CEO Phil Soran, co-founder and CEO of storage company Compellent, said in a keynote during the London-based Dell Storage Forum that he will be stepping down from his position on March 31. Soran founded Compellent in his basement with Larry Aszmann and John Guider.

“The announcement was made at Dell’s Storage Forum in London today. Soran stayed on for a year after the acquisition by Dell to bed the acquisition down, and he feels things are now in good shape. Co-founders Larry Aszmann and John Guider left quite quickly after the acquisition.”

The deal can be considered a success. Dell already managed to adopt the Fluid Data migration technology in its storage unit. The latest testimony of that is Site Recovery Manager v6, the latest version of Dell’s storage software announced today that runs on Compellent’s concept.  Soran agreed with that, and noted in an interview that if he had the choice he would not take the company he helped build in a different direction.

Compellent was founded in March 2002, two years after Xiotech– the three partners’ first storage venture, also conceived in Soran’s basement – was acquired by Seagate.

Compellent has helped shape Dell’s storage business in a very profound way, contributing a great deal to the company’s decision to start focusing on its own products. One key indicator of this decision is a statement that the hardware maker does not plan on renewing its partnership with EMC, which as a part of the agreement provided Dell with its storage solutions to resell.

Soran stopped by theCube last year and expanded on another point – the integration of his company into Michael Dell’s own hardware giant. He also discussed his personal experiences working in IT, providing a bit of interesting background for our readers.