Cloud computing and EMC
EMC Corporation is a Massachusetts-based information management systems provider.
Started in 1979, at a time when computers were still a rather rare site, EMC has been one of the companies behind the growth in information technology, especially with regard to corporate (large scale) computing.
EMC’s revenue topped US $13 Billion in 2007, with a workforce that is 42,000 strong and spread out at more than 100 locations. EMC is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the company is recognized as a United States Fortune 500 company.
EMC’s Products
EMC specializes in information storage infrastructure, with a product range that encompasses both hardware and software. Perhaps EMC’s best known product is its Symetrix information storage collection that many data storage networks around the world are based on.
Other EMC products include its EMC Autostart, DiskXtender, NetWorker, PowerPath and ControlCenter—all of which are the hardware and software components that make data storage networks work.
RSA Security, one of EMC’s major divisions provides the products that secure the storage networks that are built with EMC’s products.
EMC also offers a content management system, which makes effective information management in large organizations a convenient possibility.
Cloud Computing at EMC
By its very nature, cloud computing plays right into the hands of large scale computing manufacturers like EMC.
With cloud computing, people get the opportunity to run applications in the cloud, thus eliminating the need for individual organizations to run and maintain in-house application servers, which tend to be rather expensive.
Obviously, such a venture requires information management infrastructure of a scale previously unheard of.
As a leading manufacturer of large scale network storage devices, EMC has correctly identified the opportunity that cloud computing offers—to which EMC has responded quite well, by creating a division entirely devoted to cloud computing.
It could even be argued that EMC was one of the front runners to the provision of EMC infrastructure, as it using the very kind of network storage it manufactures that the current promoters of cloud computing got the idea that it could be done.
Notably also, EMC’s response to the cloud computing revolution which is slowly taking shape and which is promising to change the way we view corporate computing has been unique in that it is proactive – rather than reactive.
Of course this is understandable, seeing that cloud computing is more of an opportunity than a threat to a company like EMC.
The company’s whose response to cloud computing tends to be more reactive than proactive are those that see cloud computing as more of a threat than an opportunity.
Cloud computing can be seen as an opportunity (rather than a threat) to EMC because it is a company that has made a name for itself by providing information management systems of precisely the scale that cloud computing is likely to require.
Many data centers are powered by network storage devices made by EMC, and they are probably the closest in scale to cloud computing that you will find.
This means that if cloud computing proves to be the next frontier in computing, EMC would definitely be a major beneficiary. Indeed, the business of providing infrastructure for the cloud could just as easily drive EMC to even greater heights, than where it is as of now.
Of course, another way of looking at it is by viewing cloud computing as a threat to EMC—considering that cloud computing is likely to bring other tech companies, who were previously uninterested network storage devices, into direct competition.
The Future of Cloud Computing at EMC
EMC’s quite recent acquisition of Seattle-based Pi and the subsequent hiring of Paul Maritz (former vice president in charge of Platforms Strategy at Microsoft) shows just how seriously EMC is taking the cloud computing revolution.
Pi’s acquisition, in itself, brings on board more than a hundred engineers who are experienced in the kind of development that is required to make cloud computing a reality.
Besides the acquisition of Pi and employment of Maritz, EMC also seems to be doing plenty more to tap into the opportunities that the cloud brings—and the company is now pegged as a major player in the future cloud computing.
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