Subversive IT management EMC re-customization

In the torrent of technological change, EMC is "Redefine" (redefining) itself.

For the past more than 10 years, EMC has evolved from a storage hardware vendor to an information infrastructure solution provider. Today, it is trying to shift towards cloud computing, large data vendors, delivering it as a service to meet the trends of the third platform.

At the 2014 EMC World Conference in Las Vegas, EMC's silver-haired but Hale "soul figure"-Chairman Joe Tucci (Jotus) took a playful, funny, picture of the Irish national Costume on stage. He also tried to use this affinity to tell tens of thousands of viewers, EMC is not old, trying to change.

In fact, this time EMC's "Redefine" is a doomed change, as technology is changing and being "Redefine".

In a word, the world is shifting from a second platform to a third platform, a third platform for it growth and innovation with mobile devices, cloud services, social technologies and large data from the second platform in the LAN, Internet, client, and server era.

Behind this shift will be the process of redefining "software" and "IT Management". As a global information Infrastructure solution Leader, EMC needs and must be aware of this change and use the new platform to provide new services to avoid missed opportunities.

It is worth mentioning that this subversive change has also been reflected in EMC's business performance, it sounded the alarm. According to EMC2014 's first quarterly earnings, revenue from the Information Infrastructure business unit fell 3% to $4.08 billion against the same period last year, while emerging storage business revenues, including Isilon, at Mo S, Vplex, VIPR, and Xtremiio, achieved 81% Rapid growth. Pivotal, a software-defined business, also achieved a 41% per cent year-on-year revenue increase of 49 million dollars.

The clarion call for change has been blown, and will EMC have a forward-looking vision of a future that will test Jotus and his three potential successors-leaders of three companies, EMC Information Infrastructure Business CEO David Goulden, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz.

"If EMC fails to grasp these new directions, future development will be very limited." Jotus also said solemnly at the EMC World Conference.

"Three" changes in technology platform

Technology is changing, driving traditional IT companies to "change".

So what is going on in the world? This has been a glimpse into the daily life of people, today's drop-by-taxi, smart watch and other products have simple cloud computing, large data features, the future with wearable equipment, unmanned vehicles, the GE Industrial Internet and other mature, the entire production, lifestyle will also occur a larger range of changes.

All this is not a coincidence, the logic behind the change is that the information technology industry is transforming from a second platform to a third platform.

According to the report published by IDC, from the history of information technology industry, in the 50 's and 80 's, it was the first platform period of the large host and terminal. The second platform period, which was represented by LAN/Internet, client/server system, was now turning to cloud computing, Large data analysis, mobile technology, social technology as the core of the third platform period.

In the first platform era, there were only thousands of applications, the second stage was increased to tens of thousands of, the user increased to tens of millions of, and when the third platform arrived, the application would reach millions of and the user would be expected to be up to billions of.

This is not a simple information technology upgrade, replacement, but a landmark change. The increase of mass data brings new requirements to related hardware, software and service market. In the future, the purchase proportion of the server will be reduced, the storage cost will increase, which is expected to account for 50% of the data center equipment purchase.

"Although it will take some time to transition from the second platform to the third platform, the transition to the third platform is an inevitable trend," said Ye Chenghui, senior global vice president and Greater China president, in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter. ”

In the future, EMC will not only consolidate the battlefield of the second platform, but also smooth transition from the traditional data center market to the software-defined data center market in the new market of the third platform.

This change has led to the transformation of the storage market competition map, IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard in the first three quarters of 2013, respectively, the decline, while the EMC, Huawei and other companies are showing upward trend.

However, it is not easy to meet the challenges of this change, and even established storage vendors, such as EMC, need to continue to make breakthroughs and innovations in the areas of object storage, software-defined storage, next-generation file collaboration, third platform development tools and analysis tools, and more.

To this end, EMC is making unremitting efforts to launch a series of new products and services to meet its challenges, including infoarchive listing, and VIPR software definition storage platform more than 10 new products. In addition, EMC related people told reporters, "All products have a life cycle, the second half of this year is expected to release more new products." ”

Redefine policy

The critical phase of technological change has also led to the decision by EMC boss Joe Tucci, who was scheduled to retire in 2012, to postpone the farewell time. He developed a "federal plan" for EMC to meet the challenge and to strengthen the Union when he was in office.

The so-called "federal program" means that EMC company will comprise four companies, namely Emcii, VMware, RSA and pivotal. These four companies have their respective roles, EMC provides software-defined storage, VMware focuses on software-defined data centers, pivotal focuses on software-defined businesses, and RSA provides security across the entire software definition architecture.

In other words, EMC will no longer be EMC, but a "four-horse", an integral part of EMC. According to Joe Tucci's plan, "Federation" will be the most powerful weapon EMC should challenge the second platform to the third platform.

But in the future, this unique "Commonwealth" needs to consider many factors of integration, such as: how to develop and implement a unified strategy, how to find the most appropriate mode of operation, that is, to maintain the independence of companies, but also to cooperate with each other, if a high degree of consensus and so on.

"The ability of the four coaches to coordinate and apply the technology correctly is the biggest challenge for the next two years after taking office," said David Golden, CEO of Emcii, who took office just six months ago, in an interview with an economic reporter from 21st century. ”

In addition to the Alliance strategy, EMC continues to strengthen its capabilities through acquisition strategies. Because of acquisitions, EMC can continuously integrate its products, technologies, solutions, and resources into its own camp, evolving into different types of areas that meet the needs of users with EMC's overall advantage. In fact, in EMC's history, it was through a series of successful acquisitions that allowed the company to grow to the size of today's $23 billion trillion.

In order to achieve a better transition to the third platform, EMC has acquired flash manufacturer Xtreamio, released software-defined storage platform VIPR, enhanced the promotion of converged solutions, and so on.

At this EMC World Conference, a newly acquired company named SDDS has been unveiled to expand its leadership position in flash storage. Bill Moore, president and chief executive of the company's DSSD company, is chief storage engineer for the original Sun Microsystems company. Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of the original Sun Microsystems Company, is also the Chairman and chief development officer of Arista NX, who will serve as DSSD strategic advisor.

At present, SDDS has not yet released relevant specific products and services. But Andy Bechtolsheim revealed: "We've created a new tier of storage for transactional and large data applications with the highest I/O performance requirements." With EMC, DSSD delivers a new type of storage system that delivers disruptive changes in latency, IOPS, and bandwidth features, while delivering shared storage efficiency.

Ye Chenghui told reporters that the future of EMC's acquisition will focus on the third platform area, and software definition storage, large data, cloud architecture consulting services, integration solutions, etc. will be the focus of the promotion.

Industry competition in the future

In addition to acquisitions, EMC is also brewing the channel for change, by strengthening the channel to expand and control, and further consolidate their market position.

Over the past two years, EMC has cooperated with many brands in China and globally, taking China as an example, and EMC has cooperated with Lenovo, Shenzhou Digital, Fortis, Changhong and other local brands. At present, EMC has 7 OEM partners in China, and they have contributed a lot to the improvement of EMC's China performance.

In the global marketplace, EMC plans to unify all EMC partners under an overall plan through the latest EMC Business Partner Program (EMC Business Partner programs).

According to the latest business partner Program, partners can choose the mode of cooperation that best suits their strategic objectives. The business partners collaborate in such ways as EMC resellers, distributors, cloud service providers, system integrators and subcontractors, and the RSA Securworld program.

It is learned that a variety of cooperative partners can be obtained through a cooperative approach to income and training points, in other ways of cooperation, to maximize flexibility, reduce costs and invest in new EMC business.

In addition, EMC will reward partners with broad investment in EMC, the EMC Federation, and VCE, provide new and richer incentives, and provide deeper investment in supporting the development of markets for cloud service providers and Global Alliance partners.

The establishment of a large, systematic, flexible and effective channel system is an important guarantee for EMC's development in the past, and in the future, it will play a more important role, because cloud computing, large data competition will be more intense.

In the past, EMC's main competitors were IBM, HP, Dell, NetApp and other software and hardware vendors, and now EMC's talk and advocacy are ubiquitous in Google, Amazon and other internet makers. And in the "Internet thinking" of the tide, consumer internet manufacturers of competitive advantage will be reflected, and traditional it manufacturers pressure will be even greater. This requires EMC to change itself, leveraging software to make practical applications more automated and more flexible in hardware and software-integrated solutions to improve competitiveness.

However, despite the intense competition, EMC is facing a favourable wave of opportunities in terms of global market demand. Research from EMC shows that in the 2014, the storage hardware market is thriving, large data and cloud computing will grow fast, enterprise-class memory applications will continue to expand, software-defined storage will be the way, and storage will be sold as a solution.

Therefore, for the traditional giants such as EMC, opportunities, challenges coexist, the test is not the ability to change, more importantly, the determination and urgency of change, redefine themselves, redefine technology.