[ Executive Vision ] The power of two

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The powerEMC President and CEO Joe Tucci talksabout his company’s partnership with Delland keeping sight of the two companies’number-one goal: helping customersaffordably tame the growing beast that isenterprise data

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The power of two [ Executive Vision ]

When it comes to partnerships, the

business world has its fair share of

marriages of convenience: Company A has

access to a market that Company B wants

to tap, and vice versa. And in marriages of

necessity, King of the Hill Corp. dominates

market share, and Little Guy Inc. under-

stands the power of association.

Whatever prompts a union, all part-

nerships require hard work and good

communication. But Joe Tucci, president

and CEO of EMC Corporation, knows that

the best marriages—the ones that make the

partners better than they could be on their

own—can’t survive without a little love.

“The alliance between EMC and Dell is

unique because it began with a friendship,”

Tucci says. “And that’s one of the reasons

it continues to grow.”

Out of partnerships past

In the three years since it began, the

partnership between Dell and EMC has

flourished. But you can trace the roots of

this partnership to two people with a big

idea—Tucci and newly appointed Dell

CEO Kevin Rollins.

In 1993, Tucci, something of a

specialist in reviving ailing businesses,

became CEO of Wang Laboratories to pull

the company out of bankruptcy and back

in the black. Tucci succeeded; he

upended the organization’s model and

reversed its course to make it a US$4

billion company with a newfound

emphasis on global services.

In 1994, Michael Dell caught wind of

Tucci’s good deeds at Wang and spotted an

opportunity for both companies.

“Michael called me to say that Dell

was growing like crazy and needed some-

one who could help Dell install and

service PCs. That’s how the original part-

nership formed.”

When Tucci began the Wang services

partnership with Dell, he worked with

Kevin Rollins. The two built a friendship

that lasted after Tucci’s departure from

the revived Wang Global, which in 2000

led him to EMC to serve as its president

and chief operating officer (COO). He

retained the title of president and

became CEO of EMC in 2001, about the

same time Rollins became Dell’s COO.

Suddenly, the two old friends with

Boston roots had even more to discuss.

“You know what it’s like when you

meet someone and you just ‘click’ with

that person? That’s how our friendship

started,” Tucci says. “So when I joined

EMC, it was only natural that we start

talking about the possibilities.”

Given the atmosphere into which Tucci

stepped when he became CEO, partner-

ships were very much on his mind. EMC

had spent the late 1990s riding high on the

e-commerce wave as thousands of startups

invested in high-end storage systems and

existing companies established an online

presence to gobble new market share

through the Internet. EMC saw its revenues

skyrocket—but much of that new revenue

came from startups, telcos, and service

providers that eventually perished in the

NASDAQ crash of April 2000.

of twoBy Tara Swords

Dell President and CEO Kevin Rollins and EMCPresident and CEO Joe Tucci at a joint press confer-ence in London on May 26, 2004

[ Executive Vision ] The power of two

“Many of those customers disappeared

–literally,” Tucci says. “This phenomenon

ultimately eliminated a significant

portion of the new customers EMC had

won in 1999 and 2000. And just as

devastating, the hardware we sold them

in 2000 was back on the market in 2001,

hardly used and at a much lower price.”

In addition, EMC had responded to

the dot-com boom with such fervor that it

diminished its successful direct sales

force’s focus in the heartland of America—

the long-established corporations in

industries such as manufacturing that

were not immediately affected by the

economic slowdown. EMC barely had

time to respond to its rapidly changing

customer base before the global recession

set in heavily.

The need for serious restructuring was

the main driver for Tucci as he took the CEO

reins. Together with Rollins, Tucci carefully

considered the role that strategic partnering

could play in EMC’s transformation. The

two men might have been friends, but they

knew very well that the partnership

between these two multibillion-dollar,

multinational corporations must be based

on more than just good will.

“The partnerships that work best are

not all touchy-feely, softhearted deals,”

says John Mariotti, author of several books

including Partnerships: The Power of

Partnerships and Making Partnerships

Work. “There is a valuable and necessary

tension between the soft and hard sides.

The soft side has to do with the human

issues of trust and the relationships built

in the partnership. The hard side has to do

with the fact that partnerships must

consistently deliver value for all partners.

This requires clear understanding, specifi-

cally stated expectations, measurable goals,

detailed commitments, vigilant follow-up,

and single-mindedness of purpose—

nothing less will do.”

Tucci and Rollins surveyed the situation

to determine whether the two companies

were suited for the challenge.

“Kevin and I are students of business

models, and we’ve spent plenty of time

talking about which business models

work and which don’t work,” Tucci says.

“We talked about our own business

models and how they would have to

change if we wanted a successful partner-

ship between Dell and EMC. We got our

people involved, weighed the pros and

cons, and decided that this could be a

killer deal for both companies.”

Rollins instantly saw synergies between

the two organizations, their long-term

goals, and—most important—the IT needs

of their customers. “Dell’s direct relation-

ships with customers have given us a lot of

expertise in understanding customer

requirements, and EMC has incredible

engineering strength,” Rollins says. “We

knew our expertise would help EMC deter-

mine the right technologies for the market

and how to best package them for our joint

customers. This partnership was clearly in

the best interests of Dell and EMC and the

customers we were trying to help.”

From the ashes

When Dell and EMC officially joined

forces in October 2001, they inked a five-

year, multibillion-dollar deal in which the

“We talked about our ownbusiness models and how theywould have to change if wewanted a successful partnershipbetween Dell and EMC”

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J U N E 2 0 0 4 D E L L I N S I G H T 9

The power of two [ Executive Vision ]

two companies would co-brand EMC’s

CLARiiON® line of storage systems. Dell

would become the leading reseller of

CLARiiON, which is now Dell’s standard

offering for storage area networks (SANs).

The point of any partnership is to make

each partner stronger than it could be

alone, and the alliance could not have

come at a better time for either company.

Dell offered EMC exposure to small and

medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—a

market that EMC, largely focused on enter-

prise data centers with its direct sales

force, had not truly tapped. EMC offered

Dell a wealth of technology and storage

know-how, giving Dell the chance to share

the fruits of EMC’s research and develop-

ment (R&D) labors.

Industry analysts called the alliance a

harbinger of bad news for competing stor-

age vendors. True, Dell was still building

its storage business and EMC was in the

midst of a major restructuring. But the fact

that other storage vendors had a lot of

market share meant they also had a lot

to lose.

And potential customers had much

to gain. Dell and EMC technology—sold

through a direct model and backed by

engineering strength—offered enterprise

customers an attractive alternative to

storage solutions on the market, so the

partnership rapidly attracted new converts.

Although the market for storage is adding

new customers, Dell and EMC have won

over many customers from competing

vendors, thanks to their winning combina-

tion of affordable hardware, high-quality

support, and strong reputations.

Let them use SANs

The breadth of the Dell/EMC product

offering has enabled customers in every

industry and of every size to gain from

Dell’s direct model and EMC’s engineering

expertise. But nowhere has the impact been

so positive as in the mid-tier storage market.

For years, SANs were the fare of

large corporations with hefty IT budgets.

Organizations with fewer IT resources—

especially SMBs and organizations in

government and education—were stuck

in the world of direct attach storage (DAS).

Yet their quantity of data was growing at

the same exponential rate as data in the

enterprise world. The DAS approach of

linking individual servers to individual

storage machines may be the least efficient

method of data storage, leading to under-

utilization, management nightmares, and

data that is vulnerable to downtime.

As part of the Dell/EMC agreement,

Dell builds some of the co-branded systems

in its facilities worldwide, including Austin,

Ireland, and Malaysia. This arrangement

applies the Dell build-to-order model to

Dell/EMC equipment and helps decrease

manufacturing costs—savings that are ulti-

mately passed on to customers. Another

benefit: Joint customers don’t fret over

which company to call if they need

service or support. Gold-level Dell/EMC

Premier Enterprise Support services

provide customers with a single point of

contact for around-the-clock help.

The advent of the Dell/EMC CX200 in

2002, for example, finally put advanced,

affordable storage pooling technology

within reach of smaller organizations. It

was the first Dell/EMC product to be built

in Dell’s manufacturing facilities, and was

backed by Dell’s proven support method-

ologies—helping companies make the

move to SANs with confidence and ease.

Today, the newest additions to the line—

the Dell/EMC AX100 and Dell/EMC

CX300 storage arrays—are also manufac-

tured by Dell. These systems give smaller

organizations and workgroups a SAN that

SANs in actionDell/EMC customers around the world are doingimportant work with their Dell/EMC solutions.When the Buckinghamshire City Council in theUnited Kingdom decided to become moreconstituent-focused, the organization decided toimplement a new enterprise resource planning(ERP) system. Part of the solution is a Dell/EMCSAN to store data that the agency serves on itscommunity Web portal. The council expects theamount of content on its portal to grow dramati-cally in the coming years, and the Dell/EMC SANis scalable enough to support that growth—andpowerful enough to access archived data quickly.

The Detroit Free Press relies on photos, files, andfootage to create compelling content. The news-paper collects and stores hundreds of thousands ofmultimedia files ranging from PDFs and JPEGs towave files and video, and these files sometimesare needed long after they are created. For thatreason, Detroit Free Press implemented aDell/EMC SAN, which stores different data filesand enables access to the newspaper’s archives,including a digital photo archive that containsphotographs spanning the last 10 years.

[ Executive Vision ] The power of two

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is even easier to own and operate, further

eliminating barriers to SAN adoption and

the IT benefits it can bring.

In just the first two years of the part-

nership, Dell and EMC helped customers

deploy nearly 10,000 Dell/EMC storage

systems to simplify storage management,

dramatically increase storage capacity,

and help lower the total cost of ownership

(TCO) of storage. Dell’s direct relationship

with customers also has given EMC a

valuable pipeline to customers, whose

needs Dell communicates back to EMC

engineers. EMC then ensures that future

product development incorporates

customer feedback—a process that was

instrumental in the development of prod-

ucts such as the Dell/EMC AX100 and

Dell/EMC CX300.

A vision of the future

The original five-year deal between Dell

and EMC has been extended to 2008. In

May of this year, the two companies

announced an expansion of the original

alliance, including the introduction of

the Dell/EMC AX100 storage array and

Dell’s decision to offer backup and repli-

cation software from EMC’s LEGATO

software division.

“The vision of the Dell and EMC part-

nership is to combine our strengths to

scale advanced storage solutions down

into volume markets as well as to improve

the TCO equation for customers,” Rollins

says. “As we enter our third year of the

partnership, we mark our success today

by delivering unprecedented levels of

performance and value to customers of

all sizes.”

EMC’s 2004 acquisition of VMware

will further help Dell and EMC customers

lower costs and simplify operations by

deploying virtualization technologies across

their Intel® processor–based servers and,

down the road, across their heterogeneous

IT infrastructures to create a single pool

of available storage and computing

resources. Dell offers software from EMC’s

VMware subsidiary.

In the meantime, Tucci says he and

Rollins continue to personally “own”

the alliance and ensure both companies

grow together and deliver more and

better storage options for customers that

face rapidly growing data and regulations

about how to manage that data.

“We decided we were going to take

on this relationship and make sure it

stayed on track at every level,” Tucci

says. “It has stayed on track and

expanded as we hoped it would. Now,

with the release of the innovative new

Dell/EMC AX100 storage array, we are

again helping smaller organizations with

fewer IT resources achieve the same

impressive price/performance ratio that

large enterprises with huge budgets and

staffs can achieve. That’s why we started

this partnership, and that’s why we’ll

continue it.”

Dell/EMC AX100

A complete, simplified storage solution

The new Dell/EMC AX100 is a storage plat-form designed specifically to create a low-cost SAN that is easy to use. The Dell/EMCAX100 is a storage array well suited forsmall and medium-sized businesses, schools,local government agencies, and even branchoffices of large corporations. Organizationswith limited IT support will appreciate howeasy it is to deploy and manage this highlyaffordable storage solution. The systemcomes complete with simplified software.Just follow Dell’s easy, customer-friendlyprocess to create a SAN:

• Connect the Dell/EMC AX100 to a server • Run Dell’s easy-to-use graphical interface

wizard to install and set up the systemconfiguration in four simple steps

• Run additional wizards to connect otherdevices to the SAN, such as servers or theBrocade® 3250 VL2 switch

• Run the easy-to-use management softwareto provision storage volumes

• Include the QLogic® QLA200 host busadapters (HBAs)—network adapters thathelp servers communicate with the SANusing Fibre Channel

The power of two [ Executive Vision ]

Living, breathing dataEMC has identified several clear trends among its customers: IT budgets are not expanding nearlyas fast as information is growing. The needs for business continuity, compliance, and consolida-tion are driving the requirement to store ever greater quantities of information. And the value ofthis information changes over time, making it doubly important to consider the kind of platformused for storage. What is the best way for organizations to deal with these trends? Informationlifecycle management (ILM)—a customer strategy for aligning IT infrastructure with the businessbased on the changing value of information. This strategy has sparked intense interest amongsolutions-hungry customers. By enabling organizations to manage data in a way that respondsautomatically to its changing value throughout its life cycle, ILM holds real promise for organiza-tions concerned about data recovery, archiving, backup, availability, and regulatory compliance.

To understand how ILM can work in real-world environments, consider how informationmoves through the supply chain:

• Company XYZ receives an order for a new widget. Immediately, automated tools tag thedata with predetermined, business-driven data policies, enabling the company to track andmanage the order data throughout its life cycle.

• The value of the order data at the time of its creation is high. The value remains highthroughout order processing, when many people access and use it to fulfill the request andship products.

• After the order is filled and the product is shipped, the information value of the order drops,prompting ILM tools to automatically migrate the data from a high-performance tier ofstorage to a lower-cost level that takes only slightly longer to access.

• However, if the customer calls with a claim approximately one year into a two-yearwarranty, for example, the ILM tools—once again managed by value-driven policies—allow customer representatives and technical personnel to readily access the customer order.

• When the warranty runs out, ILM tools automatically delete or permanently archive theorder information, thus closing out the life cycle.

The Dell/EMC AX100 also includes auto-mated failover software that routes datato another drive, helping to ensure data isalways available. In addition, snapshotsoftware helps organizations recover lost orcorrupted data.

The Dell/EMC AX100 incorporates mirroredcache and provides redundant controllers,power supplies, and fans to help ensurethat data is always available. Starting at480 GB capacity, the array supports up to12 hard drives that can accommodate upto 3 TB of data. One of the hard drives canalso be dedicated as a hot spare that isautomatically incorporated into a RAID setif another drive fails.

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“As we enter our third year of the partnership, we mark oursuccess today by deliveringunprecedented levels ofperformance and value tocustomers of all sizes”