EMC and Accenture Join Hands in Storage Consulting

The Hopkinton, Mass.-based company has expanded its global services group to include the new information solutions consulting storage unit responsible for platform-independent storage consulting. In tandem, EMC has signed a five-year agreement with Accenture to help accelerate the growth of that part of global services.

This is all part of CEO Joseph Tucci's marching orders for the entire company to generate a portion of its revenues from services. Tucci has stated he wants 50 percent of the revenues to be generated from hardware sales, 30 percent from software and 20 percent from services by the end of 2004. At the end of 2001, services accounted for 14 percent of the company's revenues.

"Before, we had a very small portion of our business focusing on storage consulting services," says Joseph Walton, EMC's senior vice president of global services. "This is really a new business within EMC."

EMC's Global Services group is a worldwide organization with 1,400 employees. The new storage consulting services, which is comprised of 100 EMC employees and 100 Accenture employees, will focus on two objectives. The first will center on developing platform-independent storage services dealing not only with EMC products but other vendors' wares. The second goal entails delving into customer issues such as people, skills, processes and policies.

Accenture will earn money from this deal in two ways, says Terry Breen, a partner at New York-based Accenture. EMC essentially becomes an Accenture client--with EMC paying them for their resources and time. Accenture also will earn compensation on their ability to grow the business.

"A good part of our compensation is based on the services this business brings," says Breen.

EMC executives say they are not looking to become another IBM Global Services.

"IBM storage is a small part of the larger organization," Walton says. "To them, it's a small piece of the puzzle. To us, it is the only thing we do."