Server/Storage Attach Sells For Systems Vendors

Are North American enterprise customers more likely to buy storage from their server vendors than from other sources? We surveyed enterprise IT hardware buyers and learned that they purchase a wide variety of combinations of server and storage gear, with no pairing dominating the market. Buyers are as likely to combine Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM with EMC for storage as with the server vendor's products, underscoring that EMC is holding its own as the leading storage vendor by customer count. To compete with EMC, systems vendors must move beyond the convenience of server/storage packaging to offering real technical synergies — while EMC must counter by improving the integration across its product line.