HP's bungled acquisition of Autonomy is all over the news. Here is an analysis that shares some insight. The perspective is well explain in the last paragraph.

As an ex-auditor, I realize that while a lot of the focus will be on finding people to blame for this, I think that more focus should be put on making sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again at HP or to you. We can learn from the mistakes of others. HP has been an excellent teacher, though I think it is well past time it passed this responsibility on to another firm.

The author highlights the flaws in the acquisition process.

Wrapping Up: Acquisition Method

Now that the mistake is in HP’s history, process changes have been put into place to assure this same mistake is less likely to occur, and the CEOs who were responsible are both gone from the acquired and acquiring companies. However, one final lesson stands out: HP’s acquisitions have been going very badly and so had Autonomy’s. Both firms appear to have used the integration merger process, which appears to have a better than 80 percent failure rate.

While this showcases an ongoing problem of doing things the way they have always been done, regardless of how badly they work out, it should also showcase that firms like EMC and Dell have been following a very different path far more successfully of late and that it is their example, not the historical failed process, that should now be followed.

Keep this in mind when you think about acquisitions in the data center ecosystem.