Brussels, 01/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - On 29 February, the European Commission announced that it had cleared the acquisition of the data storage and software provider EMC by the IT company Dell, both of which are American.
The Commission assessed the effects of the transaction on the market for external enterprise storage systems. It concluded that the merged entity has a moderate market share in the market for external enterprise storage systems and, in any event, the increment brought about by the merger is small. It also found that the merged entity will continue to face strong competition from established players such as Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp and from new entrants.
The Commission also examined the risk that the merged entity could try to limit or degrade access to VMware's software for competing hardware vendors. VMware holds a strong position on the server 'virtualisation' software market. However, the Commission found, on the basis of available evidence, that the merged entity would have neither the ability nor the incentive to shut out competitors. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)