EMC to target consumers with own and partners’ brands

EMC plans to use both its own products and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deals to target the consumer market, a company executive said Friday in an interview.

Mozy, an online backup and recovery subscription service, will be offered by EMC to consumers under its own brand, said David Goulden, EMC's executive vice president and chief financial officer. Mozy became part of EMC after it acquired Berkeley Data Systems in October.

In contrast, the company has also tied up with Intel for Intel-branded storage that will run EMC's LifeLine software suite. The product will ship with Intel's brand and will be supported by Intel, although there will be a mention that the product runs LifeLine powered by EMC, Goulden said.

Partnerships like the one with Intel are important for EMC as it is relatively unknown in the consumer market, an expensive market to enter on its own, Goulden added.

LifeLine provides NAS (network attached storage) capabilities and backup and recovery and file management for consumer systems, according to Goulden. To get it to the consumer, EMC decided to partner with Intel because it required distribution channels that can get the product to millions of customers, and required low-end, near-commodity type hardware which is not EMC's business, he added.

Goulden did not however comment on whether the deal with Intel was exclusive, or whether EMC would do similar deals around its LifeLine software with other vendors. For now, even Dell, which already has an agreement with EMC for enterprise storage, will have to do a deal for the product with Intel, he said.

At a user conference earlier this year, EMC President and CEO Joseph Tucci said his company was considering entering the consumer market. Besides Mozy and LifeLine, EMC plans other products and services for the consumer market, Goulden said. For consumer products that include hardware, the company will more likely have OEM relationships, he said.