the EMC underling. If the name rings a bell, that's because McNealy co-founded and then led Sun Microsystems until Oracle
Greenplum is not a blockbuster deal for EMC, but it goes to show how EMC is thinking outside the box to find bolt-on solutions that can enhance what the company already does. It's certainly a clearer growth-by-acquisition plan than what Cisco Systems is doing these days. EMC looks like a stock that's worth owning.