EMC to focus on software space
By siliconindia staff writer   |   Thursday, 11 December 2003, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: For storage behemoth EMC (2002 revenues at $5.4 billion), coming to India with a software focus was a late decision, but the company is trying to speed things up and make up for lost time. Last month, there was a clear announcement of investment numbers — $100 million, reports an Indian daily. For a long time, EMC — like HP — was perceived to be just a box-maker in the storage area, while newer entrants to the market such as Network Appliances made it known that they were nimbler and better adjusted to the times because of their focus on software. Chris Gahagan, senior vice-president, storage infrastructure software, EMC, was quoted by the daily as: “Everyone thought EMC had proprietary software. We did, but only because we were the first to make it and there was nothing else available! But it’s true that we are now thinking like a software company. After the acquisition of Legato and Documentum, we can enter areas where we couldn’t before. Right now, we are 50% hardware, 30% software and 20% services. We’re well on the way to being 30% hardware, 50% software and 20% services. Some of this change has come through acquisitions, some through organic development.” Needless to say, EMC has been hiring from software companies of late. India will be the vehicle for EMC to increase IP output, said Gahagan. “We want the team here to craft a product, do advanced designing of it and also offer support once it’s launched. The strategy is to have the India team do the entire software lifecycle. Some of the original team can go on to design new products, but others can move to supporting the old product,” he says. A team at the EMC IDC is in fact working on a fresh product, the technology for which is so new that it hasn’t yet been used in the storage space. “It’s very, very cutting edge. We have split the team so that part of the development is done in the US, while the rest of the team is in India,” he said. Once the product is out, in say a year or so, the support will move totally to India. Another seven-year-old product is also being migrated to India to develop new features and take on global support. “It’s a challenge to move customer support here because we have about 1,00,000 licences for this product out there in the US. We have to make sure that the service levels here are as good as in the US,” said Gahagan. What EMC is trying to offer the customer is “information lifecycle management” with the focus on information, not storage per se. “This is where we get close to the customer, because managing information is at the heart of an organisation,” says Gahagan. He promises that in a year, IT organisations will know EMC as a different company — more software, less hardware. With more happening out of India, that’s inevitable. (Source: ET)

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