EMC Details 'Information Lifecycle Management' Strategy

In a meeting in New York with financial analysts, Joseph Tucci, CEO of the Hopkinton, Mass.-based storage company, said EMC would seek to "fatten" the market as it integrates its hardware, software and services businesses.

"We're going to get really into the information management business," Tucci said, calling it a "massive opportunity."

EMC has spoken previously about its Information Lifecycle Management strategy, which Tucci said involves developing "better information" on customers data from its creation on. From a hardware perspective, EMC will continue to focus on driving much of that storage to disk-based solutions and away from tape-based solutions.

The changes will be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but will be apparent nonetheless, EMC executives aid.

"The storage market will change more in the next three years than it has in the past ten to 12 years," Tucci said.

The executives outlined the steps they would take to grow EMC's business and profitability, even as the company continues working to close its $1.3 billion acquisition of Legato Systems, which provides heterogeneous management software.

Bill Teuber, EMC's CFO, reiterated the company's goal to eventually drive 30 percent of its overall revenue through software sales, noting that the company's software revenue now stands at about 22 percent of the total and would reach 26 percent organically after the Legato deal closes.

"We're still very focused on 30 percent for software," Teuber said.

The Legato acquisition remains a centerpiece to EMC's strategy. David Goulden, EMC's executive vice president for marketing and new business development, said there was minimal overlap between Legato's and EMC's solution provider channels and, after the deal closes, the company would keep the two organizations separate, with Legato operating as a subsidiary of EMC.

Other details of the EMC-Legato channel strategy--including which channel program features would be common between the two organizations--continue to be developed by an integration team while the companies await final approvals and hurdles for the deal to be completed. EMC executives have predicted that that will happen by mid-October.

Teuber and Tucci told the analysts that they were "on track" to meet their sales projections for the third quarter, with Tucci noting that there may be "the light at the end of the tunnel" in terms of an IT spending rebound.

In trading on the New York Stock exchange, shares of EMC were up 23 cents per share to $10.76.