EMC to Unveil Products Challenging Cloud-Storage Sellers

September 5, 2013 Leave a comment

EMC to Unveil Products Challenging Cloud-Storage Sellers

EMC Corp. (EMC) said it’s introducing new products that will be offered via a faster and more simplified buying process, challenging the appeal of Web-based computing services from Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and other cloud providers. The product initiative, called Project Nile, will introduce machines in the first half of next year, Jeremy Burton, executive vice president at EMC, said in an interview. Customers can choose storage for files, databases or the Web and receive a complete system within 48 hours, he said.Companies are looking for ways to store data generated by Internet applications that run transactions, store content and analyze data. While providers such as Amazon and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) offer online services for such tasks without complex management, there hasn’t been a product for customers seeking to keep their data in-house along with the easy ordering and management benefits of Web-based services, according to Richard Villars, an analyst at market-research firm IDC.

“Cloud providers have given customers scale, and they can pick and choose across four different types of storage, without having to manage four different incompatible systems,” Villars said. “EMC is making a bet they can provide the same kind of system.”

Burton said EMC isn’t losing sales to cloud providers right now. While that’s true, existing customers are opting for Internet-based storage as they build new applications, putting EMC at risk of losing out on growth, Villars said.

EMC, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, is offering the new types of storage to boost sales as demand slows for its traditional and priciest products. The company said in March that revenue will rise by at least 8 percent annually through 2016.

Market Growth

The high-end of the market will only grow 1 percent to 3 percent a year, EMC forecast, while the emerging market for newer types of storage will increase more than 25 percent in the same period.

Burton said the new range of products will cost customers 40 percent to 60 percent less than public cloud options. Villars said the jury is still out on that figure, given that the new machines aren’t even on sale yet.

“Whether they can provide at same price point, they’ve got to prove that, and that will take a number of years,” Villars said. “Can they provide the same kind of agility and flexibility? That’s what they’re trying to solve.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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