Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

STRENGTHENING R&D: Joseph M. Tucci (centre), Chairman, President and CEO, EMC Corporation, shaking hands with Manoj Chugh, President, EMC, India and SAARC, at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. Steve Leonard, President, APAC-Japan, EMC Corporation, looks on.

NEW DELHI: EMC Corporation of the U.S., a global leader in information management and storage solutions, on Tuesday announced the third phase of its expansion plan aimed at strengthening its presence in the Indian market.

"EMC's additional investment in India will be used to grow the market for information management, expand the sales and marketing infrastructure and strengthen R&D presence. EMC has committed that by 2008, customers in the 60 largest cities in India will be able to purchase EMC products and solutions through its partner network,'' said EMC Corporation President and CEO, Joe Tucci, at a news conference here on Tuesday.

The investment in the third phase of the expansion pegged at $250 million (Rs. 1,200 crore) would also see the company doubling the headcount from 1,600 to 3,200 in the next two years. While half the headcount would be directly on the EMC's rolls, the remaining would form the contractors' team.

EMC marked the first phase of investment with its entry in the country in 2000 and five years later announced an investment of $250 million. In the process, Bangalore became the home to EMC's largest software development effort outside North America.

EMC also announced that it would set up a Centre of Excellence for e-governance (CoEE) to assist the Central and State governments with their e-governance information management and storage needs. "India has rapidly become one of the most strategic markets for EMC's expanding global business. Our new plan to double our investment in India is the direct result of the great success we have had helping hundreds of organisations with their information management needs and the tremendous opportunity we see in front of us." The CoEE will work in close partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

EMC Country Manager, Manoj Chugh, pointed out that the company had been increasing its investment and commitment to India every year for the last three years. Today, it is the leading provider of information management and storage in India with over 350 customers.

Anand Parthasarthy reports from Bangalore

Virtual infrastructure

Information infrastructure is the hottest, most dynamic, niche in information technology today, Mr. Tucci said.

In a briefing for The Hindu, Mr. Tucci said the way to go was `virtual' — create systems that allowed enterprises to seamlessly switch between different tiers of storage: some mission critical, others archival.

Software could make this happen, he said. Indeed, for a company like EMC, software had become the tail, accounting for over 50 per cent of the total information management solu- tion.

Mr. Tucci said five technology areas — content and resource management; storage virtualisation, security and virtual infrastructure — would together define the road map for next-generation secure information systems.

The Bangalore development centre was the largest R&D operation outside the U.S. and contributed to all of EMC's product development lines. Indian developers were helping to localise some of EMC's offerings for the emerging small and medium sized markets in India, China and elsewhere.

They were also working on some forward looking solutions that would ride the coming wave of grid computing — the harnessing of heterogeneous servers and storage in a grid network, Mr. Tucci said.

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