EMC changed itself over the year both in response to industry trends and to prepare for the future. Here are the 10 biggest stories of 2014.

The FlashStack CI becomes the latest in a crowded field of converged infrastructure solutions offered in partnership with Cisco UCS and Nexus technology, although one Pure Storage partner says there's plenty of room for all.

Spanning Backup for Office 365, when released in the first half of 2015, will be the first solution offering enterprise cloud-to-cloud data protection for Microsoft Office 365 environments.

Logicalis has agreed to acquire a 160-person German IT services and solution provider, bolstering its database and storage offerings.

Customers can take advantage of the new HP 3PAR File Persona software to manage all block, file, and object storage via a single user interface with no need for APIs or multiple storage systems.

EMC, which traditionally acquired companies with top market share, now prefers to acquire startups not only for their lower price but for the extra time EMC gets to make their pending product launches better integrated into EMC's strategy.

The EMC Federation, including EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware, Pivotal and RSA, together can build complete customer solutions, but overlapping technologies can lead to some friction between the different components.

EMC's Tucci tells investors that VMware could quickly be spun out as a separate company if investors so desire, but made the case that EMC has a much better potential future the way it is organized now.

Rich Napolitano, who led development of EMC's successful VNXe and VNX2 arrays, is looking to take software-defined networking mainstream as the new CEO of Plexxi, a developer of SDN software and configurable, photonics-based networking hardware.

NetApp's FlashRay all-flash array, released in September -- about nine months after it was expected -- is still missing some key management capabilities, but the company promises they will be available soon.

HP is moving aggressively to exploit what it sees as a chance to leapfrog EMC by taking a lead in the all-flash storage market.

The company ratchets up its hybrid cloud offerings with a new solution on top of the acquisitions of Cloudscaling, Maginatics and Spanning.

EMC has reorganized into a new Emerging Technology Division and a new Core Technology Division, and has formed a new cloud management and orchestration business unit to handle cloud brokering technologies.

EMC, fresh off failed merger talks with HP and facing investor pressure to spin off VMware, is planning a corporate overhaul that could include forming a new cloud business unit.

We look at VCE from its start as a developer of reference architectures based on EMC, Cisco and VMware technologies through its transformation into a $2 billion developer of integrated data center solutions to now as a new unit of the EMC Federation.

EMC used its third fiscal quarter 2014 to deflect concerns away from recent rumors to how it is building the company into a disruptive force in the future IT industry.

HP CEO Meg Whitman said HP's robust storage and networking offerings, combined with the HP split, puts HP "ahead of the curve" to do battle with EMC and Cisco in a market moving at lightning speed.

EMC, Cisco and VCE executives moved to deflect any concerns that the decision to absorb VCE into EMC would impact the long-standing partnership between EMC and Cisco, and said that VCE as part of EMC would become a more agile organization.

Bloomberg is reporting the company is set to make the announcement Wednesday when it reports its quarterly results.

Symantec, currently in the midst of a move to split into two businesses, releases a new NetBackup appliance and unveils plans to end production of its SMB-focused Backup Exec appliances.