EMC pulls ILM, Software, Services from magic hat

Langkawi, Malaysia -- Traditionally, EMC has been known as a storage hardware company offering affordable disk-based systems. But EMC (an acronym for its three founders) has just reinvented itself and wants the world to know that it is also a software and services company. While making this announcement on February 11 at a South Asia Press Symposium here, EMC also unveiled new storage solutions and revamped its product lineup. The company believes its Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy can help its customers gain strategic control over their information efficiently and cost-effectively.

Steve Coad, General Manager, EMC South Asia, said, "As a sweeping change continues across the storage industry, EMC has kept a laser focus on tiered storage platforms—a key foundation of information lifecycle management. Today's announcement demonstrates this focus and showcases the industry's broadest and most capable lineup of tiered storage offerings."

EMC also unveiled a new strategy that will help it become what it calls "The Ultimate Information Lifecycle Management Company."

Strategy

EMC wants to be an end-to-end tiered storage platforms company. It believes increased focus on software and services can help it achieve this objective. In fact, the breakup of its information storage revenues for Q4 2003 asserts this.

About 51% of its Q4 revenue came from hardware systems, 24% from software and 24% from services. EMC reported total consolidated revenue for Q4 2003 as $1.86 billion. In 2000, EMC was seen mainly as a hardware company with 76% hardware revenue.

For Q4 2004, EMC is targeting 28% for software revenue and 25% for services. The rest (47%) will come from hardware.

Evidently, software will be the major focus and EMC is banking heavily on its India development center to help it achieve its target 28% software revenue. Last November EMC said it would invest $100 million in India over five years. Over half this will go into R&D, the rest towards market development and partnerships with network integrators.

On the sales and services side, EMC says India and Thailand are its fastest growing regions. "We will be focusing on penetrating the enterprise segment, not just the MNCs, but also the domestic companies," said Jon Murray, Regional Program Manager, EMC South Asia. "We shall be going after the SMEs. While we continue to pursue the BFSI and Telco verticals at the high-end, we also want to target Government, Media and Entertainment industries. We want to serve customers in more Indian cities, through our channel and EMC India."

New Products

EMC's tiered storage platforms now span high-end, mid-tier, NAS and CAS (Content Addressable Storage) segments. In the high-end segment, EMC launched its new Symmetrix DMX-2 systems. The mid-range lineup sees new Clariion (CX300, CX500 and CX700) systems.

EMC is also offering a NAS gateway (Celerra NS700G), an integrated NAS system (Celerra NS700) and a Data Mover (Celerra CNS 514).

EMC's new CAS system (Centera) supports native mainframe connectivity and is ideal for storing fixed-content digital assets in mainframe environments.

—Brian Pereira