possible M&A: Dell and EMC?

Story is here. Not sure this is a great tie up … EMC has lots of things Dell doesn’t need (and vice versa). Possibly parts of EMC (secession from the federation?) with Dell. I can’t imagine VMware wanting to tie up with one vendor. Nor Pivotal, etc. This said, Cisco pulled out of the venture with EMC to pursue its own directions, competitive with elements. But then they bought and subsequently closed Whiptail. I am not really sure I know what to make of this. HP Enterprise with EMC storage would be leaner/meaner I think, though HP acquisitions haven’t been all that successful. I dunno … maybe de-federating, and splitting the company up to pursue markets would be better, but I can’t see how it would impact much (other than to return capital to shareholders … which isn’t a terrible idea). If they did split up, I could see the storage piece looking for a happy home for vertical integration. I could see DSSD, Isilon, etc. under one roof, though you’d have to be careful to prevent making regulators uncomfortable … so there would likely be more divestiture.