TBR Analyst Krista Macomber has warned that Lenovo's rapid growth could receive a swift kick to the bottom line from the deal.

She said Lenovo needs to have an immediate competitive response to the deal or it could be in trouble.

Lenovo is working aggressively to gain data centre market share, but it faces a strategic challenge in the form of its limited in-house competencies around storage, networking and outcomes-focused line-of-business sales models, she said.

Lenovo is filling out hardware portfolio gaps steadily, launching its first Lenovo-developed storage arrays in May of this year, but Lenovo can't compete against an end-to-end Dell and EMC stack.

Lenovo has depended on EMC for its China operations so it can provide complete packages. It will have to dissolve this partnership if the Dell deal goes ahead. This means that it will have to quickly to partner with others, acquire or build its storage practice, Macomber said.