Software leads IT industry into challenging era

THE biggest transition in the history of data storage is now under way, according to EMC, the global market leader in the sector.

At the EMC World 2014 convention in Las Vegas in the US this week, David Goulden, CEO of EMC’s information infrastructure division, set the agenda for the evolution of storage from an industry dominated by hardware to one that will be defined by software applications.

“The industry is navigating the single-most transformative IT shift ever,” he said. “It’s driven by billions of devices, billions of users and millions of applications. Not a single industry or organisation is immune.”

To address the shift, EMC has reorganised itself into a “federation” structure over the past year. It comprises Goulden’s division, along with cloud computing leaders VM Ware and a new application development business called Pivotal, put together by South Africa-educated Paul Maritz, one-time number three executive at Microsoft.

Maritz was CEO of VM Ware before becoming chief strategy officer at EMC and guiding the creation of its new structure. Along with Goulden and group CEO and chairman Joe Tucci, he used the stage at EMC World to usher in “the third platform of IT”.

Mainframe computers and terminals represented the first platform and PCs the second. The third platform is based on “the mega-trends of cloud, mobile, social and big data”, which, said Maritz, was creating a new world of opportunity — and competitive threat — for businesses in every industry.

He described a triangle of activity that would define all enterprises — applications, data and analytics. The applications produce data and analytics make sense of the data and feed back into the refinement of the applications, in a continuous cycle.

“The consumer internet giants like Facebook and Google are using their underlying technology capability to go round this triangle at a rate, size and cost that most businesses cannot match today,” said Maritz.

“That’s what makes them so disruptive. The typical enterprise could take weeks, months and years to go round this cycle. The disruptors take a few hours. We want to put that kind of power in the hands of our customers.”

In South Africa, too, EMC has seen a restructure in recent years. Previously, each line of business in the local office reported separately to management in Europe. It was also managed separately from the region comprising Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East (Team), creating an artificial distance from the region.

Two years ago South Africa was brought into the Team structure, and 18 months ago a general manager was appointed in South Africa to oversee all lines of business. “The new structure means we can engage our core customers from a pan-African perspective,” said country general manager Servaas Venter.

“The federation structure also works particularly well in South Africa, for example, with Pivotal based inside the EMC offices.”

One result was that, in 2013, EMC gained 5% of South African market share to reach 38% of the market in its core storage business and become the clear market leader. Revenue across Africa grew a massive 33%.

Venter said the third platform of IT was already a reality in South Africa and one of the factors that motivated more than 70 decision-makers from South Africa to fly to Las Vegas to attend EMC World.

“When this idea of the third platform emerged two years ago, we were all sceptical about how far away it was,” said Venter. “Now it’s upon us.”