Lenovo, EMC Finalize NAS Co-Venture

Does Lenovo want to be the next Dell (NASDAQ: DELL)? And has EMC (NYSE: EMC) finally replaced its fizzled relationship with Dell? The global PC shipment leader certainly looks like it’s heading in that direction, while the storage giant appears to have landed a new dance partner.

Building on its initial software acquisition last September of Stoneware that brought it cloud-based BYOD capabilities, Lenovo now has finalized the joint venture with EMC it first announced in August 2012. The initiative, called LenovoEMC Ltd., will deliver co-branded network attached storage (NAS) solutions to distributed enterprise, remote branches and SMBs.

For Lenovo, the partnership could spark its nascent server business and it could give EMC a suitable replacement for its dwindling relationship with Dell. In the long run, certainly Lenovo could benefit from EMC’s experience with Dell.

At the heart of the arrangement is a redirecting of EMC’s Iomega division, the company’s consumer and SMB storage supplier for the past two years, which now will provide NAS to Lenovo’s ThinkServer and ThinkStation server and workstation lineup. The Iomega network storage portfolio sports desktop, tower and rackmount arrays in capacities from diskless to 48TB. Iomega NAS solutions include the EMC Lifeline operating system.

In addition to the joint venture, the Lenovo EMC partnership also covers an x86 server development program, and an OEM and reseller relationship for EMC’s storage lineup.

For EMC, the Lenovo deal provides a vehicle for the vendor to replace its longstanding partnership with Dell, which began to fray around the edges about five years ago when the Dell decided it wanted to do more than resell EMC equipment. EMC signed Dell as a reseller in 2001 and renewed the agreement in 2008 for another five years. At one point, Dell accounted for 10 percent of EMC’s storage sales and more than 30 percent of its channel revenue. In December, 2011, Dell said it had stopped reselling EMC storage products, functionally ending the relationship two years before the contract was slated to end.