EMC is set to initiate a major security uprade to its product range. The move comes as EMC initiates its largest product refresh ever.
The move also comes at a time when the company finds itself in marketplace battles with Symantec who have a reputation for security.
EMC’s convert to security religion will see major upgrades to both its SMB offering and large enterprise solutions.It follows in the footsteps of Symantec’s merger with Veritas and Network Appliance’s planned acquisition of data-encryption vendor Decru, reflecting the growing need for storage and security to converge. EMC president and CEO Joe Tucci announced the plan in a briefing presented to Wall Street and industry analysts.
“Information and security do go together; they are not separate,” he said. “Customers are not asking us–they are demanding it.”EMC has already added encryption capability to its Dantz Retrospect backup software, and intends to do the same with the rest of its software lines and storage systems. Company officials are emphatic that EMC is not seeking a major acquisition partner, but hasn’t ruled out smaller deals and partnerships.
Recent losses of backup tapes by key banks, credit-card processors and government agencies, among others, potentially exposing the personal information of millions of people, have brought the issue of storage security to the forefront. EMC had to up the ante on security, notes equity analyst Daniel Renouard, of R.W. Baird claimed. “How they execute will be really hard,” Renouard says. In addition to security, EMC is seeing strong demand for its VMWare unit’s server-virtualisation software. After posting 93 percent growth last quarter, EMC is now a $400 million company.
“That’s a tremendous opportunity,” Tucci told analysts.Another key area of emphasis will come from EMC’s network-management subsidiary, Smarts, which it acquired in February. Using that company’s network-monitoring technology and EMC’s Documentum workflow engine, EMC plans to bolster its own Control Center Management console early next year. The revamped Control Center will add network analysis and workflow from both Smarts and Documentum.
Tucci says Smarts’ tool collects data and events. It can tap into other data, build a model of how the various components are supposed to interact and take appropriate actions.
“It’s going to give us magic,” Tucci says. As a result of its expanded strategy, EMC is fine-tuning its tagline, from that of an information life-cycle management (ILM) provider to an infrastructure-management company. The storage giant says it’s not moving away from ILM–which accounts for 95 percent of its revenue–but rather that it is part of what EMC sees as a broader market encompassing not just the management of data, but the infrastructure that supports it.
Meanwhile, EMC has just refreshed the Symmetrix DMX line with its largest system to date, and has upgraded its flagship CLARiiON storage arrays as well.