In Depth: The Transformation Of EMC

That sounds like the right direction to Vincent Cottone, senior VP of infrastructure services at financial services company Eaton Vance, an EMC customer. One of his company's biggest challenges is putting the right data security in place as it makes more financial information available to partners and clients. "Firewalls are no longer a help here," he says.

Eaton Vance is a longtime user of EMC's storage systems. And it built a fund management app using RSA technology before EMC bought the company. Will EMC's acquisition of RSA help? It depends on how well EMC integrates RSA's technology, Cottone says. Of Eaton Vance's 60-plus IT vendors, EMC is in the top tier, he says. "They're very strategic, in tune with the way we do business."

The acquisition of Network Intelligence comes into play in security audit and compliance tasks. The software collects and stores data about security events from system, network, database, and storage-device logs. That data can be analyzed to help formulate, implement, and enforce security policies, and to audit compliance with those policies. Because EMC had been selling Network Intelligence's products before it bought the company, they're already integrated with EMC's Centera and Celerra storage systems. Work to integrate them with the Smarts system is under way.

Through its global services group, EMC is offering new security services, such as building data encryption into storage systems to protect data that's flowing over public networks or being shipped on tape, and determining the level of security needed for stored data. Along with pulling all customer service and support operations under one roof, the global services group will offer product implementation and integration consulting services. It includes Internosis, a services company specializing in Microsoft products that was acquired in January, and Interlink, an IT services company acquired in May.

BUTTING HEADS WITH IBM
EMC will find itself knocking heads more frequently with IBM in the content management market after IBM's deal last month to acquire FileNet, a developer of content management and business process workflow applications, for $1.6 billion. That follows EMC's 2003 acquisition of Documentum and OpenText's pending buyout of Hummingbird for $489 million. Earlier this year, IBM said it would spend $1 billion in the next three years to expand development of information management software.

Given that as much as 80% of all information in corporate IT systems is unstructured--E-mails, images, PDFs, Word files--EMC's intent is to link its storage management business as closely as possible to its content management products. "What's happening is that content management is moving into the data center," says Dave DeWalt, CEO of Documentum before its acquisition, who now oversees EMC's customer operations as well as its content management and archiving businesses.

Infoscape, which EMC will unveil this week, is used to locate, classify, and manage unstructured data. The software is intended for smaller companies that don't use large-scale content management systems like Documentum and is made up of pieces of acquired technology from Astrum, Documentum, Legato, and Smarts. It will be available next month, priced at $150,000 based on a 10-terabyte license. The software is complemented by an information management strategy consulting service, also debuting this week.

Fifth Third Bank uses EMC's replication tools and storage systems to maintain about 95% of its 600 terabytes of data. That puts EMC "in the top two or three IT vendors for us," storage management VP Steve Swanson says. The bank has tried a test version of the Infoscape bundle, and Swanson sees the potential of adding RSA encryption for data protection. "From a historical perspective, yeah, they've been a storage vendor," Swanson says. "But some of their recent acquisitions position them to be something more than that."

Tucci isn't ruling out more acquisitions but says making the pieces EMC already has work together is the focus now. That, and helping customers understand the company's information infrastructure vision. But time isn't on Tucci's side. If EMC misses its financial numbers a few more quarters and continues to slide in market share, explaining the company's strategy gets even harder.