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30 minute interview
‘Storage software will account for 50 percent of our revenues’
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Mark E Sorenson
Senior Vice President, EMC Software Group |
EMC is bullish about the global storage software market. It believes that the
storage software is slated for a boom period as organisations turn to Information
Lifecycle Management (ILM) solutions and disk-to-disk backup to manage and protect
their data.
*What is your strategy for the storage software business?
EMC has traditionally been an external storage hardware vendor. Storage is now
commoditised and prices of solutions are coming down drastically. In order to
leverage the storage market fully, we balanced our portfolio and found that
storage software gave us the profits we sought. EMC has acquired fifteen software
companies in the recent past to add to its storage software capabilities. These
companies include Legato, Documentum, VMware and Dantz among others. 25 percent
of our revenues come from storage software and the services built around it.
With software capabilities from these acquisitions, our products can perform
optimally in a heterogeneous (multi-vendor) environment. In the near future,
the percentage of revenues from storage software and services will move up to
50 percent from 25 now.
*Where is the storage software market headed?
Many organisations across the world, including those in India, are going in
for disk-to-disk systems for faster backup and retrieval of data. They are adopting
Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategies gradually, in order to protect
corporate and Intellectual Property (IP) information. They also want to completely
automate their backup, replication and data retrieval processes, which will
drive the need for replication and backup software. We hope to take advantage
of this.
*Does EMC’s Indian development centre play an important
role in the company’s storage software strategy?
We have pledged an investment of $100 million in Indian operations in areas
such as research and development (R&D) and sales and marketing. Of this,
a substantial amount will go into R&D efforts at our Bangalore development
centre that is carrying out significant work in the storage software domain.
This centre has 350 people and it is one of the largest centres outside of the
US. It has been exposed to storage software products such as Documentum and
Legato’s NetWorker. The centre is also working on storage virtualisation
technology and products.
*Will storage virtualisation find many takers?
Storage virtualisation will reduce complexities associated with storage and
help organisations utilise storage resources to the optimum. By opting for storage
virtualisation, organisations will be able to manage their storage-related functions
more efficiently. EMC is likely to come out with a large number of storage virtualisation
products shortly.
*What is the potential of the storage software segment
in India?
We will continue to see growth in demand for storage software from large enterprises
in India. The small and medium business (SMB) segment is also expected to be
a major growth contributor. EMC, which was initially focused on large enterprises,
is now tapping the SMB segment as part of a global initiative. The CLARiiON
series of products will cater to the external storage requirements of SMBs.
We acquired Dantz, a software company that specialises in storage software tailor-made
for SMB needs. The products for the SMBs would be focussed on ease of use and
will be sold by channel partners. We are concentrating on enhancing our partner
programmes in India and are working with HCL, Tata Infotech, CMC and Redington.
With their help, we will be able to penetrate deeper into the SMB segment in
India.
Abhinav Singh
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