EMC Reorganizes Hardware, Software Divisions

EMC reorganized its hardware and software development teams to streamline the development of several of its storage product lines.

On the hardware side, EMC is combining its VMAX enterprise storage development team and its VNX midrange storage development team as part of a new organization, according to a Nov. 20 blog post by EMC President and COO David Goulden.

The new division is called the Enterprise and Midrange Systems Division, according to EMC, Hopkinton, Mass.

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On the software side, EMC is bringing together its VPLEX, RecoverPoint, and Backup & Recovery Systems teams into a new Data Protection & Availability Division, Goulden wrote.

This reorganization follows the September establishment of the Emerging Technology Products Division, which is made up of its former Flash Business Unit, including its XtremIO all-flash storage arrays, ScaleIO software-defined storage technology, and XtremSF PCIe cards and XtremSW flash storage software. Also included is EMC's hybrid cloud gateways and high-performance computing storage lines.

The latest reorganizations are great moves by EMC and should help overcome the perception that EMC has too many products, said Jamie Shepard, regional vice president at Lumenate, a Dallas-based solution provider and EMC partner.

"EMC addresses every customer requirement in any way," he said. "They really take care of businesses both large and small."

Goulden wrote in his blog post that while EMC is bringing the VMAX and VNX development teams into a single division, it will maintain the two as separate lines for different workload requirements.

"There are no changes to any products, product road maps or the way we take our products to market or how we support our customers. But we believe that bringing these teams together will make our portfolio and our business even stronger," he wrote.

The new division will enable the two product lines to share platforms while still targeting different parts of the market.

"In the auto industry, automakers that offer different product lines for different segments of the market have demonstrated the benefits of sharing platforms, and we intend to leverage those benefits here. Bringing these teams together will allow us to accelerate innovation and maintain our leading edge in the storage industry," Goulden wrote.

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The new hardware division will be run by Brian Gallagher, who currently serves as president of EMC's Enterprise Storage Division. Gallagher previously managed EMC's VMAX business.

Rich Napolitano, who as president of EMC's Unified Storage Division ran the company's VNX business, is moving on to an "exciting new role leading an early stage initiative, focused on next-generation information infrastructures for multicloud environments," Goulden wrote.

These are the kind of moves EMC is famous for in a good way, Shepard said.

"Brian has done all the EMC Symmetrix and VPLEX integration and is the best person to integrate VMAX and VNX," he said. "And Rich is more in line with emerging technologies initiatives at EMC. Rich is a real technical leader. He's the guy who talks with the CIOs about new technologies."

On the software side, EMC's new Data Protection & Availability Division, under the leadership of Guy Churchward, president of the division, will focus on "protecting, recovering and ensuring data availability and on driving data protection across and into EMC's primary storage arrays," Goulden wrote.

"This team will better position us to deliver data protection as a set of software-defined services on top of ViPR and provide a solid foundation for 'Trust' in the Cloud," he wrote.

Churchward is a real technology leader, Shepard said.

"He's focused on driving the right technical solutions after taking over from B.J. Jenkins," he said. "He's very much in tune with the technology."

PUBLISHED NOV. 26, 2013