Lenovo's IBM deal will help EMC expand its market, storage systems giant says

EMC, the world's largest maker of storage systems, says its international expansion plan will receive a shot in the arm when Lenovo completes its acquisition of International Business Machines' low-end server business.

"Lenovo is going to be stronger in data centres [following that acquisition], where we are already strong, so the combination works well," David Webster, EMC's president for the Asia-Pacific and Japan, told the South China Morning Post.

United States-based EMC and Lenovo, which has operations in more than 160 countries, established in 2012 a broad partnership in which Lenovo manufactures and resells EMC's networked storage systems in China and other markets.

Their partnership also includes a technology development programme designed to accelerate Lenovo's capabilities in producing so-called x86-standard servers, which are embedded in selected EMC storage systems.

Lenovo, however, was keen to have a bigger footprint in the server market and announced in January its purchase of IBM's struggling x86 server business for US$2.3 billion.

The deal would enable Lenovo, which is already the top global supplier of personal computers, to become the world's third-largest manufacturer of general-purpose enterprise servers.

Lenovo chairman and chief executive Yang Yuanqing said the deal would benefit the company's alliance with EMC, but he declined to elaborate.