48 Worcester Business Journal • www.wbjournal.com
25 YEARS: MORPHERS & MERGERS
Struck_WBJ_1/2PgHorz.indd 1 9/22/14 5:43 PM
DATA GENERAL
AND EMC
FALLON CLINIC AND ATRIUS HEALTH
I
n 1999, 31 years after its founding,
Westborough-based Data General was
sold to EMC, of Hopkinton, for $1.1 bil-
lion. Michael Ruettgers, then EMC's
president and CEO, saw the deal as an
opportunity to grow his company. Data
General had helped advance the busi-
ness computing paradigm from one
based largely on mainframes to one
based on minicomputers. But the shift
to the personal computer and the
Internet in the 1990s caused another
seismic shift in the technology business.
Yet, since Data General had also been a
major supplier of computer-storage sys-
tems and servers, the marriage with
EMC made sense.
Unlike the 1998 acquisition of Digital
Equipment Corp. by Compaq Computer,
which was instigated by competition, the
Data General-EMC merger was "sparked
by growth," Thomas Hubbard, then-vice
president of the Massachusetts
Technology Collaborative, said at the
time. The acquisition of Data General
surprised some analysts, who would not
have predicted a merger with another
storage company, CNET News said.
T
he brand confusion between
Fallon Clinic and Fallon
Community Health Plan was reme-
died in 2011 when Atrius Health, an
alliance of five nonprofit, community-
based medical groups serving nearly
700,000 patients throughout Eastern
Massachusetts, acquired Fallon Clinic,
which continued to function as a
locally operated, multispecialty medi-
cal group ser ving Central
Massachusetts. The Atrius/Fallon
Clinic deal — which led to Fallon
renaming itself Reliant Medical Group,
— covered almost a million Bay State
patients and was part of a wave of con-
solidation in the U.S. hospital sector.
In August, Reliant announced it
plans to leave Atrius and is exploring a
merger with another Atrius-affiliated
organization, Southboro Medical
Group, with the goal of serving the
Central Massachusetts and MetroWest
markets.
The Westborough
headquarters of the for-
mer Data General Corp.,
top, and the Hopkinton
headquarters of
EMC Corp.
