Michael Ruettgers, Executive Chairman, EMC

That's a lesson some former classmates, colleagues and, more importantly, EMC competitors have learned the hard way. In fact, the same skills that provided the young Ruettgers with extra cash in college have been applied by the 58-year-old EMC executive chairman to the increasingly high-stakes storage game.

"When Michael was on the road for several weeks, he would sometimes get the senior folks together for a poker game," recalls Larry Vale, who worked with the soft-spoken Ruettgers at technology consultant Keane. "I refused to participate. . . . I knew I would lose my shirt because there are not too many folks that could beat Michael Ruettgers' game."

Whether it's playing poker or charting EMC's storage strategy, Ruettgers has consistently outthought and outmaneuvered virtually any and all who have come to the table to match wits with him.

Since Ruettgers joined EMC nearly 14 years ago, sales have grown more than 74-fold to $8.9 billion in 2000. And for the 10-year period from October 1990 to October 2000, EMC was the single highest-performing publicly traded stock on both the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange.

With those kinds of numbers, Ruettgers has done the impossible: He has made the complex and arcane world of storage sexy. In the process, the unassuming and mild-mannered strategist has become a business celebrity now mentioned in the same league as Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and former General Electric chairman Jack Welch.

Ruettgers was one of 3,000 business leaders, heads of government, film stars and musicians gathered on the slopes at the 31st Annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January. CNN captured Ruettgers strolling in the Swiss resort with his burly fur coat, looking every bit the part of the business statesman. And when the most elite of the high-tech elite gathered at one of the lead tables for dinner, Ruettgers was there. "Five years ago, the storage guys wouldn't have been at the table at all," he says.

But success apparently has not changed Ruettgers. Despite all the millions of dollars he has earned, he lives in the same modest home in a picturesque, woodsy suburb outside of Boston, where he and his wife, Maureen, have raised three children. He has donated $5 million to his alma mater, Idaho State University, and spent countless hours on charity ventures. "I don't see a big fat ego," says William Stratton, dean of the College of Business at ISU. "He is down-to-earth and very easy to talk to."

A golfer and avid outdoorsman, Ruettgers loves fly-fishing and skeet-shooting, as well as hunting pheasant, quail and grouse.And when The New York Times asked him to reveal the contents of his briefcase for a regular news feature, he touted his copy of the Orvis catalog, which pedals gear for outdoor activities. Ruettgers figures he's got to be one of Orvis' biggest customers. He is also a gourmet cook who enjoys spending time in the kitchen whipping up fine dishes.

Lately, though, Ruettgers has had little time for cooking or fly-fishing. Even though he gave up his CEO title to EMC President Joe Tucci in February, that hasn't meant less time on the road meeting with customers, alongside EMC's legendary sales force. "Mike gets his rear end out of his office, and he goes on sales calls," says Frank Hauck, executive vice president of global sales and services at EMC. Legend has it Ruettgers once ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in three different countries on the same day to meet with EMC customers.

Ruettgers has not always been a hard worker. When it came time to go to college, he decided to study engineering close to the beach at UCLA, the same school where his dad received a football scholarship. The problem was Ruettgers spent more time at the card table playing poker than in the classroom, and he ended up dropping out his freshman year.

Ruettgers picked himself up and went on to attend St. Martin's College, a small Catholic college in Lacey, Wash., where he improved his study habits. Then he transferred in his junior year to ISU, where he says he found his "North Star" and "determined that someday I would be a CEO."

After graduating from ISU with a business degree in 1964, he went to work for defense contractor LTV and then onto Harvard Business School, where he earned his MBA in 1967. Thirty-four years later, Ruettgers' reinvention of EMC several times over would be chronicled in the Harvard Business Review.

After Harvard, Ruettgers spent 13 years at Raytheon, where as general manager of the computer services organization he was instrumental in the development of the Patriot Missile. Then he moved on to Keane to oversee the firm's consulting business. "He is very determined and committed," says Keane Chairman John Keane. "That means an awful lot. . . . When you are dead serious and put everything you have into it, that is what it is really all about. That is the way Mike plays the game."

Ruettgers put in place a compensation structure for the Keane sales force that let top performers earn more than $100,000, a hefty paycheck for a top salesperson in the early '80s. This thinking would later color the sales force incentives he instituted at EMC, making many EMC salespeople millionaires.

When Ruettgers was recruited by EMC founder Richard Egan as executive vice president of operations in 1988, EMC was primarily making memory boards for minicomputers. It was Ruettgers, who became EMC's president and COO in 1989 and assumed the CEO title in 1992, who charted the company's hard-and-fast push into storage systems. Later, Ruettgers would drive the company to support third-party products, just as he is now pushing hard into the storage management software market.

Ruettgers' reserved demeanor is in sharp contrast to the rah-rah style of a CEO such as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer or the bullying bombastic approach taken by Apple's Steve Jobs.

"When I need to do something, he is pretty good about giving me hints and indications. Sometimes it's just the question that he asks, and I know what the problem is," Hauck says.

Ruettgers' biggest challenge may be successfully guiding EMC through its current troubles. The company suffered its first quarterly loss in a dozen years for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. EMC lost $945.2 million, and sales were down a whopping 47 percent to $1.2 billion. While the company laid off 23 percent of its 19,000 employees, it still doesn't expect to see a profit until the second quarter of next year. A somber Ruettgers told analysts that the global economy, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, price competition and execution all played a role.

Ruettgers is already anteing up for the next hand, however. In a bid to reduce selling costs and gain a bigger piece of the low-end market, EMC recently signed a reseller agreement with Dell Computer, which raises a number of channel conflict issues.

At the same time, Ruettgers has been expanding EMC's presence with solution providers and distributors. He signed on Gates/Arrow and Avnet and eliminated direct sales to companies with less than $500 million in revenue. About 30 percent of EMC's sales now go through partners, according to the company.

Storage integrators are cautiously optimistic about EMC's intentions. "Everybody has to work at building up trust, and it takes time, but the building of our relationship is going well," says Mike Crush, CTO of Adexis, a storage integrator in Columbus, Ohio, that began selling EMC products this year.

Meanwhile, Ruettgers says that amid the current turmoil, customers will emphasize protecting, managing and sharing information. As they do, the "advantage will move back to EMC," he says.

Is he just bluffing? The cards Ruettgers plays in the next few months may well determine whether EMC remains at the top of the storage pyramid. Those betting against Ruettgers would be wise to remember the empty pockets of those who have doubted him in the past.