Storage analyst goes to the Dell Side
Posted by: Beth Pariseau
Storage
The industry’s been abuzz this week with rumors that ESG analyst Tony Asaro is headed to Dell, and today Asaro confirmed that’s the plan. He’s going to join Dell as a director of product marketing; today is his last official day as an analyst.
Asaro said his new role will be in creating Dell’s storage strategy and evangelizing their storage products (some would say this is the role of analysts in the market today, anyway). When asked why he’s leaving his analyst gig, Asaro said he’s excited by the position iSCSI is taking in the market and Dell’s direction following the $1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic in November. In other words, a boilerplate answer.
In fairness, Asaro has focused on iSCSI during his time as an analyst and has been bullish about that market’s future. Maybe he didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore, watching money roll in elsewhere. In that way, it’s refreshing to see an analyst put his career where his predictions are.
However, he’ll need to be careful to avoid the fate of another former analyst, Randy Kerns, who left the Evaluator Group to become a vice president of strategy and planning at Sun in September 2005, shortly after Sun completed a blockbuster acquisition of its own. Less than a year later, he left Sun, resurfacing in October 2006 as CTO of ProStor Systems.
Still, this news, along with Dell’s acquisition of The Networked Storage Co. in December, will be welcome to EqualLogic users concerned with customer support in the wake of the acquisition. Folding in added storage expertise shows Dell’s at least trying to make the right moves.
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