EMC banking billions on ILM

EMC Corp. is investing US$1.2 billion this year to develop and acquire technologies geared to help businesses share, protect, manage and secure data, said Chief Executive Officer and President Joe Tucci in his keynote address at the EMC World conference in Boston Monday.

Since 2003, EMC has spent $4.5 billion acquiring software and services companies to further this strategy, which it calls ILM (information lifecycle management). Software and services sales now comprise more than half the company's revenue.

The company's ILM strategy revolves around hardware, software and services for storing, protecting, moving, archiving, managing and securing data, Tucci said. As the company moves into the third year, or third phase, of its ILM strategy, it is shifting focus to application-specific offerings, such as ILM for databases or e-mail, Tucci said.

Going forward, EMC is looking to develop or acquire technologies in unified ILM, virtualization, model-based resource management, information security and information grid, Tucci said.

"We will use some of our balance sheet assets to acquire more technologies, there are more companies we have on our hit list," Tucci said.

The company's focus on virtualization and model-based management build upon its ILM strategy but also offer new market opportunities for the company, he said.

"Virtualization and model-based management will change the game face of technology and IT over the next three years," Tucci said. "I personally believe that all hardware products will eventually be virtualized."