eChannelLine Daily News 1-January-2009 EMC continues to move forward by David Hill Many consider EMC to be mostly a storage company, even though Documentum, RSA, and VMware have been key contributors to EMC's revenue stream for some time. During EMC's recent North American Industry Analyst Summit 2008 at the company's Hopkinton, Massachusetts headquarters, EMC shed light on a wide range of activities that illustrate where it is going and why it is a broad-based IT supplier. Let's examine a small sample of four areas where EMC is tangibly demonstrating this breadth of offerings. RSA Tackles Information Security Today and Tomorrow RSA is one of EMC's poster child acquisitions. Brand recognition for RSA as leader in security is high, and the organization considers it a responsibility to help out clients not only with information security, but also with identity security. Recognizing that many view security as an inhibitor to making things happen in IT, RSA views security as an enabler. Security needs to go beyond just being a defensive mechanism to helping enable key IT initiatives, such as mobile banking, cloud computing, and global supply chains. RSA security tools help to analyze, report, and respond to security-based events. Policy management is essential for enabling security in three key areas -- identities (such as user authentication and access controls), information (including data loss prevention), and infrastructure (such as key management). RSA's goal is to develop a more integrated policy oriented system of products. This strategy should help RSA maintain a leadership role. EMC and Cloud Computing -- Fair Weather Ahead EMC says that cloud infrastructures should "enable a frictionless economy by lowering the barrier for entry and reducing the penalty for failure." In essence, EMC believes that businesses will be able to use the cloud concept to innovate aggressively and successfully. The promises of the cloud are just-in-time resources that are always available and flexibly proportional to need; not locked into a rigid infrastructure where configuration changes are difficult and expensive. Cloud computing also offers economies of scale that are attractive to businesses. EMC is taking a measured pace in going forward in this market, leading with the recently announced Atmos. EMC describes Atmos as a policy-based information management solution for building a new category of Cloud Optimized Storage infrastructures. Simply put, Atmos is the software that manages cloud storage processes, including, unified namespace, auto-healing, multi-tenancy, and data services, such as replication and data deduplication. EMC is not ignoring the opportunity to sell hardware as part of this solution, where if offers low-cost, high-density storage systems for cloud environments. So EMC intends to be a player in the cloud computing market and has started to work towards making its vision of cloud computing real by offering an initial product in the space and recognizing that a lot more needs to be done. Atmos seems to be a solid way to start getting EMC into cloud computing. eDiscovery and File Governance -- Better Doing What Has to be Done EMC has identified six areas where it provides Proven Solutions  complete pre-integrated, scalable, federated solutions that meet specific customer needs. And Compliance/ eDiscovery is one of them. The reason for EMC's focus here is that businesses are required to comply with numerous, complex federal civil litigation rules and compliance regulations while at the same time trying not to keep unnecessary data. Part of the function of file governance is about getting rid of unnecessary data legally, i.e., defensively deleting data. That can save companies money in two ways. One is the normal way that deleted data does not take up resources, such as storage space, backup time, and administrator effort. The second is that it saves the cost of having to produce and examine data that would serve no useful purpose anyway in the case of litigation. Effective eDiscovery capabilities can help with file governance, as well as making the whole process of eDiscovery easier and more cost effective. In its solutions, EMC has partnered with StoredIQ, one of the recognized leaders in eDiscovery. One of the problems with eDiscovery is that a lot of data typically has to be sent outside a company's four walls for processing. StoredIQ has a purpose-built indexing appliance for in-house eDiscovery that is claimed to be much more cost effective than competing solutions. A solutions-based approach using partners is a good way to do eDiscovery and file governance without breaking the bank. Investing -- Not Just Selling -- In Emerging Markets All large vendors recognize that emerging markets can help fuel growth in the long run. So it is no surprise that EMC targets the so-called BRIC countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China) along with 13 other countries with rapidly developing economies. But EMC also recognizes that globalization is about more than just expanding its global sales. It is also about investing locally in development and/or manufacturing and in using local talent as the fuel for providing future innovation. EMC has therefore established Centers of Excellence (COE) in four countries -- Russia, India, China, and Israel -- whose software development brainpower is well-recognized. How EMC taps into that talent pool to hire the proverbial "best and brightest" is illustrated in China. The country annually produces a huge population of computer science and engineering graduates, and EMC receives thousands of resumes. Through a process that includes standardized testing and multiple interviews, the company is able to winnow down to a selected number who are given job offers. EMC is able to select the crème de la crème from a very deep talent pool, and the company states that its employee turnover is a fraction of the industry mean. Maybe that's because EMC has figured out how to make the COE developers work together, drive productive relationships with developers around the world, and innovate based on country or regional opportunities. Taking advantage of talent and becoming locally relevant is not unique to EMC (other large vendors have been doing it for years), but EMC's success in finding, employing and retaining top quality workers shows that the company understands what it takes to be a world-class company and is moving firmly in the right direction. Final Words None of the four EMC areas we have discussed -- RSA and security, Atmos and cloud computing, the eDiscovery Proven Solution, and the focus on emerging markets -- seem to have anything in common, but they do. If the proverbial blind men were to "touch" the EMC elephant, they would all come to a different conclusion as to what the company is all about. Though the four are all part of the EMC "elephant," that creature is a broad-based IT supplier that delivers highly sophisticated solutions in these areas. And what is even more interesting is that the four disparate areas we have considered here represent only a few touch points of the EMC "elephant." Those who consider the company to be only a storage "one-trick pony" base that erroneous assumption on a one-dimensional view that distorts the true picture of EMC. The Mesabi Group (www.mesabigroup.com) helps organizations make their complex storage, storage management, and interrelated IT infrastructure decisions easier by making the choices simpler and clearer to understand. This article first appeared in the Pund-IT Weekly Review.