EMC: A Packaged Deal


EMC Corp.
176 South St., Hopkinton, MA 01748
(508) 435-1000
www.emc.com/products/software.jsp
Ticker: EMC
Exchange: NYSE
Employees: 17,400

Mark S. Lewis
Executive Vice President, Open Software Operations
Oversees all storage management software products. Joined EMC in 2002 from HP, where he was VP/GM of Compaq’s Enterprise Storage Group.

Chris Gahagan
Senior VP, Storage Infrastructure Software
Responsible for development of EMC’s storage software products. Before joining EMC was VP and GM of BMC Software’s enterprise systems management business unit.

Peter C. Conway
Vice President, Open Software Management
Oversees development, integration and release of new software products. Joined EMC in 2002 from Microsoft.

Products
Storage area network management, storage resource management, storage monitoring and reporting tools. Includes native tools specifically for EMC devices, such as the SnapView file system recording tools. Also heterogeneous tools such as SAN Manager.

Remember Cracker Jack prizes? They aren’t the highest quality toys, but they come right in the box of that candied popcorn—and they’re free.

That’s how some companies view EMC’s ControlCenter storage management software: It’s not the best, but then again, it’s not the most expensive.

Some contend it lacks features compared with offerings from Veritas, IBM and others.

While EMC has made ControlCenter more user-friendly, some customers say it’s not friendly enough: They still must jump between screens to administer storage management and backup. Another gripe: ontrolCenter lacks powerful scripting tools to customize the software.

Still, customers say EMC software is less expensive because it’s bundled with the company’s market-leading hardware. And by their accounts, EMC has been willing to discount the software as much as 20% when bundled with EMC hardware.

“Our decision came down to economics,” says Rebecca Naughton of biotech company Incyte Corp., which 18 months ago installed ControlCenter along with EMC hardware.

Another customer, JetBlue, also uses both EMC hardware and software. CIO Jeff Cohen likens the decision to buying integrated desktop applications from Microsoft rather than getting each application separately. “It’s a total-cost-of-ownership thing.”

Yet some EMC customers, such as Rockwell Collins, still buy storage software from multiple vendors. They say that products like ControlCenter may not support some non-EMC devices automatically or as well as the software from the device’s own manufacturer.

Rockwell Collins turned to other software to manage network-attached storage from Network Appliance as well as storage attached to longtime departmental systems. The reason? The company hasn’t had time to test EMC’s software for the Network Appliance devices, says Rockwell’s Ed Malamut. But he still expects that one day he’ll be able to use EMC to manage storage across multiple hardware devices. “Our vision is that, in the not-too-distant future, we will have one view of, and one way to manage, everything we have.”

And that’s worth more than a free prize.