The tectonic shifts in the global information technology industry driven by cloud, mobility, security and analytics is witnessing many a number of established companies reinventing themselves to tap into the future opportunities and also attempt to recreate that streak of dominance. This reinvention would mean a completely new strategy which would give a different look for the company. EMC, the US headquartered $24.4 billion global storage products and services giant has already embarked on this journey by expanding its portfolio to bring under its ambit more number of technologies which are available to its customers under one roof.

Today, EMC is not just a storage products and services provider but has created a federation. The EMC Federation represents five key line of products and services: information infrastructure, virtulisation software, security, Big Data & analytics and converged software. These are represented by brands: EMC II, VMware, Pivotal, RSA and VCE. The unfolding strategy was unveiled at the EMC World 2015 conference held in Las Vegas.

The common theme which is driving all these five elements of the federation is to give the marketplace the choice to take them individually or together. It is focused on emerging third platform of mobile, cloud, big data and social, which are all being transformed by the world of apps.

EMC chairman and CEO Joseph M Tucci said, “We believe that the biggest movement is the industry is the movement of the cloud and we have a much more compelling value proposition.” EMC strongly believes that the piecemeal approach to creating technology infrastructure is unlikely to work and it would be a more converged structure which would be the winner. Here lies the value of its Federation structure as Tucci puts it, “When we compete against others, I believe we are better together.”

As EMC accelerates its journey towards cloud computing, it is looking at better ways to store, manage, protect and analyse the key asset of any enterprise—information. David Goulden, CEO, EMC Infrastructure, felt that the market for traditional information products and services will remain flat or decline but the key challenge will be to build a new kind of platform which can manage the complexity of explosion of apps and its users.

“We believe that we are leading the transition of creating this information platform which will be defined through software,” Goulden said, while adding that the two big challenges which will be faced by all the technology providers will be security and authentication. At the EMC World 2015 conference, EMC unveiled a array of new products which has the possibility of redefining the way one deals with information or data. Though, key announcement was EMC’s embrace of open source.

EMC announced it plans to release an open source project based on EMC ViPR Controller, Project CoprHD, into the open source community. It is EMC’s first open source project based on one of its commercial software products. The project will make the code for ViPR Controller—the storage automation and control functionality software—open for community-driven development.

CJ Desai, president, EMC Emerging Technologies Division, said, “ViPR Controller was the perfect candidate for open source contribution. As fully transparent software focusing on storage automation, both the software and its users will benefit from community contributions.” As EMC moves forward with its vision of providing an integrated play of converged infrastructure, India as a geography is moving in tandem with these plans. The technology major started its operations in India in October 2000 and currently has over 3,500 employees, besides a strong customer portfolio and partner network.

EMC dominated the Indian storage market. According to IDC, EMC continued to lead and increased its share to 31% from 29% in CY Q4 2014 with their stock and sell business model also starting to contribute. According to IDC, India external storage market saw a marginal year-on-year de-growth (in vendor revenue) and stood at $ 60.85 million for Q4 2014. However, terabyte sold continue to grow irrespective of revenue de-growth and witnessed a double-digit year-on-year growth in Q4 2014 due to decrease in $/GB depicting the ever increasing storage demand.

According to Gaurav Sharma, research manager, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC India, “Digitisation drives across verticals and segments are generating unprecedented levels of content and data that are expected to boost storage demand in CY 2015, though organisations may choose to route some of this storage on the non-traditional  cloud/software based solutions as well. Emerging verticals and players across segments will play a significant role in providing a noticeable mindset shift from traditional storage planning, evaluation and buying patterns in CY 2015.”

It is the emergence of the new breed of companies and a burgeoning consumption population which promises immense potential for a corporation like EMC. David Webster, president, EMC Asia Pacific and Japan, projected that by 2030, Asian middle class will constitute about 66% of the global share with India and China leading the way.

He felt that there are twin business opportunities in India: lesser presence of legacy  infrastructure and new age companies who demand business outcome with minimal focus on pure technology. “India presents huge business opportunity where there is a shift from products and technologies to better outcomes with newer solutions.”

Aiding EMC in its further foray into the Indian market is presence of its research & development centre or the centre of excellence (CoE). The Indian CoE formed in 2007 and is one of the largest R&D centre outside of North America has also been involved in developing solutions catering to the local market besides being engaged with its global programmes. EMC is already engaged with several government projects like Aadhaar and city surveillance. It has also evinced interest in the smart city projects.

EMC is geared up to meet the requirements of a digital world where information is not going to be stored in boxes but data lakes which will be software defined and majority of these residing in the cloud.

(The correspondent was in Las Vegas on an invitation by EMC)

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