Yesterday the US newswires were full of stories that EMC was selling its stake in VMware – today EMC squashed them by doing nothing. It looks like no sale - for now.

EMC is still suffering from the relentless campaign from shareholder activist Paul Singer’s Elliot Management Corporation to sell its stake in VMWare and the subsequent feeding frenzy in the shareholder press.

The latest salvos from both sides show EMC standing firm in its determination to keep its stake despite this vocal opposition. Whether the Singer camp is growing or just getting louder as it gets more desperate is a matter of opinion.

The US newswires seem to suggest that investors are increasingly hostile to EMC’s present stand. A research note from Wall Street analysts Stifel said: “We believe investors will continue to question the company’s willingness to change its views on the 80% ownership stake in VMware, Inc.,”.

A Stifel note predicted after reading the New York Post’s report.

However the Singer camp seems to have underestimated Joe Tucci, EMC’s CEO, and the EMC board’s  apparent determination to keep VMWare at the heart of its organisation. Singer seems to have some irritation at EMC’s federal organisation which seems to muddy the waters around VMWare’s contribution to EMC’s bottom line.

The EMC board begs to differ. During the company’s recent quarterly conference call, before Singer purchased EMC, the company’s management continued to highlight that its Federated strategy remains the right long-term move as enterprises continue to virtualize and move to the cloud.  In this call, Stifel said, the executives downplayed the importance of the increasing competitive overlap between EMC storage and VMware’s software-defined strategy. They appear to be happy with the status quo.

As vendors battle for the data center industry’s share of the software-defined market strategic confusion will not be tolerated by shareholders. They increasingly realise the importance of speed of take up for success as software-defined standards begin to emerge internationally.

Bizarrely some US commentators say that Hewlett-Packard (HP) is a possible buyer of VMware, which Stifel says “investors would likely question.” This would be partly due to HP’s recent corporate Mergers & Acquisition commentary which highlighted potential acquisitions in the several hundred million dollar range – focusing on cloud, security and big data.

However, HP shareholders keeping a weather eye on the woes of the company after the disastrous Autonomy purchase might be quick to veto another large dose of corporate indigestion.