EMC Corporation: Managing IT M&A Integration to Enable Profitable Growth by Acquisitions

EMC Corporation is one of the fastest profitably growing public companies in the United States. It pursues both organic and acquisitive growth. Between 2005 and 2010, it acquired over 50 companies. EMC used to be a vendor entirely of enterprise storage products. Complementary products and technologies of the acquired companies enabled EMC to transform itself into a vendor offering complete systems of hardware and software solutions for addressing information infrastructure needs of customers. EMC’s acquisition strategy has been to retain the specialization and talent of acquired companies, and accelerate their revenue growth. Consistent with this strategy, EMC has followed a case-by-case approach in integrating IT infra-structures and applications of acquired companies. Depending on the strategic intent of an acquisition, EMC has left the IT of the acquired company alone; integrated it fully with that of EMC; or followed a hybrid IT integration approach. This case-by-case IT M&A integration approach has been pivotal in EMC’s profitable growth through acquisitions. As of early 2011, EMC was facing an unprecedented profitable growth opportunity. However, as the company’s size and scope of products and operations grew, different levels of IT integration across various acquired businesses and product lines started to create some challenges. Business and IT leaders were contemplating how to address these challenges and how to architect the company to seize the profitable growth opportunities ahead. This case study examines how EMC has organized for and governed M&A integrations with a particular focus on IT M&A integrations.