EMC Pounds ILM Pulpit: Page 3 of 4

EMC is battling services organizations from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), as well as competition from the likes of Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK)
and Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), which also are adding partnerships and acquisitions to build ILM strategies of their own.

StorageTek, for instance, is remodeling itself from purely a tape vendor to an overall storage company (see Pat Martin, President & CEO, StorageTek). NetApp, EMC’s major NAS competitor, today announced it would incorporate an enterprise content management package from IXOS Software AG (Nasdaq: XOSY) with its SnapLock software.

All the hardware and software maneuverings are just part of the ILM picture. Services -- meaning consulting to help companies install and maintain storage applications -- are becoming the key differentiator for ILM. After all, what better way to get one's products into an account than to take charge of what the customer installs?

And analysts think customers need lots of help with storage problems. “If you’re going to do ILM, you can’t just say, ‘Here’s hardware, here’s software, have at it,’ ” says Steve Berg, senior research analyst at Punk Ziegel & Co.. “You need services.”

EMC clearly sees services as key to getting its ILM products into as many accounts as possible, and it's rabid about glomming on -- which may help it in what's shaping up to be a major competitive fray. “When it comes to ILM and the whole package, we’re in the best position,” crows Derrell James, VP of EMC's Technology Solutions group. “[ILM's] our main focus. Our whole strategy and vision is on ILM. We have far more focus than [competitors] do.”