Gartner Inc. analyst John Pescatore was skeptical.

"EMC is trying to make it look like all of the RSA piece makes sense," said Pescatore. In fact, only a small portion of RSA's portfolio is likely to be of immediate use in bolstering EMC's existing storage management capabilities. RSA's SecurID product, one of its biggest sellers, is used purely to help companies enable remote access to corporate networks and is unlikely to be of much use to EMC's storage customers, he said.

Like Symantec's purchase of Veritas, RSA's acquisition by EMC faces a lot of challenges, Pescatore said. "Seventy percent of big acquisitions don't work. I don't think anyone will say the Symantec and Veritas deal has been a screaming success so far. At this point, there's nothing about this one either that jumps out and says it will be a screaming success."

Brian Babineau, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., disagreed, saying EMC is buying RSA because its users are becoming increasingly concerned about data security. RSA's tools could help EMC meet the requirements of security and privacy legislation proposed in Congress in the wake of recent data breaches.

Babineau dismissed any comparison to the Symantec-Veritas deal. "It can't compare to Symantec/Veritas," he said. "There you had a consumer business and an enterprise business coming together. Here, you have two enterprise businesses that sell to different organizations, with one of those companies looking to expand their horizons and the other looking for an exit strategy."