Thomas also talked about Dell's plans to expand its relationship with EMC and whether his company would consider buying EMC.

Do you see acquisitions playing into your storage growth strategy? My experience has been it's very hard to make acquisitions really work. You end up spending a lot of money and then the two companies end up struggling with a lot of overlap. So overall I think we're not inclined to acquisitions. But on the other hand, we never say no to a good idea. As I look at storage, the first thing I think of is I can get almost any company to play with me without buying the company. If I can get the value without paying the down payment, that's a better deal for Dell. I just want access to their technology, and I can do that with relationships like the one with EMC.

You say Dell is adverse to acquisitions, but could there be a time when Dell considers buying EMC? EMC, in my mind, is the rare exception. We work so well together. We've already done all the integration of the teams and the companies. It would be a smooth thing. But that's really a call beyond me. But I also have all the value without the acquisition. I can't imagine, other than just pocketing more of the profit, what I would gain. I have met my objectives with the EMC relationship. I have their technology, I meet my customers' needs, it's great stuff. But if Kevin [Rollins] wants to change the bottom line of Dell, that's his call. He and [EMC CEO] Joe Tucci are very close personal friends. I can't imagine the thought hasn't entered their minds.

Do you ever see Dell expanding its reseller agreement with EMC to include high-end systems? Yeah. We just added their NAS solutions earlier this year. If necessary, we can take any product they have and add it to an OEM relationship. We have an enormous number of products, including their high-end products, already in a reseller agreement, and there is no product EMC has that's outside of our reseller agreement reach. The only difference between reseller and OEM is when I figure there's enough volume in it for me to invest in doing my own services and management thing. I can imagine a time when that could happen. But as we sit here right now, the low end is accelerating. The high end of the business is slowing down. The opportunity for me is in the lower end. I think it's being driven by the fact that the low-end products are every bit as capable of what the high-end products had been.

Then there are "good enough" things, like iSCSI and SATA drives, that are also coming down. So our market has a confluence of technology, price declines, corporate partnerships that drive product sets down. There's a confluence at the sub-$20K price point. That's my sweet spot.