History 2002: EMC Quietly Sells MCI

When EMC acquires a company, the storage leader’s press office goes into action immediately.

But when EMC recently sold off its Groupe MCI subsidiary, it remained strangely silent.

So it was that some 4 years ago, on April 28, 1998, EMC announced with a flourish of press releases its acquisition for $33.5 million of the Paris, France-based Groupe MCI, at that time a company with $37 million in annual revenues and 400 employees, as well as a subsidiary in Canada.

“The addition of Groupe MCI strengthens EMC’s overall presence in France and gives both Groupe MCI and EMC customers the resources of 2 leading organizations to help them to meet their business challenges,” said SVP of business development, Paul Noble, a cousin of the Egan family that provided the E in EMC .

After a string of poor financial results that led to a number of lay-offs, EMC recently moved to dump or dissolve the subsidiary, specialized in professional services for large accounts.

Much to its apparent surprise, the company found a buyer in 3S Informatique (850 employees, annual revenues of €100 million), another French firm that offers consulting and services in the financial and banking world.

The sale price was not disclosed, but it would not have been too substantial.

When queried in April about the subject, EMC CEO Joe Tucci told us that the French firm did not fit into his company’s strategy, which now aims to focus essentially on storage.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 172 on May 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.