EMCs Buying Spree Snares Interlink

The purchase of Interlink Group gives EMC another weapon to bulk up its professional services arsenal to attract and satisfy SMB storage customers.

Moving quickly to seize its second vendor acquisition in just three days, EMC announced May 11 that it has acquired Interlink Group, a privately held IT services firm focused on Microsoft technology offerings. Financial details of the transaction were not released.

The purchase of Interlink gives EMC another weapon to bulk up its professional services arsenal to attract and satisfy SMB (small to midsize business) storage customers, many of whom rely on Microsoft software to help run their organizations.

Interlink joins Internosis, another Microsoft-centric IT services firm acquired by EMC last November, as recent additions to the growing Microsoft practice within the EMC Technology Solutions group.

Interlinks Microsoft environment professional services capabilities canvas application development, enterprise integration, CRM (customer relationship management) and ECM (enterprise content management).

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The services firm is certified as a Microsoft Gold Partner and was awarded the 2005 Microsoft Partner of the Year in the Western United States.

Featuring almost 180 IT professionals and headquartered in Englewood, Colo., Interlink fits the exact "small regional-based" IT services company profile, which EMC president and CEO Joe Tucci has described as being on EMCs near-term acquisition radar to fill out the storage vendors professional services arm.

Click here to read more about EMCs purchase of Kashya.

"Were going to make sure for our market—for goods and services—there is plenty of room for our partners to make good profits for themselves, or what they get for reselling our software and hardware. For services [that means] combining them to make bigger solution sets," Tucci said.

However, Tucci was quick to dismiss any notion that EMCs concentrated services/Microsoft interest and related buying spree would in any way impact existing partnerships that directly play in the SMB and services arena.

"One of the fastest-growing areas of EMC is our channel area. By no means do I think were even close to the [channel compete] line; theres tremendous growth for services, so were extending there but not in a [direction] to hurt our partners," Tucci said.

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